The End of NaNoWriMo!

Well I have just finished my novel for National Novel Writing Month!  First let me apologize that I did not continue to update the story as I went, but it got too busy for me to keep updating every night and I often forgot or was too tired.

If there is anyone that wants to finish reading it, you can email me at backalleyscrapper@gmail.com

I finished my novel with 55,000 words, though I reached 50,000 on Thursday, which makes Thanksgiving my official win date.

It was a long and slow process and I was frustrated OFTEN, but I am super psyched I pulled through!  :D

NaNoWriMo Story – Nov. 15-17 (33,268)

He hoped Kyo would be okay, and left him lying there to check on Yesmina.  The man wasn’t too worried about her—she had only fainted from fatigue.  She was already stirring though.  She tried to lift her head slightly, but she was stopped by the man’s hand.

“Stay still,” he commanded, in a stern, no-nonsense voice.  It had the effect of her complying without argument.  She rested her head back on the asphalt, but turned it to the right so she could see Kyo on the ground.  She choked as she saw him so still, and tried to ask if he was alright, but her words were raspy and incomprehensible against her dry mouth and bruised lips.  “He’ll be fine.  But you have to keep still.  I don’t know if anything is broken yet, and I do not want to take chances.”

“Mmph,” she managed to respond.  Yesmina got the message, though, and as much as she wanted to rush to Kyo, she stayed on the ground and closed her eyes.  Her whole body throbbed.  She couldn’t tell if it was from pain or her complete lack of energy.  Whatever the cause was, it felt as if her muscles were about to catch fire.  She heard a series of beeps, and then silence.  A few minutes later, she heard him grunt.

“Alright, let’s go.. Can you try and stand.  Please?” he added.  Yesmina groaned as she began to push herself up with her hands.  When she was on all fours, the man took her arms and helped her up the rest of the way.  She swayed a little, and stumbled backwards to lean on the wall.  She bent over and threw up, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.The hero went over to Kyo and gently lifted him up onto his shoulder.  His hands were bleeding badly, and his breaths were coming in short gasps.

“Let’s go.”

They began to walk back out of the courtyard.  Yesmina picked up the heavy sword and stumbled after the man and Kyo.  When she began to feel more comfortable at being upright, she walked more normally.  He walked very quickly, taking sharp turns down alleys and passages Yesmina hadn’t even noticed until he disappeared behind a corner.  Yesmina’s thoughts were full of panic and worry, though she was too tired and hurt to voice them.  Where the hell were they going, and how much longer could Kyo survive like that?  She tried not to look at his hands, which turned the back of the man’s back a scarlet red.  It had turned quite dark, and each time he passed under a streetlight, Yesmina studied him.  The rock was the most disturbing part of him.  It covered all of his body, as far as she could tell, but it seemed to flow around his muscles and joints smoothly as if organic.  It was dark brown stone, and it looked to weigh a lot—each step the man took resounded against the pavement.  He was surprisingly quick on his feet for a golem of rock.  A melancholy smile flashed across her face as she labeled him this, remembering the golem that had given her her powers.

“Who are you?” Yesmina said in a raspy, quiet voice.  The man didn’t respond, and Yesmina thought he hadn’t heard her.  They kept walking, and finally stopped by a metal door on the ground, leading to some underground compartment.  As Yesmina caught up and stood next to him, a beep signaled their arrival from his helmet.  She was about to ask the question again; she cleared her throat and parted her lips to speak.

“Alpha Impact.”

The sudden response surprised Yesmina, and she licked her lips to speak again.

“Thank you.  So much, for helping us.”

“No prob,” he said, then paused.  “This is a lab,” he continued, motioning towards the door.  “I used my database to find somewhere to take your friend.  I don’t think an ordinary hospital would be outfitted to help him, and even if they were, they most likely wouldn’t,” he pointed out bitterly.

He reached down and yanked at the handle.  The door opened surprisingly easily for something so rusted.  Yesmina went first, down dark stone steps.  Alpha Impact followed after her, shutting the door behind him.  As he did, lights on the steps began to glow, and the space was illuminated quickly.  The walls were modern steel and there was a door at the base of the stone stairs, curved, with a small screen and some sort of camera.  There was the sound of tiny motors as the camera focused on them.

“Please state your name,” the door requested in a metallic female voice from a hidden speaker.

“Alpha Impact…” he looked at Yesmina, realizing he didn’t know their names.

“Yesm—” she cleared her throat to speak more clearly, and loudly.  “Yesmina Glint and Back Alley Scrapper.”

“Scanning superhuman database; Query: Alpha Impact.  Yesmina Glint.  Back Alley Scrapper.”

“We’re here to see Dr. Burstein about an injury,” Alpha Impact added.

The door slid open in response, and a dark corridor lit up in front of them by the same lights that were on the steps, small LEDs on the floor by the walls.  The floor, walls, and ceiling were a uniform silver steel seamlessly covering the hallway.  Somewhat hesitantly, Alpha Impact stepped forward.  He looked back and motioned for Yesmina to follow.

“What is this place?” she asked in a low whisper.

“I’m not too sure.  I just Google’d it.”

“Google?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

“State-of-the-art technology.  It was built in with the suit.  It’ll probably be on the common market in a few decades or so.”  He left his explanation at that.

Both their footsteps now resounded off the metallic surface, echoing eerily in the desolate place.  Yesmina walked apprehensively, unsure if she liked this place.  She certainly wasn’t comforted that she didn’t have the energy to use her powers, let alone put up any kind of fight if need be.  She wouldn’t even be able to run away.  She just hoped she wouldn’t have to.

Finally they came to a big archway with a door.  It had a seam down the middle, and when they approached it, the two halves slid silently away into the wall.  When the doors had allowed their entry, the two were blown away by what lay before them.  It was a large room with a high ceiling, at least twenty feet above their heads.  The space was littered with gadgets and machines.  There was some sort of giant engine, blinking with a multitude of lights in one corner, connected to a large circle of metal on the wall by thick tubes that snaked on the floor.  Off to another corner was an operating table, a bright white surface under an overhanging lamp.  There was a small table of scissors and needles and other medical tools next to it.

Yesmina thought it all looked rather sinister.  But though the room was crowded with these oddities, there was no one in sight.  There could have certainly been someone in the room, Yesmina supposed, what with all the corners and things to hide behind.

Then a door to the side opened, and a tall, thin woman stepped into the room.  She was wearing a sleek white lab coat over a colorful striped slip.  She wore earrings of interlaced silver circles.  Her hair was brown and short, hugging her face.  She wore tall heels that clicked on the metal floor loudly with each step.  The woman was consulting a clipboard and checking things off with a pencil and writing notes in the margins.  She walked right past the trio, her nose buried in her work.  Yesmina coughed then, involuntarily, and her hand shot up to her mouth, unsure if she should have made a noise or not.

The woman’s head shot up, her eyes wide to the source of the noise.  After a moment, her face returned to normal, and she smiled.  She set aside her clipboard and put her pencil behind her ear.

“Ah, I recognize you from the door.  My, that poor soul has suffered quite a wound,” she looked at Kyo sympathetically.  “I suppose you’ve come for medical assistance.  I had my cameras scan your technology when you stated your name—Alpha Impact, was it?  I hope you don’t mind.  I had to make sure you hadn’t looked me up for the wrong reasons,” she chuckled.

Walking over to the corner with the table, she motioned for them to follow her.  Carefully stepping over the wires and tubes, they made their way to her, who walked briskly through the mess without any trouble navigating in her shoes.

“Set him down, please,” she said, looking at Alpha Impact.  “Let’s see what we can do…  Oh dear, he really had a bad day, I’m afraid.”  She said all this with an air of nonchalance, setting both of them at ease.  Either she really knew what she was doing, or she had no clue and was pretending the later.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.  I forgot to introduce myself!”  She smiled and reached over Kyo to shake their hands.  They did so apprehensively.  “I’m Dr. Susan Meer.  I specialize in, well, special cases of almost any scientific kind—medical, mechanical, physical, et cetera.  I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades, though I do have a particular knack for chemistry.

“Now, let’s not leave this man waiting.”  She turned her back to them and reached for a pair of scissors.  Taking the bottom of Kyo’s shirt, she began cutting it, exposing her chest.  She applied two wires to his chest which connected to a machine with a blank screen on it.  As she flicked a switch, a display of lines flickered into view.  “This will help me monitor his vitals… Y’know, heart rate and stuff like that.  I’ll need you guys to step away, please,” she requested, tying a mask to her mouth.  “Thank you.”

She took a needle and carefully inserted it into his arm, just below the crook of his elbow.  She barely found a spot of skin far enough away from his wounds to put it in.  She hooked a bag of blood onto a metal stand and the blood began flowing into Kyo from the bag.  From a distance, Yesmina and Alpha Impact watched as she carefully examined the many cuts on his torso and arms.  She took the most time around his hands where the most damage had been done.  His fingers were mangled and his hands had been cut to the bone in some places.  Taking heavy gauze from a drawer, she carefully wrapped his hands in it.  They almost instantly became soaked in blood, and she replaced them efficiently.  She wrapped them incredibly tight around his wounds, aiming to prevent more blood loss.

The magic that ran throughout Kyo’s body helped clot the blood quicker than a normal man’s would, and as the wounds became slightly less critical, Dr. Meer unwrapped them, one at a time, and began stitching up the gashes.  She seemed to work for hours, meticulously and thoroughly.  Her face was unexpressive throughout the ordeal.

Yesmina fell asleep shortly into the procedure, and Alpha Impact did the same an hour later.  When they woke up, the lights in the room were drastically dimmed, and it took both of them a few minutes to adjust to the lack of light.

Once the darkness became less thick, they were able to make out the shape of Kyo lying on the table.  His chest rose up in down in quick, short gasps, though his breathing was quiet, an improvement from before.  Standing up, Yesmina went to his side and laid a hand on his arm.  He was covered in bandages and IVs, and he smelled like a hospital—all the medicine, disinfectant, and sickness.

“Don’t think about healing him, missy,” a clear voice warned from behind.  It was Dr. Meer.  “His body would heal better with conventional medicine this time.  Your still weak from whatever, and your streams of energy wouldn’t even half-heal his wounds.  It would just make his recovery slower.”

Yesmina was shocked.  She was certain she hadn’t let anything slip.  She wasn’t sure if she had said anything at all.  Unless somehow the good doctor had done something to her during the night.  “How did you… know?”  She began reading her mind for an answer, but there hadn’t been anything done to her last night.  Alpha Impact and her had been left alone.

“I could tell from your expression last night.  You so desperately wanted to do something, but you knew you couldn’t.  The way you looked at him helplessly.  That, and I scanned your code-name when you said it at the door,” she chuckled and winked at her.

Yesmina smiled in return, though hers wasn’t really genuine.  She still thought the doctor wasn’t entirely alright.  

“He’s pretty stable right now,” Meer continued.  “His body’s pretty tough.  No one should have survived something like that,” she said, staring at him sleeping with mild curiosity.  “He won’t be able to use his hands, of course, I’m afraid,” she said, looking at his sword laying on the floor.  “But I have a feeling he needs them, direly.  Am I right?”

“Yes—he can’t work without ‘em.”

“Well then follow me.  I’m developing something that might come in handy.”

The two women began to walk away.  Yesmina looked back at Alpha Impact, who began to get up to follow them.  “Stay there.  Look after BAS,” she communicated to him telepathically.  “I’ll be fine,” she reassured him.

He settled back down and nodded, but turned so he could see the door they exited through while keeping an eye on Kyo.

Yesmina stayed a few steps behind Burstein’s loud heels.  They went through a door that looked the same as all the others in the facility, and entered a hallway made of the same grey steel.

“It’s a bit of a walk, where we’re going, so I hope you don’t mind,” she called back.

Yesmina grew suspicious, being taken away so far from the others.  She figured though that she couldn’t do anything to her.  She could take her.

“Do you have this whole place to yourself?” she asked.  “It seems gigantic.”

“Oh yes, but I do have a few robots to help maintain the place.  You know, help me with experiments, clean up, all that stuff.”

They finally made it to a room.  This one had a rectangular glass door, different from all the others.  Touching a metal button on the wall, the doors swung open and they entered.  On a raised metal dais were two egg-shaped pieces of metal.  They were plugged in at their base to a glowing blue socket.

 

“I built these last night, but I’ve had the idea for quite some time,” she said.

“What are they?” Yesmina asked.

“Gauntlets.  Gloves, for your friend.  They can be electrically wired to his brain, allowing him to control them.”

“There aren’t any fingers,” Yesmina pointed out.
Dr. Burstein laughed.  “Oh, contraire!”  She chuckled to herself.

Pulling a remote out of her lab coat pocket, she pressed a button.  With a whir, the top of the gauntlets receded into itself.  After a clicking noise, five tubes extended from each.  Yesmina realized they were fingers.

“How much do these cost?  Why would you go through all this trouble for someone you just met, and haven’t even spoken to?”

“Oh, they’re free of charge.  I just feel a…impulse to help others,” she smiled, showing the whites of her teeth.  “They may be a little troublesome to get on, but I’m sure your friend can handle it.”

“These are pretty neat.  I’m sure he’ll really appreciate it.”

Yesmina walked closer to the gauntlets perched on the platform.  Leaning over it, she inspected the finely curved metal and precise grooves of where two sheets connected.  The fingers were a marvel; they had two joints each, except for the thumbs and were carefully built to be sturdy but nimble.  Yesmina’s admiration was interrupted by a loud clunking noise behind her, and the clink of metal on metal.

“Damn it, leave!” she heard Burstein whisper to the robot.

Yesmina turned around slowly, first to see her waving her hand to dismiss the robot, then the robot itself.  Her heart dropped like a stone as it began to beat rapidly.  Standing in the hallway was a bronze and steel robot.  Its arms were thin and ended in three-fingered claws.  Though it had no visible head, it had a single circle on a plate which helped it navigate.  “Oh my—,” she was cut off by Burstein.

“Well, I didn’t mean to reveal myself so early,” she bit her lip in mock contemplation.  “But I guess I’ll just have to get rid of you three sooner than I expected.”

She laughed and pulled out a small gun.  Yesmina barely had time to react and tried to sidestep the laser beam.  It barely missed her, chipping her nail.

“Bitch!”  Yesmina threw a ball of energy at the doctor, but she flattened herself against the wall and watched it whiz past her face.  She ran out of the room and pressed a button on the wall next to the door.  It began to close quickly, but Burstein didn’t wait.  She ran around the corner, speaking quickly into a microphone hanging from her ear.  Yesmina dashed for the closing gap, but a stream of electricity came from the robot’s hand, hitting her chest and knocking her to the ground.

She pressed her hand where the lightning had hit her, and cursed.  The steel door had closed, and there was no way she knew to get out.  She searched the room but found no buttons or keypads to open the door.  She’d have to get out by force, and brute strength was not something she was best at.

Focusing resolutely, she closed her eyes and forced herself to think about the shot of power that was about to blast from her raised palm.  Taking a deep breath, she exhaled in a loud grunt and allowed her energy to flow out of her hand.  She felt it leave her body and hoped it had done something to the door.  She opened her eyes slowly, not wanting to know she had failed.  She sighed in frustration when she saw she had only managed to sear off one layer of metal.  It had revealed the wires underneath, a complex spiderweb of red, blue, and orange cords connecting and plugging in to different nodes and switches.

Then something caught her eye.  It was a big box at the edge of where her hole had exposed the wiring.  Some of it was still protected behind the metal, but Yesmina rushed over to examine it further.  Every one of the wires, as far as she could tell, came back to this one.  She hoped it was something like a power core.  If she fried this, she hoped it would open the door.  That or it would cut off any mechanical ways of opening it.  She decided she had little other choice.

Stepping back again, she kept her eyes opened and trained her fingers on the edge of the box.  The psychic energy came easier now that she had warmed up a bit.  As it impacted with the metal of the box, a small explosion erupted and smoke began billowing from the door.  Underneath the thick cloud of smoke, Yesmina saw a sliver of light, though.  The outside.

The door had opened itself a few feet, and she could tell smoke was leaving the gap into the hall.  Hoping it was big enough, she turned herself sideways and began to squeeze through the door.  She had managed to push herself halfway when she heard a hiss like the firing of a piston.  With a sudden lurch, the metal jaws began to close again.  She felt the two pieces slowly begin to put pressure on her, but she was too far to get out quickly.  Panicking she pushed harder against the ground to get her body through the minimizing gap.  She could hardly breathe from the pressure and she could tell her bones would soon be crushed.  But she was almost out.  With a final desperate push, she wiggled her shoulder into the hallway.  Almost forgetting, she retracted her leg quickly to her side and out of the clutches of the door as it snapped shut with a resounding echo.

Yesmina let out a sigh, but didn’t rest long.  She raced after the mad doctor, back through the maze of tunnels back to the main room.  Taking sharp right and left turns, she moved without thinking too much, praying that she remembered her way back to Alpha Impact and Kyo.  A loud whirring sound told her she had taken the right route.  Sliding to a halt into the room, she saw another army of the clockwork men.  They had surrounded Alpha Impact, who was kicking them one at a time as they tried to climb to a perch he had found on a ledge.  Yesmina looked around and found Dr. Burstein, unperturbed by anything else in the room, looking over Kyo.  She had a syringe in her hand and was filling it up with a green liquid from a glass tank under the table.

“What the crap do you think you’re doing?”  Yesmina shouted, trying to stall the doctor from injecting Kyo with whatever was in her hand.  Alpha Impact froze for a moment, his head swiveling to see Yesmina.  He remembered his position, however, when one of the robots grabbed his leg.  Kicking it off with his other foot, he resumed to his slow attacks.

“Oh, just running a test,” she smiled, without looking up.  “You do realize, with your friend’s superb invulnerability, he’s the perfect person for all my little experiments?  His body should handle most of what I give him.”

“And how do you know they won’t kill him?” she began to scream somewhat hysterically.

“One can only hope,” she smiled again, looking up at Yesmina this time with madness in her eyes.

Yesmina started running towards her, but a group of the clockwork men intercepted her.  The one went to grab her, but she quickly blocked his claws with a blast of psychic energy.

“Yesmina!”  Alpha Impact called clearly above the noise.  Yesmina couldn’t turn around to look at him though, occupied with her own problems all of a sudden.  “Yesmina,” he called again, “look up!  There’s a switch right above you, about twenty feet up.  I have a feeling it turns on that tower in the middle, which is some sort of super magnet.  Get to it!”

“What about you?” she called back without turning her head.  “Your helmet!”

“It’s attached to me pretty securely.  I’ll just have to hold on!”

She hit another of her attackers with a blast and she pushed herself off the ground with her mind.  She didn’t go anywhere though.  She frowned and tried again, but she stayed firmly on the floor.  She tried to focus, but a hit from a robot began to draw blood from her shoulder.

“I can’t focus!  There’s too much going on!” she cried, fully in hysterics now.

“You have to try!  You have to get up there!”

Looking to Kyo again, she saw that Burstein had just finished filling the syringe.  She held it up to the light and squeezed it a little, allowing some of the liquid to squirt out.  It landed on a metal table and proceeded to melt through the surface.  She grinned.

Yesmina tried to calm herself and to get control of her powers.  She imagined herself flying to the lever, pulling it, and getting the hell out of there.  Pushing back the line that was advancing on her in order to give her some time, she looked up at her goal.  Biting her lip, she felt her feet begin to rise, slowly off the ground.  She looked down and tried to achieve more control over her ankles, but she would not go any faster.  She pushed and pushed and managed to gain a little more speed, but she was afraid it would be too slow.  The syringe was inches away from Kyo’s skin and Yesmina was still a foot away from being able to reach the lever.  The needle contacted Kyo’s flesh, but its resilience kept it from puncturing.  She grasped it firmer in her hands and began again, ready to push harder.  Yesmina was now just inches away from the lever.

She watched in slow motion as the needle got closer and closer and this time suceeded in entering a vein.  Dr. Burstein’s thumb muscle contracted, about to push the liquid into his body.  Yesmina felt the cold metal of the lever, and pulled with all her strength at the switch.  The effects were instant.

NaNoWriMo Story – November 13-14 (29,088)

Of course everything was fine, and Kyo closed his eyes again and tried to focus on what he had dreamt.  Everything was slipping so fast now, but he tried to grasp the details and commit them to memory before all was lost to him.  He remembered the bruises, but were they on him, or his brothers?  He couldn’t be sure if they had been there the whole dream either, or if they developed during the dream.  One detail that wasn’t foggy though was what Bad to the Bones had said.  “By finding and killing you all…”  Kyo hoped with all his might that it meant that his brothers were still alive.  If they were dead, wouldn’t he have left out the detail about killing all of them?

Kyo shook his head to keep his thoughts straight.  Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.  His body was producing the dream after all, and how would his mind, consciously or unconsciously, know the fate of his brothers?  Kyo reopened his eyes and began walking back towards the couch.  It was possible, he reasoned, that his body wasn’t the manufacturer of his dream.  It could be Bad to the Bones, couldn’t it?  He had magical ability for sure, and there’s no telling what else he can do that he didn’t reveal in Africa.  It could really be him speaking to him, and his brothers could be safe, and if he hadn’t had them found, they probably got away from him.

A faint murmur startled him for a moment, before he remembered that Yesmina was there.  He had forgotten that he was sharing the apartment.  He hoped he hadn’t woken her.  He sat down.  Then terror flooded him.  He wasn’t sure if he wanted the dream to have been from Bad to the Bones.  That would mean he had tracked Kyo down, no doubt.  And by tracking Kyo down, he had gotten to Yesmina as well.  Killing two birds with one stone.  Yes, killing was the right word indeed.

Kyo ran to the window and looked down into the neon-colored streets below.  He strained his eyes to see into the shadows of the buildings formed by the many angles of brick and cement.  He couldn’t see anyone except the few club goers meandering raucously down the street.  That didn’t guarantee there was someone down there he couldn’t see though.  As if to prove this point and rub it in his face, a man suddenly walked from the side of a building wearing a plaid shirt and ratty jeans.  Kyo had the sense he had been there all along, in the shadow cast by the absence of the light from a sign that had burned out.  Kyo shivered and shut the curtains, as if it could somehow protect him and Yesmina from the powerful and dark magic Bad to the Bones possessed, let alone the sheer brute force of his partner.

Unable to fall back asleep, Kyo sat on the end of the end of the couch and turned on the floor lamp.  Instead of easing his nerves, however, the eerie shadows that danced across the walls and floor when it was turned on unnerved him more, and he quickly shut the light back off.

And so he sat, in the dark, for too long to know.  The night seemed to stretch endlessly as Kyo sat almost completely still, his eyes darting to every corner of the room, searching, as his feet remained planted; a silent sentinel.

Morning finally came, announced by a faint yellow tint to the room and curtains.  Kyo tested his muscles and when they responded, even after being still for so long, he stood up.  He was terribly sore, and his eyes were burning with fatigue, but his mind had been working all night, turning over every detail he could remember and playing in his mind different scenarios, each one worse than the previous.  He moved slowly over to the curtains, and with slow hands pulled back the cloth, inviting the light in.  He almost smiled as the sun hit is face.  The next clue that day was approaching was the noise from the bedroom.  The sound of covers rustling, muffled by the closed door, told Kyo that Yesmina was up.  Sure enough, the shower was heard next and the curtain opening and closing as Yesmina stepped in wearily.

Kyo forced himself to play cheerful.  His current mood could only scare Yesmina.  He didn’t want to give her reason to probe his brain for the cause of the distress.  He took some clothes out of the closet and made his way into them.  He then went to the kitchen and pulled bread out of the cabinet.  Plugging in the toaster, he set the heat to medium and lowered the lever.  Toast was about all he could manage without burning something.  He took two glasses out next and poured orange juice into them.  He waited until the toast had popped and set everything down at the table. Finally he lowered himself into a chair less than elegantly and put his head in his hands, closing his eyes and sighing.  He had almost managed to drift off when the shower stopped.  About a minute later, Yesmina stepped out of the room, drying her hair.

“Hey, breakfast!  Nice,” Yesmina commented.

Kyo forced himself out of his daze and raised his head.  “Oh hey.  Yah, you can have the toast—I’m not really that hungry.”

Yesmina floated the towel back into her room and shut the door as she lowered herself in her seat, pulling the plate of toast towards her.  “Y’sure?  Everything okay?” she asked, concerned.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kyo dismissed her concern.  He didn’t the conversation to stay on this topic, fearing where it could go.  He tried to change the subject.  “So are you ready to try flying today?”  He somehow managed to smile in fake enthusiasm.

Yesmina’s face lit up.  His attempt had worked as she remembered today’s plans.  “I almost forgot!  Yeah, I can’t wait.  In fact, let’s start after we’re done eating.  Well, when you’re done drinking, and I’m done eating,” she corrected herself.  For a moment he worried her concern would come back, but the expression left her face quickly.  “Sound good?”

“Yah.”

They walked into the bedroom, Yesmina quickly picking up her things and putting them away with her mind.  Kyo was impressed that she was able to move all the things at once.  He hadn’t ever seen her focus on more than one object at a time.  Yesmina walked around to the foot of the bed and turned to look at Kyo, who was standing just inside the door.

“Ready?” she asked him.

“Of course—are you?”

Instead of replying, she closed her eyes and put her hands out to either side as if trying to balance herself.  She bit her bottom lip and furrowed her eyebrows and clenched her hands into fists.  Kyo noticed pink rings around her ankles.  They grew very bright as Yesmina focused her energy into them and willed them to move.  Her feet lifted slightly off the ground steadily, and then higher.  Her right foot dipped suddenly and Yesmina flailed her arms to keep her balance, but she lost control of her left foot and she was on the floor before she had time to react.

Kyo walked over to her and Yesmina opened her eyes.  Kyo stuck out his hand.  She smiled and grabbed it and Kyo pulled her onto her feet.  She seemed excited though the display hadn’t been exceptionally impressive.  When Kyo didn’t return her enthused smile back, she frowned slightly and put her hands on her hips.  “Well I almost got it!  That’s better than nothing—you couldn’t have expected me to get it on my first try,” she complained.

“No, it was great!”  He smiled now.  “Really,” he promised.  “Do you have the strength to try again?”

“Yeah.  It really isn’t too tiring, really.  Before, my energy was just getting lost after I dropped my connection with an object.  But when I focus on myself, I can feel some of my energy being… recycled, you could say.  I just need to learn how to use that energy differently.”

Yesmina got back in her position and closed her eyes again.  The same bright purple rings appeared around her ankles.  Her feet left the ground again, but this time they stayed up.  She tried to lift her feet higher and they responded.  She suddenly lurched forward, losing her balance again.  As she fell forward, she opened her eyes and stuck out her hands.  She stopped falling.  In mid-air she hung, her feet and hands both inches above the ground.  Her palms were glowing purple as well.  She looked up and smiled at Kyo.  She lost her focus, though, and dropped the last few inches to the ground, landing with a soft thud.

Kyo couldn’t help it and began laughing loudly at her comical descent.  Yesmina stood up, brushing her legs with her hands, trying to look as dignified as she could as she got up off the floor.  She looked seriously at Kyo for a moment, before her lips parted and she too began to laugh.

“It was good, though!” Kyo said, the humor of the moment passing slightly.  “If you control your wrists and feet, you’ll probably have a lot more stability, and more maneuverability.  You could become quite the aerial ace,” he suggested with a smile.

Yesmina took a low bow, sweeping her hand in front of her.  “Why thank you!”  She giggled.  “There’s not enough room in here, though,” she complained, levitating herself to touch the ceiling, illustrating her point.

“You wanna’ try this outside, already?”  Kyo was apprehensive.

“Why not?  You’ll be there, nothing can go wrong.  Plus, haven’t you been itching to get back on the streets again?”

“We just took a walk yesterday—”

“Oh come on, Kyo!  I mean really get out on the streets.  In costume.  Duh,” she stated bluntly.

Kyo rolled his eyes.  “Alright, let’s go.  I’ll grab your costume.”

Kyo and Yesmina descended the elevator and walked out a back entrance leading onto a much less busy side street.  Kyo took his sword which he had been concealing and strapped it across his back.  It shined brightly, reflecting the high afternoon sun.  They crossed the street and took a narrow path leading into the back of a mostly abandoned factory.  Its grey cement walls were void of windows except on the bottom floor, where gaping holes had been hastily boarded up with thin, rotting wood and cardboard.  Much of the stuff lay uselessly on the dirt ground, allowing access to the pitch black interior.  Yesmina and the Back Alley Scrapper passed them up, though they would have been suitable for practicing her flight uninterrupted.  No, they continued to the back where an abandoned parking lot had cracked and deteriorated.  The black asphalt had piled up on itself where plants had emerged through the rock.  The yellow gird sectioning off parking spaces was barely visible.  A car still sat in one space, abandoned and rusty, the passenger’s door nearly falling off its hinges.  The door creaked in the wind as it swung slowly open and closed.

The two heroes moved to the center of the lot.  Surrounded by the factory on all four sides, the parking lot was open to the sky, allowing Yesmina to move freely—if she wanted to go that high.  A wind found its way into the courtyard and blew Back Alley Scrapper’s dreadlocks into his face, covering his eyes.  He pulled them back behind his ears.  Yesmina had lifted her arms up.  Her trench coat was blowing back behind her.  The rings appeared once again, this time encompassing her hands and circling her ankles.  Gently her feet left the ground.  She stopped and steadied herself in midair.  She opened her eyes and looked down at Kyo who was standing about ten feet below.  Yesmina brought her fists to her chest and thrust her arms downward.  She rocketed into the air and looped around, landing on the factory roof.

She’s becoming way too confident, Back Alley Scrapper thought.

He heard Yesmina whoop high above him.  She disappeared for a moment and then walked back to the edge and looked down at him.

But BAS wasn’t looking back up at her.  His eyes were trained on a driveway that went under the building, connected to the parking lot.  Yesmina frowned, but he didn’t see.  Instead he saw a piece of gravel that quietly tumbled out of the tunnel over the way to the street.  His eyes narrowed and his ears piqued—he had had heard something in the tunnel, like a loud click.  It was followed by a low, drawn out grinding noise.  Whatever was making the sound, it wasn’t human—he could see a shadow on the wall.  It couldn’t be shorter than eight or nine feet.

Back Alley Scrapper took out his sword and began approaching the origin of the noise.  He looked up at Yesmina, but she wasn’t looking.  She was in the air again, looking out over the city.  He turned back to face the tunnel.  An orange light hummed and flickered casting a Halloween glow.  The wall was still obstructing his view of the tunnel, so he crept closer.  When he was only a yard away, he moved to the side to get a view into the tunnel.

When he moved, his world turned black.  Something had jumped onto his face.  He could feel its cold body squirming around on him and on his head, blocking his mouth and nose.  He was suffocating and began to panic.  He felt a sharp pain in his thigh and swung with his sword where the pain was.  He heard a clunk as metal hit metal.  His lungs began to tighten up and his insides screamed with the desire for air.  The thing that he had hit crashed loudly next to him, but whatever was on him was still active.  He figured there was more than one of whatever it was.  He managed to get to his feet while he batted away wherever he felt pain.  He was beginning to get dizzy and he grew extremely tired with every swing.  Grabbing at his face, he managed to pull what was blocking his mouth away from him.  The moment his mouth was free he gasped for breath, then roared at the top of his lungs.  

“Glint!”

Without time to see if she had heard him, he looked down at what was attacking him.  At first he thought they were huge insects, but that notion was quickly dismissed as one opened its metal jaws and went to clamp onto his arm.  Back Alley Scrapper swung his broadsword just in time to send its head flying, crashing and clanking as it bounced on the asphalt.

The creatures attacking him were tiny figures of bronze and steel.  They were eyeless, yet they struck with surprising precision, and though there was no chip (their heads were just a plate of metal), they reacted to his movements intelligently.  On each of their backs was a small, old fashioned looking key that turned, it seemed, perpetually.  Their thin arms ended in three-clawed hands which grabbed and pinched at the Back Alley Scrapper, ripping at his flesh and clothes.  Luckily, through the power of his mother’s protection, his skin stayed mostly unscathed, but the pain was unadulterated.

A pink blast suddenly cleared most of the figures climbing over him, and Yesmina Glint landed away from Back Alley Scrapper, beginning to blast them away with her mind, shooting psychic darts out of her forehead, while healing his wounds as quickly and thoroughly as she could.  BAS slashed at the last one off his leg and sliced its metal body in two.  The top half twitched before it lay still on the ground.

Then Yesmina cursed.  “Kyo—BAS—behind you!”

BAS wheeled around on his heels.  The pile of clockwork creatures Yesmina had pushed against the wall, broken and in pieces, began to animate.  Hands groped around for other parts, and began reassembling themselves.  Piece by piece, they slowly came to standing again, perfect replicas of their  previous self.  And though they had no expressions, they were mad, they could both tell.

Clicks and whirrs and the grinding of gears echoed in the space.  There were more of them all the sudden.  While rebuilding, they not only helped themselves, they streamlined their designs—made them more efficient.  Yesmina Glint was the first to notice.  One was missing the long piece of metal that had been serving as its neck.  Another had taken the two rods that made up the thickness of his arms and settled for one.  And the leftover had been used to create more.  They were smaller, of course, and most likely not as perfect as their creators, but they were still there.  And they were just as mad as their parents.

The mob rushed towards them, some of them springing into the air, launching themselves at the Scrapper.  The others stayed low to the ground and avoided the hero’s feet as he tried to stomp the ones on the ground while batting the ones coming at his face.  Yesmina tried to fire her bolts into the crowd, and while some of them were thrown to the side, it didn’t faze most of them.  The force of her first blast was too much energy for her to replicate, and since almost all of her attack was psychic, it had no effect on the mindless beings.  She could pick them up with her mind still, levitating them and smashing them against a wall, but it was a slow process and not as powerful.  More often than not, the clockwork drones just got up from the fall and sprinted now towards both of them.  And the ones that didn’t get up immediately rebuilt themselves or built more of the increasingly large army.

Then a faint whirr, almost undetectable from the noise of clanging metal and the clicking and snapping, came from the tunnel where the robots were first found.  Two larger bots flew into the lot, kept aloft by short helicopter blades attached to their backs.  They were boxish and less human-like than the walking ones, but they had two points which extended from appendages on either side.  Behind them, reinforcements flooded the entryway.  Yesmina screamed and relaying Back Alley Scrapper the information via telepathy, they both began to edge towards a back corner, trying desperately to get away from this mess.

Can’t get any of this right, damn it.  We haven’t had one—He took a strike at a large one coming at his face—successful mission yet.  They always end up in—he dodged one that had lashed out with its jaws, and crunched another one under his feet—disaster.

The reinforcements swarmed the Back Alley Scrapper, pinning him into a tight corner, his arm movements restricted by the walls of the factory.  He tried to swing at them, but his sword got caught in the hand of a strange robot, with one huge hand and a second small one which hung limply at its side.  The larger hand’s three fingers gripped the sword tightly and yanked it out of his muscular grip.  For the Back Alley Scrapper, who was just Kyo without his sword, the world seemed to shift into slow motion as it dropped through the air and clattered to the ground.  Seeing their opposition defenseless, the clockwork beings clambered over each other to get a strike at their victim.

“YEZ!” Kyo shouted to his right.  

Yesmina Glint turned and tried to thin out the crowd.  She wast too late.  The two copter robots swooped low and they just missing her shoulders with their spearheads which snagged on the cloth of her trench coat and carryed her through the air.  The two pinned her up against a wall just above where she could set her feet on the ground.  Some of the reinforcements, tall and skinny, wrapped their hands around her arms and legs, digging their claws into the cement, rooting her to the building, unable to help Kyo, and helpless herself.

She looked in horror as Kyo tried to thrust his fist into one of the attacker’s heads.  Instead, it was caught by a metal hand.  As he took his other fist to the hand, it too was caught in mid-air.  Gleeful with their accomplishment of constraining their foe, they began to slash at his body.  He howled in pure agony as his hands and wrists were slashed mercilessly, and the rest of his body was cut up and smashed.  He crumbled to his knees and ground his teeth, tears streaming down his cheeks.  Yesmina screamed, high-pitched and intense.

“KYO!  NO!!!”  She struggled against the grips of her captors but her effort was futile. She too began to weep, and pooling her strength, she screamed again, and a mental wave erupted from her hands.  Her pupils glowed with a ravenous rage and two columns of power shattering everything in front of her and leaving a dent in the cement wall some 100 yards away.  The helicopters and other metal men that had been holding her disintegrated into the air.  More came though, and she was spent with nothing left in her to even try resisting.  She was slipping into unconsciousness when something red flashed in front of her closing eyes.

Kyo too was going unconscious, his brain about to shut down permanently from the pain.  He saw two red orbs sweeping through the air and impacting with the robots.  If he were able to think clearly, he would have seen a man—or something resembling a man—jump from the top of the building and crash onto the asphalt.  His torso was bare, but it looked as if it was covered in some sort of rock armor.   He wore two metal gloves and a blue and white helmet.  His shoulders were covered by two pointed metal pads, and his lower body was covered in blue and white spandex.  Even his feet were without boots.  The man landed the 400-some foot drop with both feet.  He didn’t even flinch as he left a crater in the asphalt.

When the smoke cleared, his hands and forearms were glowing red.  The ruby light reflected off his helmet.  He walked forward briskly and grabbed the first robot he came to, the one furthest away from Kyo.  He tightened his fist and the metal crumpled between his fingers, irreversibly broken.  He then took aim at the next two robots, one in front of the other, and winding back his arm, shot his fist forward, the energy on his fist melting holes through them.  They fell to the ground before they even knew what had happened.  The man began to speed up his progress.  He ran to Yesmina and before he was two yards away, took a giant leap forward, crashing down on the clockwork surrounding her with his fists.  He then ran towards the group that had begun to maul Kyo.  Coming up on one that had recently gotten in a good cut on Kyo’s arm, he spread his arms wide and clapped his palms together forcefully, crushing steel beneath his gloves.  He moved on, deeper into the group.  A band tried to attack him at once, but spinning around once, decisively and quickly, whirling his fists, each one was struck down as they connected with his glowing knuckles.  Finally he was able to make his way to the big one, holding Kyo’s hands.  Grunting, the tank jumped into the air and brought his fists together, above his head.  As he came down, he brought his fists down in a mighty swoop.  As his fists first connected with the steel, the clockwork loosened his grip, then, as his hands descended further, the metal bent and twisted, snapping when the stress was too great, until it was a pile of metal laying helplessly on the ground.  Throwing a few quick yet powerful punches, he cleared out the rest of the mob in a matter of seconds.  With each connection, intricate clockwork men became piles of scrap.

Finally the last one was down, and making sure none tried to repair themselves, the rock man turned towards Kyo who had fallen on his face when he was freed from the metal grip of his adversary.  With a grace and gentleness unexpected of someone who had just before been crippling metal with raw power, he walked over to Kyo’s body and knelt down.  He took off one of his gloves, revealing more rock skin, and felt his neck for a pulse.  It was there.  Barely.

NaNoWriMo Story – November 11 & 12 (24,945)

“Hmm…  Look, Kyo!  He seems so young.”

“Huh?  How young?  We’re pretty young ourselves for this kind of stuff.”

“Just look.  He looks barely 18.  I hope he isn’t in over his head.  A lot of people rush into this.  They get powers and are so excited to really try them out, they don’t take the time to practice.

“He’ll have to be really good.  How many villains did the original Flagstaff upset during his, what, 20 years as a hero?  Probably hundreds,” Yesmina responding to her own question.

“Does it say what his powers are?  Speaking of which, what were Flagstaff’s powers, anyways?  I don’t think I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, no one’s sure if he really did have powers.  That’s what made him so popular.  Ordinary Americans everywhere connected with him.  He had a staff which he kept with him everywhere.  No one could stand toe-to-toe with him when he began whipping it around him.  It was basically a part of him.  Some also say he used to be an acrobat by the name of Curt Gordon, but of course no one’s ever been able to prove it.”

Kyo had been reading a little bit as he listened to Yesmina.  “And it looks like this Flagstaff isn’t giving his identity either.  And is that a staff on his back?”

“Yeah, looks like we’ve got someone really looking for authenticity.  Which could help the public opinion of him, but is really gonna’ anger some bad guys.”

They took a turn to the right to make their way to the light rail station.  It was a very modern silver sphere with two snakelike appendages from its middle.  These were the rails the trams road, about thirty feet above the streets and sidewalks, zigzagging all over Capitol City.  It was part of a project the mayor started a few years ago and with surprising speed, silver spheres like the one Yesmina and Kyo entered through a black door at its base were popping up everywhere.  It was one of the preferred methods of travel especially when traffic got real bad like it so often did.

While the system covered most of the major Districts of the city, the market where Kyo had lived was one of the few places still left forgotten by the planners.  Maybe in a few years they would build one close, but it certainly wasn’t a priority especially since heroes weren’t really needed there.

Superheroes without some form of transportation like flight or super speed used the trams pretty often.  They were key in getting to crises on time, and so when Yesmina and Kyo boarded, they weren’t surprised to see the thin silver tubes crowded with spandex and shining metal.  Here and there normal citizens fit into their seats, some uncomfortable with but most used to the presence of supers.

Kyo and Yesmina found a seat close to the back, along with some of the other black passengers.  Most of them looked angry to be forced to the back, but Kyo wasn’t bothered by it.  At least the tram system wasn’t restricted completely to minorities.  It took only five minutes for the light rail to arrive at their destination, and this time included the minute or so it stopped at each station it passed.  Yesmina and Kyo pushed through the crowded interior and stepped out onto the platform.

Above a large window looking out, a sign announced their destination: ‘Freedom Square’.  The name was misleading though.  Freedom Square was much more than an equiangular, equilateral parallelogram.  It was the heart of Capitol City, pumping blood to the rest of the Districts.  It was the governmental center of Capitol City, home to City Hall, and Mayor’s Mansion, as well as the court house.  Besides the politics, Freedom Square was synonymous with heroes.  Everywhere you looked heroes sped through the streets or through the sky, some jumping, sprinting, or teleporting.  Most looked human-enough, though it wasn’t rare to see a four-armed man or a woman sprouting pixie wings.

In the center of all the activity rose City Hall, a parthenon of white marble and stone, surrounded by glorious pillars traced with veins of gold.  A large carved dome decorated the top of the rectangular building, depicting the great epics of Greek mythology and modern tales.  From the center of the dome rose a gigantic American flag, the biggest in the city and visible from almost all parts of Freedom Square.  City Hall was surrounded by painstakingly trimmed hedges and sparkling pools.  A grand staircase led up to its two glass doors.  On either side, a man and woman in black suits and helmets guarded the entrance silently.

The awesomeness didn’t end at the walls of City Hall though.  Like a beautiful virus, the radiance spread to the buildings around it and throughout all the zone.  No building was old or decrepit.  The streets were perfectly black and patch-free, and the yellow and white lines juxtaposed brightly as if they had just been painted that morning.  It was all simply perfect.

Unfamiliar with such splendor, Kyo was blown away by the power Freedom Square seemed to pulse with.  “Woah,” was all he managed to produce.

Yesmina laughed.  “Oh, I forgot this is your first time!  Well let me be the first to welcome you to Freedom Square, the heartland of Capitol City, a paragon of glass, steel, and stone.”

Despite her praising words, her tone suggested something otherwise.

“What’s wrong?  You don’t seem the slightest impressed.  Even if you’ve seen this a million times, I can’t imagine not being slightly awed by it.”

“How much money do you think went into all this?  Millions.  Probably billions.  And it’s all an illusion.  “Freedom Square” only extends as far as any tourist would go.  The minute you start to dig a little deeper at the real situation of the District, its not this nice in the slightest.  It may be swarming with heroes, but its also the biggest concentration of villains in the country.  And its all just behind the curtain, if anyone cared to move it aside.”

“Well we can’t be perfect.  You don’t have to be so negative.  Villains are why we—superheroes—exist.  We need something, or someone rather, to pass the time with,” he said, nudging Yesmina with his elbow.  “Come on, try and enjoy yourself.”

The two took the elevator to the door and stepped onto the sidewalk.  Kyo thought it felt much like walking into a painting, as if nothing this wondrous could be real and whatever the painter’s intention was, and whatever was left beyond the frame, the picture was still beautiful.

Yesmina and Kyo hurried across the street dodging traffic.  They stepped onto the lawn in front of City Hall.  The green blades were perfectly trimmed even where purple and blue flowers sprung up like gems.  The pools reflected them as they walked past, and slightly self-concious in such a regal setting, Kyo adjusted his shirt to try and get out some wrinkles.  They ascended the marble steps slowly and after receiving threatening glances from both guards, pushed the door open to the interior of the building.

No less expense was spared on the interior than on the exterior.  Descending from the domed ceiling was an elaborate yet modern chandelier, spreading light to every crevice and corner in the building.  Beneath their feet, a mosaic of tile formed a large white star in front of a red and blue ribbon.  Within the ribbon was the slogan, “Birthplace of Heroes”.  A wooden desk stretched the back of the building with four lines set up full of heroes, some with and without costumes.  The lines were slow-moving and Kyo and Yesmina got in place in one behind a short but muscular man with long black hair.  Finally, after the line had moved forward and the man stood on his toes to register with the man at the counter, he was handed an ID card and was dismissed.  The two stepped forward.

“Name,” the man demanded without looking up from his computer.

Kyo went first.  “Er..  Kyo.  K-y-o.”

The man looked up expectantly.  Kyo just stood there, confused.  “You have a last name?” he spat.

“Oh, well, actually, n—”

“West.  His last name’s West.”

The man returned to the computer and typed in the information.  “Alright.  Do you have a codename, or do you need the girl’s help for that too?”

“The Back Alley Scrapper,” Kyo mumbled, embarrassed.

“I suppose I’ve heard worse…”

Slowly the man recorded all of Kyo’s information.  Things like his date of birth was difficult to supply.  The Muwamba tribe kept track of time their own way.  He just made up a date.

“Alright,” the man said when they were finished.  “Keep this card with you at all times.  It’ll keep track of anything you happen to do, and pay you for your activity.  I’d explain the technology but I doubt you’d understand,” he overemphasized, making sure people behind Kyo heard.  Snickers came from behind him, and his ears turned warm.  “You’ll receive roughly 500 dollars a job.”

“Thanks.”

The process was mostly the same for Yesmina, though a lot quicker.  She made up an alias, calling herself Becca Bailey.  Finally Yesmina also got her ID card, and was told she would get 500 dollars a job, as well.”

Yesmina smiled coldly and hurried out the building.  Kyo followed behind.

“What’s up?” he asked when they had gotten outside and away from the door guards.  “Why’d you storm out of there like that?  He definitely treated you nicer than me,” Kyo joked, failing.

“You weren’t listening, were you?  The guy before us; y’know, the real short one, got 1,000 dollars a job!  And both of us just happen to get less?  For what reason?”

When Kyo didn’t respond, Yesmina continued with gusto.  “I’ll tell you why!  Because I’m a woman, and you’re black.  Somehow that makes us incapable of doing as good a job as someone else?”

“I’m sorry, Yesmina.  That really sucks.  I’m okay with whatever I get… I guess I’m used to it, but now you’re getting the short end of the stick too.  I don’t want anyone else to go through that.  Unfortunately, there’s nothing we could do.  If we approach him he’ll kick us out and have us stripped of our registration.”

“Kyo!  If I could get control of his mind, I could force him to—”

“No.  Yesmina, that’s wrong.  You’d be taking advantage of your power.”

“I have my powers for a reason, Kyo, to use them!  It’ll be easy, no one would ever guess.”

“You have to choose how to use them, Yez.  Superheroes help people.  Supervillains use their powers for their own personal gain.  Doesn’t forcing a raise sound like personal gain?”

He had stumped Yesmina.  For only living in the country for three years, he had an uncanny aptitude to argue, and it was quite annoying.  But it was true, of course.  Kyo was right, that she couldn’t take advantage of her abilities.  It was unfair, and villainous.  She needed to keep herself above that.

Beaten but still fuming, Yesmina suggested they not return immediately back to the Globe District.  She didn’t want to be reminded of the space that required money they were twice as hard pressed to get as anyone else.  They instead to stroll down one of the main streets and get Kyo used to the Square.  As they walked, Kyo looked all around, at the street where some supers casually talked between fighting members of some of the supergangs.

The villains weren’t too terrible in Freedom Square.  Any deed done was usually orchestrated by one of the three supergangs.  They were gangs that had influence in almost every district of Capitol City with the numbers of their members in the hundreds.  There were the Metals, the Black Crows, and the Hood.  All three recruited vulnerable teenagers, mere thugs usually.  However, as one dug deeper into any of the cults more terrible people lay at the center of the groups.  Bosses stay in the shadows, usually quite literally, commanding leaders farther down in the hierarchy who then transfer the information to the minor members.  It is this system that keeps the gangs working.  Almost no one really knows who is calling the shots which keeps the members on guard and unwilling to refuse orders for fear of angering someone with power.

While the lower members are usually merely a nuisance, the bosses are much trickier.  And deadlier.  It has been reported from some that the leaders of the Metals, the Black Crows and the Hood are supers themselves, with powers of their own.  Though there have been concentrated efforts by many groups and politicians, no one has gotten to the core of any of the groups, and everything except the most negligible details are speculation.

Turning his attention away from the streets, Kyo began looking into the shop windows they passed.  Most were ordinary: a drugstore, a bookstore, and a café were all in a row with painted signs and colorful displays.  However when Kyo looked at some of the other shop signs, stranger things began popping up.  One store advertised used superhero costumes.  They were currently having a Buy-One-Get-One-Free Sale.  Another store made entirely of stone advertised magical tomes and potions.  He saw another building, this one much bigger and two stories, selling something called “power pills”.  The front was completely white metal, which two dark glass windows.  He stopped and read the words on a sign hung above the door.  “Power Pills – Take one a day, and in two weeks you, too, can have powers!”

“C’mon, Kyo,” Yesmina called back when she realized he had stopped.  “What are you looking at?” she asked as she walked back towards him.  “Oh,” she scoffed.  “Power pills?  Please!”

“What are they?  Can they really give a normal person powers?”

“Only if Paragon has classified vomiting as a power.  They’re more like sugar cubes dipped in some sick chemicals.  They don’t work at all.”

Just then a portly man came walking out of the store carrying a big brown box in both his arms.  Yesmina looked at him and began walking again.  “Still,” she said in sympathy, “Some try really hard.  Their desire for something that makes them special—unique—is so strong.  It’s sad.”

“What about people like Flagstaff?  They don’t have powers—just determination and will.  They didn’t have an easy path to becoming a superhero.”

“And do you think everyone can become a master of Kung-fo-tofu-do, or whatever?  It just isn’t plausible.”  

“Well don’t get too worked up over it,” Kyo advised.

“I know, I know.  I can’t worry about everything.  Though my mom always said my empathy will be the death of me,” she teased.  They both laughed.

They got back to their apartment as the sun set over the city.  The orange sky blanketed the city peacefully, and Yesmina looked out the large window admiring its beauty.  She was staring off silently when Kyo turned on the television.  He was flipping the channels when she spoke.

“You know, I’ve been thinking of flying.”

Kyo dropped the remote.  “Flying?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah.  I think I have worked out what I would have to do.  If I just focus on moving myself, instead of moving an object like I usually do.  Technically it should work.  My body is matter just like anything else I ever move.”

“I don’t know.  Something could go wrong.  Its not like you would just need to flap your wings to fly.  You have to concentrate, and probably very hard since you are more used to moving smaller things.  You definitely haven’t lifted anything over 100 pounds—have you?”

“Well, jeez, I’m not too heavy!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Kyo said quickly, trying to save himself before he insulted her more.

Yesmina cracked a smile.  “I’m only kidding.  You’re right.  It’ll take some time to get used to it, but I figure I could do it eventually.  I can lift small things really easily.  I hardly even think about it.”  The remote rose from the carpet and spun and looped as Yesmina showed off before it landed on Kyo’s lap.

“Well let’s work on it tomorrow.  I figure if we practice in the bedroom you won’t be risking too much.  We’ll just have to make sure you don’t fly yourself out the window!  If you fall, the bed will be a good enough cushion.”

“Alright then.  Tomorrow you’ll see!” she teased.

They sat on the couch and directed themselves to the TV, about the only thing they had for entertainment.  Nothing good was showing, so they changed the channels in frustration until both of them gave up and decided to go to bed.

“Sweet dreams, Kyo!”  Yesmina closed her door and Kyo reclined on the couch and fell asleep quickly.

Kyo dreamt vividly that night.  He was back in Africa, and his brothers were there too.  No one else was though.  Kyo looked around in hope, praying his father was somewhere, but the huts were just rubble, like they had been before he left.  He turned back to his two brothers, who were sitting in front of him.  Piit and Jamael looked the same, though both had scratches and bruises.  Kyo remembered that day three years ago very vividly.  He knew the marks hadn’t been done while those two were terrorizing them.  After all, they had been protected most of the time by the barrier.

Kyo looked at them forlornly.  “How are you two?”

They just looked back sadly.  “Hello, Kyo,” Piit said, in a familiar voice.  But though he recognized it, it wasn’t Piit’s.

Kyo got to his feet and he began scrambling away from his two brothers.  They got up and followed him.  For some reason, Kyo couldn’t get away fast enough as hard as he tried.  They walked to him slowly, but reached him almost instantly.

“Don’t be scared, Kyo…”  Jamael, in the voice of Shadow White, implored manically.  “We want to help you.”

Their bodies began changing then, elongating freakishly.  Their legs grew tall.  As Jamael grew bulky and thick with muscles, shedding his skin to reveal the mask and clothes beneath, Piit’s skin darkened to a charcoal black.  The white marks appeared all over his skin, and his hands grew bony and thick until they had turned into Bad to the Bones’ gloves.

“Don’t be scared,” Bad to the Bones said.  “We’ll reunite you with your brothers… by killing you all!”  He laughed, throwing his head back.  He held up his hand, and his pointer finger began to grow long and incredible sharp.  With his other hand, Kyo was picked off the ground and held in front of his face.  “Time to sleep!”  He drew back his hand and whipped it in front of him towards Kyo’s neck.

Kyo bolted upright on the couch, sweating heavily.  His legs and arms hurt from trying to get away in the dream.  His dreadlocks were heavy with sweat and plastered to his face.  His muscles were tense, and he was breathing loudly and quickly.

He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing and to return his heartbeat to normal.  “Damn,” he whispered.  He got off the couch and headed for the sink.  Turning on the cold water, he cupped his hands under the stream and splashed his face with it.  Leaning against the counter, he surveyed the room despite his logic telling him things were fine, making sure nothing was out of place or different from normal.

NaNoWriMo Story – November 8 & 9 (21,658)

They placed an offer on the space, and after a week when no one else had expressed interest in it, the apartment was theirs.  Yesmina and Kyo walked into the room and looked around.  It was smaller than they had remembered from first seeing it, but it would do as a headquarters.  The kitchen appliances worked but neither of them were very good cooks and they had collected a slew of numbers and addresses for pizza, Chinese, and other take out restaurants.  All the walls were white, which suited Kyo but didn’t satisfy Yesmina.  She was used to hundreds of brightly colored gizmos and decorations that her parents hung all over the house, and though she wasn’t fond of the junk, the emptiness of the apartment left her uneasy.

Luckily the apartment came fully furnished which saved Kyo from having to bring anything in, and also saved them a lot of money.  The bedroom was taken by Yesmina, and Kyo took the couch reluctantly.  She insisted on having her own space and also took the bathroom that was attached to her room.  Kyo tried to argue but she wouldn’t hear anything he had to say, so he was stuck with the small bathroom off the main room which he could hardly fit inside.

Yesmina hung up her costume and Kyo’s clothes which he had designated to wear on their adventures in a closet in the living room.  They had only been used once, but both were eager to get them on again as quickly as possible.  Kyo hid his sword on the top shelf of the closet which he had taken out and moved to a higher point that pretty much only he could reach.  He covered it with a sheet just in case anyone was able to see up that high.

Hiro and Amaya came by later in the afternoon to see how they had managed setting it up.  They looked worried; the place wasn’t very homey, Kyo admitted to himself.  It seemed more like a cheap hotel room rather than a place to live.

“We’ll continue improving it,” Yesmina promised.  “But for now this is fine.”

“No it’s great.  Yeah it looks very cozy,” Amaya lied.  “Why with just a final touch here and there—” she trailed off slightly, and just smiled back at them.  Kyo rolled his eyes, and hugged Hiro and Amaya.

“You guys have been awesome.  I really appreciate everything you have done for me, more than you could ever know.  I am indebted to you forever.”  He looked them in the eye, hoping at least half his gratitude could show to them.

They hugged both Kyo and Yesmina back, wishing them very well and giving their blessings.

“No, you guys have been the ones we are indebted to.  We love you both.”

Finally as they were ready to leave, Amaya turned back.

“If you ever need anything at all,” Amaya reminded them for the fifth time, “we’re always available.  You have our number.”

“Yes, yes, we have it!” Kyo laughed.  “Goodbye now,” he ushered them out of the room, smiling.  “Talk to you later.”

Finally the door closed with a thud and Kyo turned around, leaning on it.  He smiled at Yesmina who had sat down at the table and stared around at the space.

“It’s kinda’ weird with no one else around, huh?”  She stopped her gazing to look at Kyo.

“Yeah, I know.  It sounds so quiet.  Are you excited though?  Think about it—we’ve finally made it.  We can be full-time capes and really make ourselves known.  Soon we’ll be invincible!”

Yesmina grinned.  “Real masters of the trade.  Bonnie and Clyde!  And this view is great!  We’ll always know what’s going on.  By the way, do we have cable?”

“Yeah, I think.  I hope!”  Kyo said, forgetting all about the small television that had been brought by Amaya and Hiro.  He found the remote on the table and crashing on the couch, pressed the ‘on’ button.  At first the screen showed bars, but they disappeared to their relief and a documentary on rats flickered onto the screen.

Yesmina got on the couch as well and snatching the remote from Kyo flipped through the channels.  “Ooh, I love this movie!  Can we watch it?” Yesmina asked, pushing out her bottom lip and staring at him with puppy dog eyes.

“Haha, whatever.  Anything’s fine,” he replied.

Yesmina got up to turn off the lights which consisted of a single fluorescent ceiling lamp.  She returned to her original seat and shuffled slightly closer to Kyo.  He was surprised but didn’t show it and stayed where he was, unwilling to lose the close proximity they were in.  The movie was about a young boy who dreamed of being an astronaut.  He was confined to a wheelchair, the result of a car accident when he was very young, which also killed his mother.  Everyone believed he was incapable of realizing his dreams because of his handicap.  He studied hard in high school though and received a scholarship to college, majoring in aeronautics and space.  Kyo didn’t see the end of the movie, however.  Yesmina had fallen asleep on his shoulder only an hour into it.  He chuckled softly to himself and turned off the TV.  Picking her up gently in his arms, he carried her to the bed.  He took a blanket and put it over her, and turning out the rest of the lights, went to bed himself.

 

It felt odd sleeping in the city.  Their old house was on the outskirts of the city, and the market district wasn’t too crowded lending itself to a quiet atmosphere.  There the nights were dark and quiet, except for the occasional delivery truck dropping off stock for the next day’s business.  In the Globe District things the night wasn’t at such a contrast with the day.  Street lamps illuminated the lower parts of the street while neon signs shined up into the windows of the upper apartments coloring the brick with pink, green, and orange.  Besides the light, cars zipping through the neighborhoods or groups of people laughing loudly in drunken stupors as they smashed beer bottles on the sidewalk broke up the stillness effectively.  As the doors to clubs would open, loud music blasted into the open screaming profanities and incomprehensible lyrics.  The bass seemed to shake the buildings around.  Kyo found it difficult to fall asleep under the blanket of noise and light produced by the buildings that seemed themselves to dance outside, oblivious of the people trying to sleep within the walls of its neighbors.

Eventually Kyo found himself in a light sleep, drifting on and off over the course of the couple of hours before morning.  When the sun streamed through the windows at 7:15, Kyo tightened his eyelids’ grip around his eyes and turned over in an attempt to block out the morning to get more sleep.  As he brought his arm up to cover his eyes, he heard a clink and he opened his eyes, instinctively alert.  It was just Yesmina, though.  She was already up and dressed and was pouring yellow cereal into a bowl.  She took chocolate milk out of the refrigerator and poured it liberally over it.  She turned around to the cabinets again, opening and closing each one in search of a spoon.

“Top drawer on the left,” Kyo mumbled, rubbing the last of his fatigue from his eyes and forcing himself awake.

Yesmina leaped in the air and spun around.  She leaned back on the counter and held her hand to her heart.  “Jesus, Kyo.  I thought you were still asleep.”

“I was,” he replied, sitting up.  “Turn around real quick.” He twirled his finger in example.

“Oh!  Yeah, of course!  Sorry.”  She turned her back to him as he got out of bed and pulled on his pants.  She was looking in the metal of the cabinet doors, but averted her gaze before he caught her.

“Alright, thanks, I’m done.”

Yesmina turned around and sat down at the table with her cereal.  Kyo just looked at it.

“Gross.  Chocolate milk with cereal?” he commented before opening the fridge and taking out the regular milk.  “Can you hand me the box?  Thanks.”  He looked at it in amusement at the bold red letters across the top which read ‘Super Crunch’.  Below the words was a muscular man in yellow tights and a cape.  On his chest were the initials SC.  He grinned straight at Kyo, his perfect white teeth matching his perfect hair and body.  “Does anyone actually look like this?  What superhero would have the time for teeth this white?”

Yesmina snorted, spraying milk over the table.  “Eugh!”  She floated a towel over from the sink and wiped it across the spill.  She wrung it out over the sink with her mind, and set it back on the counter.  “You’d be surprised, unfortunately.  A ton of heroes are so picky with their appearance.  Track and Field literally have a new suit made by some famous designer every other year or so.  It’s really ridiculous.  If you want to wear nice things all day there are hundreds of other job options.  Don’t risk a victim’s life by worrying about ripping your booties.  There are more important things to think about then what style cape matches your mask.  Superheroics is turning into an industry.  It’s disgusting.”

“Well it makes good money.  Have you heard what the government pays heroes per arrest?”

“Up to 10,000 dollars for a high-level criminal.  I’ve been doing some research.”

Kyo raised an eyebrow.  “What kind of research, Yez?”

“I’ve been looking into registering myself, actually.  We need some source of income.”

“Registeration?  Are you sure, Yez?  You’ve always been so against it.  I could always find a side-job—like a pizza delivery person or something.”

“Kyo, you won’t have the time.  Fighting crime has to be a full-time job.  Besides, my ‘code name’ doesn’t really keep my identity a secret.  You don’t think people will realize I just added Glint to my first and only name?  I don’t even have a last name for goodness sake!”

“Are you sure?  I don’t want you to get hurt if your information falls into the wrong hands.  You shouldn’t have to support our partnership by yourself, either.”

“I was thinking I could make up information about myself.  It’d be illegal, but I doubt anyone would find out.  Until we got real big, anyways, and then I could always just apologize.  By then enough people would love us that no one would care,” she reasoned, laughing a little.  “What d’ya think?”

“If your comfortable with it, then go for it. But I’m registering with you.”

Kyo didn’t leave room to argue.  He finished his cereal and began folding the sheets on the couch, ending the conversation.  He drew back the curtains inviting the sunlight to warm up the room.

“Let’s go out, see what there is to do around here,” Kyo suggested.  Yesmina looked up at him.  “Come on, grab your coat.  It’ll be fun!”

Without waiting for her to respond, Kyo strode across the room and picked up their coats and tossed hers to her.  Jiggling the handle of the door, he opened it to the hallway.  Yesmina got up and wrapped put on her coat, following Kyo.  They pressed the down button and the silver doors opened silently.  They entered and watched the red numbers above the door as they slowly counted down to one.

When they had reached the ground floor, a beep went off and the doors opened once again to a sunny lobby.  The walls were almost entirely glass and all around people walked around, many in odd clothes, or at least different than either of them were used to seeing.  It was an art and party district, after all.  One guy walking past the building wore tight jeans low on his waist allowing his boxers to show.  His hair was shoulder-length and dark purple and he had piercings on both ears and his nose.  He wore a slightly dirty wife-beater and had a blue and black-striped fingerless glove on his one arm, and two sweatbands on the other.  One was of the Union Jack, matching his belt buckle which also displayed the flag.  To top it off, he had a big triangular tattoo on his shoulder.

Kyo looked at him strangely, not sure if he was good or bad.  Yesmina told him to knock it off.

“You’re gonna’ see a lot of weirdos.  Most of them are fine, it’s just their style.  You’ll get better at pointing out the real troublemakers soon enough.”

“And you know exactly who’s who, don’t you?” Kyo asked, slightly annoyed that she would assume she was the superior on the subject.

“My parents are hippies, remember?  Their friends are as strange as they come.  Trust me.”  She giggled and walked out the door, leaving him to catch up.  There weren’t as many superheroes as Kyo thought would be walking around.  He guessed it was foolish of him to think that all of them would just parade around the streets.  Were there many, he wondered, that were there that he couldn’t see?  He looked around paranoid; he hated the idea of being watched by someone he couldn’t watch back.

“Don’t be surprised if you see some things you aren’t used to,” Yesmina whispered to Kyo as they passed two women holding hands as they walked down the street.  “This is the Town of Expression, as a lot of people have dubbed it.  Most people aren’t worried of what other’s think of them—’cuz this is that place, where you can live your life without fear or oppression.  It’s pretty awesome.”

“I suppose I’m still not the most welcome at the party, though,” he whispered back a they walked by someone else who continued to stare at Kyo in disgust even after they had passed him.

“Well, I think things will change pretty soon, Kyo, don’t worry.  A lot of black superheroes are starting to rise from the shadows.  They aren’t the most respected, and they take a lot of heat, but two years ago the skies were empty of any super that wasn’t white.  ‘The revolution is nigh,’ in the words of my dad.”

“The revolution… I like the sound of it,” he said as he turned his head to look at Yesmina, smiling.

They finally stopped in front of a drug store.  Taped to the wall was the first page of the Capitol Press.  On the front cover was a tall, blonde man with a wide grin.  He was shaking hands with someone even taller, which was saying a lot, as the man in the suit was already well over six feet.  The big one was wearing blue spandex and white gloves and boots.  He was bedizened with stars and stripes.  The headline read, “New hero takes up mantle; Flagstaff!”

“Someone’s taken up Flagstaff’s name?”  Yesmina reread the headline quickly to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.  “Wow, that’s bold.  He really has a legacy to live up to.  C’mon, Kyo, let’s get a copy.”

She pushed open the door and the bells attached to the top rang loudly as she rushed inside.  She snatched up a paper and went to the counter.

“So is it true?  Someone has become the new Flagstaff?”

“Hey, kid, read it for yourself,” he said, jabbing his finger at the picture.  “That’ll be a buck, by the way.”

“Right.  I should have money in here somewhere… Oh, here it is.  Let’s see, twenty-five, fifty… one dollar, sir!  Thanks a lot!”

NaNoWriMo Story – November 7 (19,032)

“Bass?  Like the fish?  Yeah, no thanks,” Kyo rolled his eyes.  “Back Alley Scrapper is fine.  Or maybe Scrapper would work, too.”

“Well let’s not get too caught up in our names.  It’s what we do that’s important—you know that, right?”

“Yeah, duh.  You aren’t my mother, y’know.”  He reached across the table and pushed her shoulder playfully.

“You need more supervision than you think,” she giggled.

“You both aren’t professionals, just yet!” Amaya reminded them.  “Don’t take this all to your head—you still need training and discipline.”

“And discipline is something I can give you,”  Hiro butted in.  “Would you two get the car?  It’s in the garage down the street.  Me and Amaya will be here, finishing this delightful breakfast.”  He snickered.  “We’ll look out for the car, just pull up around here.”

Kyo sighed, but laughed at Hiro.  “Fine, fine, let’s go.  Be ready.”

Kyo and Yesmina left the diner and started down the street.  It was bright out now, the sun high enough to peek above the buildings looming like giants above the traffic below.  The garage wasn’t too far away from the diner and they made it their relatively quickly.  The light transitioned from bright to the artificial orange fluorescent that hung on the cement ceilings above them.  Opening the door to the steps, they found what level they were on and began the climb down to where they had left the car.

For such a busy day, most of the parking spaces were unusually empty.  Only one or two cars waited in their spots.  All of the cars there, even more unusually, were large pick-up trucks.  They were painted with bold slogans and symbols with bright green and orange spray paint.

Looking at each other quizzically and approached cautiously.  As they turned the corner, their eyes widened at what they saw:  a circle of people—no machines—no, people, were assembled in a circle, screaming and jeering at something going on in the center.  They thrust their fists into the air and booed or cheered at various points, laughing in between outbursts.

“Oh my god,”  Yesmina turned back around and dashed behind the corner, pulling Kyo with her.

“A gang…  Did you see what they were, Kyo?  They had metal grafted onto them.  I swear I saw at least three with a pair of metal arms.  All these tubes connected their appendages to the rest of their body.  Some were almost completely machine.  Kyo, I think I know who these people are,” her mouth fell open and her eyes widened more as the idea came to her.  “The Metals…They amputate their limbs to make room for cybernetic replacements.  They get a rush out of it, I think.”  She shuddered.  “They’re a dangerous lot.  I’ve heard of heroes running into them a lot—there must be thousands of ‘em running around.”

“Yesmina, we can’t hide from them.  Did you see what was in the middle of that ring?”

A bloodcurdling scream issued from around the corner.  “No, I—I.. I couldn’t see over their heads.  Besides, I was looking at their freakin’ robot bodies.”

“There was a man in the middle, Yez.  Someone was fighting with him.  More like toying with him.  The biggest one of the lot, he was.  His whole body besides his head was made of scrap metal.”

“Oh my god!  Kyo, we have to stop them!”

“I don’t have my sword, Yesmina.  I can’t do anything against ‘em.”

“Use one of those!”  She pointed to a pipe system along the ceiling.  “Hurry up, just take one!”

Kyo reached up and grabbed ahold of one of the pipes.  He yanked hard and it came loose.  Tossing it between his hands, he got used to its weight—or lack of for that matter.  “Alright.  After me.”

Kyo let out a murderous scream and came sprinting from behind the wall.  He got to them with abnormal speed and it took for the first man to go down with a powerful hit to his neck before they even realized he was there.  They all stood there for a moment, paralyzed with surprise.  Then one of them with a pointed green mohawk bared his pointed teeth and screamed loudly.  The sound rang throughout the garage and the rest of the group roared in response.  They abandoned their past-time and rushed towards him.

Kyo jumped back, but a gleaming claw slit his skin right before he could get out of the way.  He howled in pain only temporarily.  His arm glowed green and Yesmina was right behind him, healing the wound quickly.  He looked back, and began to thank her, but she cut him off.

“Shut up and fight!  Behind you!”

Kyo swung his sword arm around, the rest of his body following and he clubbed one who was about to jump on him before Kyo even saw him.

Yesmina stayed back, aware of her fragility in this situation.  It didn’t stop her from firing off psychic explosives within the group however.  While the Back Alley Scrapper fought one half of the group Yesmina Glint blocked the other half’s attacks with small, quick pink walls, keeping their claws and weapons from reaching him.  The fight was escalating quickly.  They seemed invincible and time after time they got back up, unfazed by Back Alley Scrapper’s blunt strikes with the pipe.  Finally the big one made it to the front of the group.  He had almost reached Scrapper when he saw him.  The freak, who Kyo guessed was the boss, was Halloween, an amalgam of armor plating, liquid-filled tubes and sharp points.  No skin showed except for his head.  He was almost completely machine—there were even gaps in the metal where his torso should have been, and instead there was empty space.  Just then a powerful blow that the Scrapper had just barely kept away from himself bent the pipe in half.  It was of no use now—he could barely hold it while keeping anything left to hit people with.

And to make matters worse, a familiar voice carried to his ears.

“Kyo how long does it take you to get the car?  Can’t you let Yesmina drive if you aren’t too good yet?  Me and Amaya have been waiting at the dinner for—” They rounded the corner then and saw the horrifying scene.  “Oh.”

The gang members, Yesmina, and Kyo all stopped staring at the couple.  Then, grinning and snickering, the group changed targets.  They now began to advance towards the old man and woman.  Clicking their tongues, they pounded their hammer-fists together, or scraped their long claws against the ceiling.  Kyo grabbed one and tried to pull him off his course, but he just turned around and swinging his metal fist, sent him quickly to the ground.  He knew it was over.

Yesmina had another conclusion in mind though.  Thinking quickly, she decided to try and thrust her healing straight into Back Alley Scrapper’s muscles even where there was no wound.  Concentrating hard, she pushed her palms together and thrust her arm’s towards him.  Her hands tingled as the green magic worked its way from the tips of her fingers and off into the air, to reappear on the hero’s arms.  They disappeared quickly, though.  Defeated, Yesmina gave up and began to panic.  Just then he let out a monstrous roar right as the first of the gang members had almost reached poor Hiro and Amaya.  His muscles expanded and his veins popped from his arms and hands.  Jumping onto his feet, he lunged off the ground, rocketing through the air.  He rolled onto the ground just in front of the leader, blocking their path from his family.  He grabbed the man’s metallic chest and crumpling it slightly with his grip thrust him through the air.  He finally hit against a wall and fell to the floor with a loud clang.  He lay there below where he had impacted, leaving a dent in the cement.

“Oh my god,” Yesmina whispered as she gasped.  She took the opportunity to erect a barricade around Amaya and Hiro and picking them off their feet with the barrier put them far away from the fight.

BAS had paused only momentarily as he realized this new, unknown strength.  He threw down the pipe that he was still holding and sent his fist slamming into the chest of a freak with massive hammerheads in place of hands.  He crumpled to the floor instantly knocked out cold, if not worse.  He then turned to the next man and kicked him hard, sending him skittering across the floor and landing in a pile along with his leader.  He screamed again and the remaining few began to scramble in unadulterated terror.

“Yesmina, pick ‘em up.”  His voice was deeper and louder.

Startled, she quickly surrounded them in psychic spheres.  She moved them together and threw them all into one big dome which acted as a physically impossible to break cage.  The last men tried to beat at the shimmering wall but while their weapons were excellent at crushing and slicing, they did nothing against the purely mental barrier.

In the excitement, the two almost forgot the man who had been within the Metal’s circle.  He managed a muffled groan as he lay on the cement, brutally battered and beaten.  They ran over to him and crouched down.

“Can you hear me, sir?” Yesmina asked.  “Sir, can you hear me?”  She repeated louder.

He responded with another groan.

“He’s barely conscious.  Kyo, stand back please.”

He did as he was told and allowed Yesmina room to work her magic.  Yesmina first rolled him over and she stared into his face.  It was pockmarked with gashes and bruises and his teeth lay broken in his mouth.  “Damn.”  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out audibly.  She leaned over and pushed her blonde bangs out of her face and began to concentrate.  Laying her hands on his chest, she began to pulse with her green magic.  It began in her hands as a soft glow and traveled up her arms, through her chest, down into her legs and up surrounding her head.  She pulsated with power but she withheld it for a moment or two.  Then, with a cry of pain she released the energy into his body.  The green glow drained from her and began to channel to the man’s crippled form spreading warmly throughout every inch.  She kept her hands pressed on his chest, her eyes watering in determination.  Finally, she broke the connection and the magic dissipated.

Yesmina fell back from her knees and panted hard and fast.  Though she looked terribly tired, she had done her job.  The man’s cuts had closed for the most part leaving red streaks on his arms and face.  The bruises were still unsightly and plentiful, but they weren’t serious wounds.  Alas, his teeth were unfixable.  Yesmina couldn’t grow him new ones, or reattach them.  The civilian still lay unconscious, his body almost as weary from being healed so quickly as Yesmina’s was for expelling her magic so quickly.  Everyone stood motionless after the battle.  They were physically exhausted for sure, but the stress and mental exhaustion made everything almost too much to bear.

Kyo slumped against the wall his head down.  He breathed deeply with his eyes closed.  His muscles relaxed and returned to their normal state.  Without the augmentation his arms felt like rocks and they hung loosely at his side nearly immovable.  His whole body shook slightly, sweat beading all over his skin.  He slid down the wall and landed in a seated position.  He leaned forward and then laid his head back against the cold cement.  Yesmina on the opposite side of the underground street held her fingers to her temples.  She was developing a quite painful headache.  Unable to hold the gang’s prison much longer, she motioned to Kyo to leave.  There was no way to get authorities here soon enough.  A pile of cars the Metals had made from the ones parked where they were holding their game blocked off the vehicle entrance to the garage.  An innocent man’s life had been saved, and it was decided it was beyond their current capacity to do any more.  Walking over slowly to the two heroes who had gathered near the unconscious man, Amaya and Hiro rested their hands on both their shoulders.

“Kyo?” Amaya asked softly.  “Kyo, I think we need to get this man somewhere safe.  Could you carry him, do you think?”

“Yeah… yeah, I think I’ll be able to.”

Greatly fatigued, he took hold of the man by his waist and laid him across his shoulder.  He was lighter than Kyo expected, which was great relief to him that he need not exert himself to much further.  The four walked slowly together, looking back briefly at the few gang members left in the bubble.

“Unfortunately they’ll be free once I get too far away.  And my range is less than perfect; I can hardly keep a thought straight.”

“It’s the best we can do.  You did good, girl,” Kyo encouraged.  “You did real good.”

They decided this time to take the elevator.

They took a bus home, unable to locate the car that they had driven into the city with.  A baby near the front of the bus would not stay content and cried constantly to his mother, who rather than trying to quiet him for those trying to regain sanity, decided to instead ignore his annoying shrieks.

“I’m so sorry about your car, you two,” Yesmina empathized.  “Do you think there will be any way you can get money from the city to buy another?”

Amaya smiled, touched by her thoughtfulness.  “Oh, don’t worry about us, honey.  We have the money if we need another.  Besides, we always talked about taking a bus into the city instead of driving.  Hiro likes the hub-bub of public transportation.”  She shrugged; obviously the appeal of this noisy bus was lost to her.

“We’re just happy you two are safe,” Hiro assured them.  “When you get older you realize family is more important than losing ten cars.  We don’t mind living simply as long as we are rich in love.”

Kyo smiled at the cliché.

When they finally made it home, each retired into a bed.  Kyo gave up his room to Yesmina and slept downstairs again, though took full advantage of the blankets not being used.  The brawl had taken so much out of him.  It was a true test, he thought as he lay in the dark, an accurate sampling of what it would be like to actually fight crime.  He admitted in the secrecy of his own thoughts that it was a lot harder than he had expected.  The physical strain was enormous.  Yet the personal sacrifice, he believed, would be greater.  How could he have risked Amaya and Hiro?  Once again he had almost put his family—people who loved him dearly and cared for him, and people he loved as well—in peril.  How many times could that happen in a day with them around?  What if one of the Metals had followed him home?  There was no way he could ever forgive himself for what could happen to them.  He couldn’t save them every time.  He couldn’t always be there.  Reluctantly, and with a sinking heart, he realized: he couldn’t stay.

He knew in the morning he would have to announce his plans.  He thought over in his head again and again what words he would use, carefully mapping out how to tell the two people who had loved him so fully and without hesitation what neither of them would want to here.  Even though the words flowed in his mind, he would open his mouth to speak and he could not make the words come out.  He hid every attempt to speak by stuffing more cereal in his mouth.

Amaya got up to leave the room, and turn on the news.  Now would be the best time.  So he forced the first syllables to come out before he could rethink his plan.

“I have decided…”  He had already started and gotten their attention.  He couldn’t stop now, they were listening.  “I have decided something which does not come… easily and something that I would never wish would have to happen.  For the safety of you two, Amaya and Hiro, I need to… I need to… to leave.”

Hiro’s spoon clattered in his bowl as he dropped it from his mouth, splashing milk all over the table and on himself.  Amaya dropped a plate she was carrying, and Yesmina just managed to catch it mentally as she was descending the steps into the kitchen.  She floated it to the sink, and began to speak.  She caught herself though, as she looked up and saw the expressions of the three in the room.  She stopped on the last step and fell silent.

Kyo went on.  “Yesterday was too close.  Both of you could have gotten killed.  I can’t keep you in danger.  If I picked this path, I can’t bring you along as well and have you both hurt in the process.  It’s too risky.”

Hiro scoffed.  “Well we can certainly look after ourselves, you know.  We are perfectly capable.”

“Maybe,” Yesmina chimed in unexpectedly.  “But not against anything with powers.  Those were amateurs back there, and we barely managed to keep them off you.  If we hadn’t, there would have been nothing you could have done.  It’s time we looked after ourselves and you two stayed safe.  Away from us.”

Amaya spoke up, “You two are so dear to us.  You are our life force that keeps us going each day.  It isn’t easy, you know, getting old.  But you two make it much less trying.  You know neither of us could stand it without both of you.”

“You’ll have to.  We don’t have to sever all communication.  But we need a place of our own where no one can link you to us and harm you.  It’s necessary.”

“Oh, you two…  How will we go on without you?”

“You must have known this day would come.  Please.”

“Yes, yes I suppose you are right.  Ah, but you surely aren’t leaving today are you?”

“At least stay until you can find somewhere else to go,” Hiro pleaded.

“That sounds fair,” reasoned Yesmina.  “But it is best we are gone before too long.  Before we make a name for ourselves.”  She smiled at Kyo.

“A name you shall make, too!” Hiro chuckled, his mood lifted at this thought.  “You will go far, both of you.  You have the determination, will, and purpose.”

They all smiled, and Yesmina took a seat at the table.

“So, Yesmina,” Kyo turned towards her.  “What’s a cool neighborhood in the city?  Somewhere slick, but not too fancy.  You should know of somewhere good to get a place.”

“Well there’s the Globe District.  Its kind of an artsy community, but they have some sweet clubs, too.  There’s a gang there—one we could focus taking on.  Another big one like the Metals.  They call themselves  the Blade.”

Over the next few days, the four pooled newspaper clippings, magazine advertisements, and flyers posted on telephone poles displaying any place to stay in the Globe District.  Most were very expensive, and since neither of them had a job, they were relying on any spare cash Amaya and Hiro could scrape up.  Yesmina had finally told her parents about her abilities and they were surprisingly accepting.  They even gave her a good lump of money to help buy a space.

Finally, they settled on a small apartment in a place called the Globelight Building, a highrise in the middle of the district.  They went to the apartment the next day to make a decision.

It was on the 43rd floor, its windows facing to the east of Capitol City.  Luckily, the buildings in the Globe District were rather short, giving them a view of most of the city.  The interior was modest, if not cramped.  There was a kitchen that fed into a dining and living room, and two doors on the left wall, one leading to a small bathroom and the other to a bedroom, which also had its own bathroom.  The apartment came fully furnished.

After seeing it, Kyo and Yesmina caught each other’s eye.  They smiled, and Kyo turned to the woman showing them the space.  “I think we’ll take it.”

NaNoWriMo Story – November 6 (15,592)

Kyo and Yesmina were woken early the next day to a sound coming from the upstairs living room.  Rushing up the stairs clumsy with fatigue, they ran to the sound of excited yells.  Gloomily, Kyo saw the sun had barely even risen above the horizon—a glance to the clock confirmed his suspicions that it was well before seven o’clock.

“You guys are on the news!” Hiro was yelling.  “Someone who lived in the apartment next to the alley was apparently filming a video diary when he heard you guys down below. He pointed the lens into the dark, and when Yesmina made her psychic fist he could finally see what he was filming.  You gotta’ hear the names the media’s given you.  “The Back Alley Scrapper”, for you, Kyo, and Yesmina “Glint”.”

“How’d they think of those names?”  Kyo asked, not sure if he liked them or not.

“Well what else for someone in a back alley with a sword?  According to them, you turned the gun into “scrap metal”.”  Amaya chuckled.  “They are so original.  And you, Yesmina, I can only guess they were impressed by your dazzling display of your powers.  You are so talented.”  She beamed proudly up at her as if she were her own daughter.

Yesmina blushed deeply and Kyo grinned in agreement with Amaya.  “Thanks so much.  But is this publicity good?  Do we want to be known?”

“Why not?” Kyo exclaimed.  “This is great!  We’ll be famous in no time!”

“I dunno’.  For one, I can’t keep this from my parents any longer.  And won’t we attract a lot of attention?  We’re amateur heroes—we’re perfect for any beginning villains to try to take on.”

“Any why shouldn’t we take them on?  It’s just another way to get better—and get more exposure.”

“Maybe,” Yesmina said.  “I guess you’re right.”  She smiled to please Kyo.

“Do not get too confident you two,” Hiro advised.  “Cockiness can be the downfall of the greatest heroes and heroines.

“But let’s not stick around here all day long.  Let’s celebrate!”  Hiro sprung to his feet and clapped his hands together.

“It’s not even time for breakfast!  Can’t we crash a while longer?”  Kyo’s eyelids had begun to grow heavier again.

“Party pooper,” Yesmina teased.  “Just kidding, I wouldn’t mind a few more hours sleep if that’s cool with you two.”

“Oh fine,” Hiro whined disappointed.  “We’ll find something to do before you’ve gotten your beauty sleep.”

“So is this cool or what?” Kyo asked as they descended the steps back to their makeshift beds.

“I’m still a little wierded out by the fact that that guy was able to catch us on tape without us even knowing.  What else aren’t we aware of?”

“We’re fine!  We are the dynamic duo—soon nothing can stand in our way.”

Again, Yesmina was reluctant to agree.  “Maybe.”

“For sure,” he corrected her.

Upstairs, Amaya was more worried than she let on.  “Do you think they are ready to be known about?  They’ve just started and already people know about them.  I could name many villains just off of my head that they’d be easy targets for.”

“Amaya, this is the city of heroes.  There are too many.  I don’t think the discovery of these two will cause too much disturbance.  Hopefully they’ll pass under the radar again in a day or two and they can continue their training until they are really ready to make a debut.”

Amaya sat back on the couch with Hiro’s reassurance and smiled faintly.  She ran her hand once through her hair and closed her eyes.  “I hope you’re right.”

They chose a small diner on the corner of a street in the heart of the city to celebrate at.  The morning rush sat at the counter eating a quick sandwich or eggs and coffee before heading off to work in their dark suits and white shirts.  Almost everyone going into the city for work carried a briefcase many of which most likely contained top secret blueprints for a new invention or business plan.  Coffee bubbled behind the counter and the waitresses shouted orders into the back where the sizzle of frying bacon could be heard from the companions’ table in a corner surrounded by windows looking out onto the street where cars in traffic honked loudly at the immovable line of vehicles in front of them.

A portly waitress with too much red lipstick came over to them and took out her pad and pen.  She looked over them for a moment before looking back at her notes.

“What canna’ get y’all this mornin’?  You sir?”  She addressed Hiro first.

“I’ll just have an egg sandwich, please.  And a coffee—decaf, no sugar or cream.”

“And how ‘bout for you two gals?”

“Umm, could I have waffle with whipped cream please?”  Yesmina smiled at the waitress pleasantly.  The waitress didn’t return the gesture.  She just responded with, “‘Kay.”

“And I’ll have the same as him please, thank you.”

“Alright, I’ll be back with your stuff quick.”

“Excuse me, I don’t think you took his order,” Yesmina pointed out motioning to Kyo.

“Oh.”  She looked at Kyo with disgust.  “Well?”

“Just toast, please.”  Kyo looked down at the table awkwardly.  “Thanks.”

The waitress had already left however.

“How rude of her!  I can’t believe she would just ignore you like that—this is outrageous, we should go somewhere else!”

“No, Yesmina, honestly it doesn’t really matter.  If people want to treat me like dirt because I have a different skin color than them, I say let them.  They’re probably jealous.”  He laughed trying to return the morning to its former high spirits.  Only Amaya managed a transparent chuckle.

The food came quickly as promised.  It was good all around, but somehow Kyo’s toast ended up soggy and stale, as far from toast as you can get while still giving someone something that came from a loaf.  They probably didn’t realize it was old, he tried to convince them.

“You know, those names are growing on me,” Yesmina brought up the early morning’s excitement.  “Yesmina Glint.  It’s pretty.”

“And Back Alley Scrapper isn’t too bad either I guess,” reasoned Kyo.  “Kind of long, but it sounds intimidating.”

“We could always call you BAS if we get tired of pronouncing it!” Hiro chuckled.

NaNoWriMo Story – November 5 (14,538)

Kyo’s was very different.  His was a one-piece dark blue spandex suit that zipped up in the back.  He had silver boots that came up to his knees, matched with silver gloves.  

It looks too small.  And tight.  He worried.  What in the world would I look like in it?  He worried more.

“What’dya think, Kyo?”

“It’s spandex,” is all he managed to put into words.

Yesmina frowned and looked at it.  “Yep, it sure is.”  Then she said, “If you don’t like it there’s no biggy.  I found them in the back of a superhero tailor.  Something must of been not to the customer’s order, since they had been thrown away.

“Do you have something else you want to wear?”

“Is it so bad to just wear… I dunno’, regular clothes?”

“Hey, it’s your costume.  Do what you like!”

Kyo went into his room and rummaged through the piles of clothes laying on the floor.  Most of it was dirty and smelled, so he through those into another pile on the floor.  Finally he found something that wasn’t supporting life.  Making sure Yesmina was out of the room, he kicked off his current clothes and put on a black tank top and baggy jeans.  He put on his only belt, a thick black one with silver rings.  Finally he took a pair of dark shades off of his drawer and put them on.  He opened the door to show Yesmina.

“Alright, alright.  I can dig it.”

Kyo blushed.  “So when do you think we can start?”

Yesmina smiled.  “Now?”

The sky was dark purple as the minutes before nightfall passed.  Kyo and Yesmina stood on the roof above the restaurant, looking down upon the streets of Capitol City.  Most was quiet, though occasionally the calm was disrupted by a fire truck or police siren or a car honking in the distant.  The market district where they sat was quiet at night and would stay almost uninhabited until the first hours of the morning when a multitude of trucks delivered that day’s supply to the stores.  This lack of people was one of the things that drew Hiro and Amaya to setting up a business here.  The chance of robbery was almost the lowest here than in any other place in the city.  The business district, and especially 500 Avenue, a street that housed almost every corporate giant in the city drew all the criminals, professionals and wannabes alike, away from most of the outer parts of the city.

The first street lamps flickered on below and Kyo and Yesmina both sharpened their eyes looking anything to practice on.  Like most nights the streets were empty and the only movement came from a dark grey cat the weaved lazily down the middle of the road.  It stopped beneath where the pair watched in the shadows and mewed up at them.

“Shoo!  Get, animal!”  Yesmina unleashed a small psychic blast just behind the cat as to not to hurt it and sent it scampering frantically into an alley.

“Damn!”  They heard a crash from the alley the cat had disappeared to.  Both of them knew something was wrong—as far as they were concerned, any activity was shady activity while they were on watch.

Taking the lead, Kyo jumped the half foot between building roofs until he was just across from where they had heard the noise.  He narrowed his eyes squinting into the gloom working hard to see what was there.  The streetlamp’s light however ended just before the alley entrance.

“We’ll have to go down,”  Yesmina bit her lip.  “There’s no other way we’ll be able to see what’s going on.  Unless we could fly to the other side of the street, that is.”

“Alright.  There’s an awning below, jump onto it.  It’ll support your weight.  I’ll catch you if I have to.”

Kyo  ran to the front edge of the building they were on and grabbed onto the gutter and slid down to the sidewalk.  He walked out to where Yesmina could see him and smiled encouragingly.  She stood at the edge of the building, her eyes looking down to the pavement below, imagining her bloody form lying on it.  She shook her head to get the image out and leaped before she could create another mental image.  She shut her eyes tightly and felt her body feel weightless in its descent.  It seemed forever before she felt her feet hit the cloth awning, her knees buckled, and she opened her eyes sitting on her butt.

“Never.  Again.” She stared wide-eyed at Kyo.  He just chuckled softly.

She inched to the edge of the awning and slipped down, landing softly in Kyo’s arms.  “Thanks,” she smiled into his green eyes.

“Alright let’s go,” Kyo whispered excitedly.  He let her onto the pavement and  stared towards the alley again.  He hoped whoever had cried in surprise at the cat was still there.  They ran quickly to the other side of the street and stood back to the walls of the two buildings that surrounded the alley on either side.

“We should’ve brought a damn flashlight!” Kyo mouthed to Yesmina on the other side of the alley entrance.  “We don’t even know if this person is doing anything illegal.”

“Oh well.  Nothing we can do about it now.”  Yesmina shrugged and without delay crept into the darkness.  Focusing on her hand, she stared into the dark where someone could be, even inches away, without her knowing.

“Freeze,” Yesmina ordered.  She unleashed her power on her hand right as she said it, lighting the alley with a psychic circle that surrounded her wrist.

To both their relief and excitement, there was someone in the alley.  He was kneeled on the ground stuffing something into a backpack.  It was covered with tissue paper and when the man saw the pair, he shoved it into the bottom of the bag.

“Hand it over, now.”  Yesmina extended her hand, shifting the light that came from her hand.  For an instant, Kyo saw something glint by the thief’s belt.

“Yesmina!”  He jumped in front of her as the man pulled a gun from his pocket.  Kyo was faster though.  His almost two years of training and taught him to react on instinct.  He whipped out his sword that he had strapped to his back—the metal one, this time—and swiped in front of him cutting the gun in half.  The barrel crashed to the ground.

The man just looked at him in horror and then down at his hand which held just the handle of what was his gun.  The cut was inches away from his hand.  He turned around, tossing the rest of the weapon to the ground.  Before he had taken more than two steps, a pink wall erected spontaneously from the other end of the alley which the man ran into with a loud thud and a groan.  He fell to the ground on his back and didn’t move.

“Sheesh, good job killing the first guy ever, Yesmina!”

She bolted to the man’s side.  “No, he isn’t dead.  No, he can’t be!”  She frantically moved her hand to his neck, relaxing instantly as she felt there was a still a steady pulse even though it was racing from adrenalin.

“What’s going on down there?”  An old woman’s voice came from an upstairs window.  She must have been woken by the minor scuffle.

“Ma’am, we’re two heroes.  We’ve contained someone who has stolen something.  It appears to be from somewhere close by, judging that he was just putting it in his bag.  We would really appreciate it if you could call the police.  We’ll stay with him until we hear the sirens.”

“What’s wrong, Charlotte?” mumbled a muffled voice from inside the window.

“Well I’ll be darned.  George, there’s been a robbery.  Two heroes say they’ve caught the man; he’s down in the alley.  Call 9-11!”

Soon enough Yesmina and Kyo heard the sirens coming and they went through the back of the alley just as the police shined their lights down the alley seeing the unconscious figure.  On his chest was a note.  It read, “You’re welcome.”

Kyo and Yesmina ran back to the house when all the police officers were looking the other way.  They stayed quiet until they made it down to the training room where they broke out in laughter.

“Excellent!” Kyo exclaimed.

“You did amazing, Kyo.”  Yesmina moved closer looking up into his eyes.

“You too.  The wall was great.”  He didn’t dare look back into her blue ones.

She came still closer and stood on her tiptoes until she was almost at the same height as him.  Kyo couldn’t resist any longer.  He looked into her bright blue eyes and took her head in his hands.  She smiled up at him.  His lips parted and his eyes closed.  He leaned closer to her until their lips were almost touching.

Yesmina pulled away suddenly.  “Someone’s coming.”

They backed away from each other, blushing profusely.  The door opened and Hiro walked in.  Kyo’s teeth clenched behind his closed lips in annoyance at this intrusion.

“Have fun tonight?”

Yesmina was quicker to recover than Kyo.  She jumped right into telling him about their mini-adventure.  Though Kyo would have skipped over the part about the bullet for fear of Hiro ending their career early, Yesmina didn’t leave anything out.

At the end of the tale, Hiro was smiling wide.  “Excellent, you two!  Amaya and I are so proud of you both.  We must celebrate!  Tomorrow we can go out!  Yesmina, your parents wouldn’t mind if you slept over would you?”

“They’re away for a rally in Washington, D.C.  They won’t even know I’m gone.”

“Good night, you two.”

Hiro left them in the training room alone again but the moment had passed.  Kyo went to the cupboard and found two mats for them to sleep on.  He went upstairs and got blankets and laid them out for Yesmina.

“Sweet dreams,” she whispered half-asleep already.

“‘Night,”  Kyo responded.  Though he didn’t go to sleep for a long time.

NaNoWriMo Story – November 4 (12,842)

 

“Ouch, stop doing that!” Kyo complained.  “Gimme’ a chance.”

“Kyo, you won’t have a second chance if you want to take up big time villains.  You have to learn to wield your weapon with speed and power.  The broadsword is the heaviest sword I have, but if you can control it, it is also the most powerful.

“Let’s try again—this time I’ll take it slowly.”

Hiro stepped back, giving them some room.  He put his swords into position and Kyo followed suit, using both hands to ready his weapon.  Then Hiro lunged for a third time with his arms raised and swords ready to pierce Kyo’s defenses from the top.  Kyo braced himself and raised his wooden blade.  When the three swords met, Kyo swiped in an arc, catching one of Hiro’s swords and throwing him to the ground.  

He jumped up quickly, laughing.  “Good, you’re getting there!  Now show me more!”

This time Kyo initiated the fight keeping his broadsword low and to his side.  Then as he reached his target he swung up and to the left.  Hiro jumped back and thrust with his two swords, but Kyo rolled backwards onto his feet, evading the attack.  Then Hiro threw one of his swords at Kyo’s head and dived in with his other.  The sword flew straight and with speed, and Kyo stepped out its way too late and it grazed the side of his head.  The impact caught him by surprise and he lost his balance allowing Hiro to strike him on the shoulder.  Kyo’s sword clattered loudly to the ground.  The sound of defeat.

Hiro reached out his hand and helped Kyo up.  “You are already improving, boy.  But I think before we go on to more swordplay, you need to bulk up.  There are weights over there, and a pull-up bar along the same wall.”

Kyo stayed down in the training room the whole day.  He struggled with the heaviest weights he could carry, completing repetition after repetition.  After he could barely lift his arms, he retreated to bed, exhausted.

For the next two months Kyo went down to the room every day.  He worked hard for hours at a time, experimenting with different weights for different muscles and tried out different lifting techniques.  His strength increased dramatically, partly because of his will and also due to the magic his mother had gifted to him allowing his muscles to respond to training quite easily.  He tested the sword he had chosen every day, weighing it in his hands and learning how to balance it in his every position giving him grace and precision when handling the bulky weapon.  Finally on his eighteenth birthday, Hiro returned to the room and picked up his weapons once again.

“Technique!” he reminded Kyo as he ran towards him, rolling to avoid Kyo’s first attack and popping up, only to get blocked again.  Kyo stepped backwards as one of Hiro’s blades thrust towards his stomach.  He swung his sword around in one hand and brought it down towards Hiro, only to hit the hard floor.  Hiro was quick on his feet and danced around Kyo’s blade and slapped it with his own swords, tiring Kyo out quickly.

Kyo put out his foot to gain more stability, and accidently tripped Hiro.  He fell to the floor and tried to roll over to avoid Kyo’s blade, but he reacted too slowly and Kyo spun around and placed the tip of his sword to Hiro’s chin.

“Luck!” Hiro spat, but he was smiling.  “Excellent work, you.

“We’ll keep training…  It will take you a long time to get better.  There is a gym down the street if you would like further training.  They have machines I cannot replicate here.  Why don’t you go there today?”

“I have hardly been out of this house since I got to America.  Is it safe?”

“Ah, Capitol City is probably one of the safest cities there are, with all the heroes.

“I must warn you though, Kyo.  As much as I hate to admit it, not too many people are fond of your kind.”

“My kind?”

“Your skin, Kyo—people have discriminated against blacks for a long time in America.  I hope it is about to change, but for now, you must be careful.  You can’t let these people get to you.  You are as equal as them, if not better.”

“Do not worry, Hiro.  I’ll be okay, I won’t listen to them, I promise.”

 

The day was cold and gloomy when Kyo stepped outside of the restaurant.  A cold breeze whipped down the street, and Kyo wrapped himself tighter in his thin coat against the wintry air.  The sun was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds and Capitol City seemed to be black and white, the color subdued without sunlight.

Kyo turned to the right and headed towards the gym following the directions Amaya had given him. His feet echoed loudly on the cement beneath his feet—he had grown very much in the last months, and now he towered at just over six feet.  His arms and legs had thickened with his workouts, and he was constantly buying new clothes to accommodate his size.  Finally he reached the gym and ducking his head slightly went inside.

The gym was a single, brightly lit room with machines littering the floor.  Mostly men, but some women, grunted as they lifted enormous weights and took up most of the machines.  Kyo went to a machine in the corner and setting the weight to the highest setting began pulling on the bar bringing it towards his chest and then releasing it, grimacing as the black weights were lifted off the ground by the pulley system.  He had almost finished his first set when a tap on his shoulder stopped him.  He turned around to see a tall, white man looking down at him.  He had short spiky blond hair and wore dark black sunglasses though there was certainly no need in the grey day.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice agitated.  His nose flinched in anger, and the many was clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Sorry?”  Kyo looked around.  He was doing the machine correctly.  There was someone else on one doing it the same way.

“‘Sorry?’  Who d’ya think you are lifting on these machines?  You think you’re special, that you got privilege?”

Kyo didn’t know what to think.  He just stared back at him utterly confused.

“Damn it, you idiot, do I have to spell it out for you?  This here’s a white-only gym!  Your kind ain’t allowed in here.”

Kyo stood up now.  He was taller than the man, almost by a whole head.

“You think your tough, negro, but my boys can make your life hell, so I suggest you leave.”

“Shut up you bastard!”  A young woman with golden blonde hair walked over to the scene.  “Leave him alone, Brick.  Don’t you have better things to worry about?”

“Aw, beautiful, the two of us are just having a chat…  Guy things.  Leave.”

“Don’t you treat me like I’m some toy, Brick.  Let it go, this guy didn’t do anything to you.”

“Bitch, I’ll—”

Brick stopped talking.  The girl was looking at him with a ferocity and determination Kyo had never seen.  She seemed to be looking through him, right into his mind.

“I said, leave him alone!”

Without argument this time, Brick stopped.  His sunglasses fell from his face and his eyes looked glazed like he was unconscious.  He turned around and walked out the door, running into an old lady who was inching down the sidewalk.  He walked into the street without looking.  Car horns blared and their breaks screeched as the people driving slammed down their foot.  Brick kept on unaffected and turned around a corner finally, out of sight.

“Aw, I was hoping he’d get hit!”

Kyo just looked at her incredulously.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!  Jeez!”  she laughed.  “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

Without asking questions, Kyo followed her out of the gym and they walked down the street.  She was slender and slightly shorter than Kyo.  She had bright blue eyes slightly hidden by her bangs. She wore sweat pants and a tank top and though she was skinny, Kyo could see the faint outline of muscles in her arms.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she stopped suddenly and reached out her hand.  “I’m Yesmina.  Yesmina Glint.  I know its a weird name…  I have hippie parents.”

“Hey.  My name’s Kyo.  Yeah, I guess I have a weird name too—I’m from Africa.”

“Woah, cool!  So what brings you to America?”

“My father and brothers were, well…  They were taken by two American villains.  I’ve come to save them.”

“Wow, that sucks, man.  I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks.  So what was that back there?  What happened to him?”

“Oh!  Can I trust you with a secret?”

Kyo nodded.  “I don’t really have anyone to talk to it about, anyways.”

“Ok, then.  I have superpowers.  I have psychic powers, and I can heal things too.”

“Wow, that’s awesome.  Are you going to be a superhero when you get older?”

“Well I used to work on a superhero team—I got my powers on one of their missions.  But it split up afterwards and I don’t know if I wanna’ get back in the business.  I’ve been training in that gym for awhile though, just in case.”

“I want to be a superhero,” Kyo told her.  “I have this charm from my mother, it gives me almost unparalleled resistance to attack.  My bones are very hard to break, my skin hard to cut.  I’ve been training with a foster father of sorts to wield a sword, too.”

“Well that’s nifty!”

“Hey, Yesmina… We could be superheroes together!”

“Kyo, don’t you think that’s a little naive?  There’s a lot that goes into being a superhero.  You can’t just decide one day to go fight crime.”

“Why not?”

“Because!  You’ve gotta’ well… do stuff before you can be a superhero.  Like… get a costume.”

“Well, Yesmina.. I’ll help you train, and you could get costumes.  Deal?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Kyo…  It’s a big deal this superhero thing.”

“Yeah, normally it would be, but if we do it together we’d be fine!”

Yesmina sighed exasperated.  “Oh fine!  Deal!”

They shook hands.

Kyo and Yesmina met the next day in his house.  He introduced her to Hiro and Amaya, and they went down to the training room.  Kyo brought sticks and rocks that he had collected from the yard that morning.

“What are all those for?”

“Our training,” Kyo grinned.  “Alright, stand over there by that wall.  I’m going to throw these at you, and you stop them with your powers.  Understood?”

“Okay…” Yesmina was hesitant—she wasn’t sure how she liked being the one getting things thrown at her, especially when the objects were being thrown by someone the size of Kyo.

“Focus,” he told her.

Yesmina widened her stance and narrowed her eyes in concentration.

“Ready,” she said.

Kyo started with a small rock and threw it lightly at her.  Yesmina’s hand shot up and from it a purple blast erupted, shattering the rock in midair.

“My, you’ve got a talent, miss!”  Hiro was watching and had come down the steps without them hearing.

“Oh!  My gosh, please don’t tell anyone I—”

“No, no, I wouldn’t dare!  But let me help you two.  Yesmina, was it?  Yes…  Okay, Yesmina, try and control your power.  This isn’t about blowing up the house,” he chuckled.  “Stop the rocks as they come at you and have them hit the ground.  Once you get used to using your power in its different ways, then we can focus on intensity.”

Kyo threw another rock, this time one that was slightly bigger.  Yesmina shut her eyes and concentrated on stopping it while keeping it intact.  She had to restrain part of herself, and the rock came ever closer to her face, and she had yet to act.  Then as the rock was about to hit her between the eyes, a purple wall materialized in front of her head.  The rock bounced off and rolled on the floor.

“Excellent!” Hiro and Kyo exclaimed in unison.

They tried another one, and this time Yesmina deflected it quickly.  However when the rock hit the floor, psychic residue exploded it, and Yesmina blushed.

“Sorry!”  She swept up the pieces with her mind and created a pile by the wall.

“Do not worry,” Hiro reassured her.  “It will all come in time.”

Now instead of Kyo training on his own everyday, the three of them came down at lunchtime every day to train.  Yesmina’s parents were never home, so she practically lived in the house above the restaurant with them.  Whenever they got together, Amaya would insist of making lunch and having everyone sit down to eat.  It was healthy, she would say, to slow down for a little everyday and have a chance to be worry-free and in good company.  It was during these times that Yesmina learned the full story of Kyo’s life in Africa and his trip to America.

“Tell us about yourself, Yesmina.  We keep inviting you into our home, but we barely know you,” Amaya joked.

“Okay, well, let’s see… Where to start…  I got my powers on a mission with a supergroup.  We were busting up some mages, and a golem that they had been controlling died in the process.  As it died, it transferred its powers to me.  Well, I already had the healing powers—people I’ve seen said I’ve had it since birth—but it was the golem’s power that unlocked my natural ability.”

“What about your parents, Yez?  You never talk about them.”

“Oh, well, they don’t really pay much attention to me.  They’re always consumed by some cause to support.  First its some animal in the Amazon that needs saving, then its some war that needs to be put to an end, then superhero registration… The list goes on and on.”

“Superhero registration?  What’s that?” Kyo had never heard of it in all the time he had spent in America.

“Some people want heroes to register with the government.  They want them to turn in their secret identities, and make a public database of information about heroes.  You can do it already if you’d like;you get paid for your hero work if you register.  Two real big government-employed heroes are Track and Field, if you’ve heard of them.”

“So do your parents want you to register your powers?”

“They don’t know I have powers.”

“That complicates things for you, doesn’t it?” Hiro asked.

“Yeah I guess.  At least it isn’t some obvious or unstable power, like rock skin or laser eyes.”

“Back when I trained heroes, I knew this one guy; every time he got mad or excited, he mutated into this giant, green killing machine.  Talk about instability!”  Hiro chuckled.

“That’s a fib, Hiro!  You can’t possibly be telling the truth—a not-so-jolly green giant?  Ha ha!” Yesmina rolled her eyes.

“Hey, miss, I don’t care if you believe me or not!”

They all chuckled and left the table, Yesmina and Kyo down the stairs into the training room, and Hiro and Amaya up the stairs and through their room to the balcony.  They sat down on the wooden bench which faced a beautiful park.

“They’re sweet kids,” Amaya smiled.

“Determined, too.  I swear they’re down there training everyday.”

“Some day they’ll be the next great heroes.  Wouldn’t that be something crazy, Hiro?”

“Yes, my dear.  Something crazy.”

Down two floors, Kyo and Yesmina were at it like always.  Yesmina was able to stop whole bricks with ease, now, and they moved onto explosions like she had originally been using her power for. This time however she contained the explosions as to not harm anyone.  She sat in a chair at one end of the room, both hands on the seat as she concentrated hard.  As another brick came hurling across the room, she furrowed her eyebrows.  A small pink sphere came whizzing out of her forehead and when it contacted with the brick it shattered it into a hundred pieces.  Almost instantly, the brick’s pieces were surrounded by a larger pink sphere containing the blast.  Only a small amount of detritus remained uncontained.  The pieces rocketed away from the explosion nearly embedding themselves in the cement walls.

“Your explosions are definitely getting more powerful, and your reaction time for force fields is also getting a lot better,” Kyo remarked, his eyebrows raised in pleasant surprise.

“I wanna’ see what you’ve got, Kyo.  Take your sword.  I’ll fight you with a mental weapon.”

Yesmina closed her eyes and produced a purple, translucent staff. It hovered in the air just in front of her.  Kyo went to the cupboard and took out the broadsword, unsure about fighting a psychic weapon.

“Alright, I’m ready,” Kyo took his beginning stance.

“Go!”

Without opening her eyes, Yesmina began to control the staff.  It spun and whipped through the air quickly and powerfully.  Kyo deflected its blows easily, bouncing on the balls of his feet and constantly moving to keep himself harder to hit.  He flipped backwards, landing on his feet right as the staff crashed down where he had been standing just seconds before.  Kyo lunged forward to strike the staff, but it swiveled to the side and with a strong hit knocked the sword out of Kyo’s hand.  It spun across the room and landed in a far corner.  He didn’t even try to go after it.  Using sheer strength, he began to deflect the staff with his feet and forearms, grimacing slightly each time it impacted him.  Finally he reached out with both hands and just barely grabbing the staff, raised it into the air and snapped it on his knee.

Losing the connection to Yesmina, the staff dissipated into nothing.  Yesmina opened her eyes.

“Very impressive!  Hiro has taught you very well.  Which is just as well, because I think I have the costume thing figured out.”

“Oh, awesome, Yez!”

“Alright, I have them upstairs.  Let’s go!” She started for the steps, and Kyo followed.

Upstairs, Yesmina had already laid them out.  There was one for each of them.  Yesmina’s was black spandex: a top with full sleeves and gloves and a black skirt.  She had a silver belt with a pink jewel inside it, along with silver goggles that had light blue lenses.  Lying on the floor were black boots with thick soles.

 

NaNoWriMo Story – November 3 (9,731)

It took a long time to travel through the portal.  Kyo had the stomach-flipping sensation of falling though no wind was whistling in his ears.  He was blinded by the pure whiteness of the universe around him and shut his eyes most of the journey.  Finally, a cold wind rushed across his face, and he opened his eyes.  Lying in a dirty alleyway, he hadn’t felt the impact of the ground.  He peered onto a path of hard, black rock—asphalt, some power told him— where shiny animals—cars, again he heard a voice correct him—whizzed passed him and people with flesh as white as the beach sand walked back and forth.

Nowhere did he see anyone without some sort of clothing.  He thought it must be a religious festival and like the Muwamban tribe often did, wore colorful pieces of cloth in celebration.  Kyo felt impolite that he wasn’t dressed up for the holiday and looked around for scraps of cloth to cover himself with.  On a pile of garbage he noticed two tubes of clothing that were attached at the top—pants.  They were covered in brown and green splotches which reminded him of the forests of his home.  He pulled his legs through the two holes and clumsily tried to push the round piece of plastic through the hole at the top of the pants.  They were very baggy, and he had to hold them up with his hands to keep them from falling.

Staring back into the street, he realized that in light of the religious festival, not too many people seemed very happy.  It was a sunny day, and Kyo figured there should be cause for much rejoicing, but many stared at the ground, bumping into others that walked with the same hunched over position.  Still others screamed at yellow cars until they would stop.  They would open some sort of metal door and climb inside, and the car would zip off again.  The speed made Kyo sick just looking at them.

Remembering his mother’s amulet, which was still in his hand, he raised it above his head and put it around his neck.  Taking a deep breath, he walked from the safety of the shadows into the light.  The people who took the time to notice him looked at him with disgust and many with hatred.  There was nothing Kyo had done to provoke their anger, and he hurried down the street away from the people.  Buildings taller than he could imagine stretched to they sky.  Many others went even higher up, piercing the sky with their pointed tips and steeples.  Almost all of them had brightly colored signs in their window, in the same language that he had heard the two men speak in.  Somehow the villain had gifted him with the knowledge of this language, most likely just so they could understand his death threats.

He passed one building with hundreds of signs in their front.  The glass was plastered with reds and yellows and bold black lettering.  Signs were squeezed into the smallest of openings until there were only a couple empty spots in the window.

“Separate but equal,” one sign read.  Kyo looked at it confused, staring uncomprehendingly at its words.

He began on again, and stopped this time at the only shop he saw that didn’t have the same signs as the other shops.  This one was old and dirty and the people that passed it barely noticed it next to the tall glass and steel structures that reflected the sky.

The building’s sign, a large board of wood with painted gold letters was in a language very much unlike the one he had seen on all the signs and unlike, he assumed, anything the villain had said.  Its characters were made up of many intersecting lines, and the figures were complex but elegant.  Starting towards the door, he saw inside a large plate of meat on the counter.   Food!  He had forgotten how hungry he was with all the confusion of the day.  He pushed at the door with all his might but it would not budge.  He stopped, and thinking for a minute, pulled this time, as hard as he could.  The door swung open without resistance, and Kyo fell back on his butt.  Embarrassed and hoping no one had seen, he got up and this time pulled the door back gently.  He slipped inside.

The atmosphere was warm and smelled good.  There was no one else in the restaurant, but from behind the counter he heard people talking.  He couldn’t understand what they were saying and they spoke in loud voices.  Kyo approached the counter where the food was, and looked at it greedily.  He was about to take a piece when the talking in the back stopped.  Someone asked a question and he could hear footsteps coming from the back.  Kyo hid his hand quickly, ashamed of almost stealing the man’s food.

“Ah, a customer!” he heard the man say in the familiar language.  The source of the voice rounded the corner from the back.  When he saw it was Kyo, a young black boy, half clothed, his smile vanished.  “What do you want?” the man snapped.

“Please… I have lost my family.  I do not know where I am…  I…”  Kyo didn’t know the language too well and gave up and frustrated, began touching his amulet.

The man saw the amulet and his mouth fell open.  He spoke back into the kitchen, this time in his own language, and a woman came out.  He pointed to the amulet and they stared at each other.

“What is your name boy?”

“K—Kyo.”

“And where did you get that necklace, there?”

“My mother… well, she’s a spirit mother—”

“A spirit, you say?  My god…  Amaya, this is the boy…”

The woman named Amaya spoke for the first time.  “Kyo, we are Amaya and Hiro.  I had a dream last night that a boy would come seeking shelter.  He had come a long way from his home—where are you from?”

“The Muwamba tribe.”

“Well, I’m sure its far away, but I don’t know where that is—do you, Hiro?”

He shook his head.

“Anyways, this dream gave me the task to watch over this boy, and we believe that boy to be you.  You said you have no parents?”

Kyo nodded, sadly.

“We will take care of you then, dear, at least for now.  Please, come with me.”

Amaya led Kyo to the back kitchen where the smell of food was strong and intoxicating.  Pots bubbled happily and the hiss of something sizzling on pans could be heard loudly.

“First we must get you something to eat.  I’m sure you are starving.”

Kyo nodded fervently and she laughed.  She was a small woman with tan skin.  Her eyes were an extremely light blue.  Her hands were delicate with long fingers which worked nimbly with a knife to cut vegetables that she had taken out of a cupboard.  Hiro came then.  While Amaya was a small, delicate person, Hiro, though not fat, was tall and broad-shouldered.  His hands were rough from a lifetime of work, and his eyes were unremarkably brown, almost the same shade of his skin, which was darker than Amaya’s.

Kyo sat down on a stool that he found in the kitchen, and looked around nervously.  Once again his life was going faster than he could keep up with.  He had only spent a few hours in this strange world and he had already be taken in by these people.  He wondered if he could trust the two of them, but decided he had no choice.  They were offering him food and shelter, two things he would not be able to get on his own very easily.

Amaya brought a plate over to him, piled high with rice, vegetables, and chicken.  She brought over chopsticks, and saw Kyo hold them awkwardly, confused.  She hit her forehead and chuckled.  She took them back and brought a silver fork.  Yet still Kyo was unsure of what to do with it.

“You have come a long way, dear.”

She took the fork, and making sure he was watching, slowly stabbed a piece of chicken and brought it to his mouth.  She gave the silverware back to him, and he tried himself, scooping at the rice and stabbing a slice of zucchini.  After he had  mastered the utensil he ate with a savage fury, clumsily getting rice all over the floor and on himself, which he apologized for once he realized what he had done.

“Oh, don’t worry, Kyo,” Hiro assured him as he handed Kyo the broom.  “Just sweep it up into this dust pan.”  Hiro chuckled and winked.

Kyo didn’t mind cleaning the floor, though.  It gave his mind time to think while his hands worked.  He couldn’t believe what had happened in such short a time.  He had no idea how far away he was from his home, or where his family was.  He wished his mother was with him again.

After he had finished, Amaya showed him the bathroom where he could clean himself.  She showed him how the shower handles worked and how to change the temperature, and she gave him a hot towel to dry off with afterwards.

Kyo walked into the white shower cautiously and studied the handles Amaya had shown him.  The red one was what he wanted, he remembered.  Turning it to the right, he tested the water.  Realizing how quickly the water heated up, he turned it down a little.

Everything in this new world—America, his mother had called it—amazed him.  The warm water that came without buckets and changed its temperature without fire.  The strange men and women of different skin colors.  He had never seen someone as pale as those on the street.  He had seen only a couple people that were almost as dark as him.  For some reason, they seemed the poorest of anyone he had noticed.  They sat on the corners of streets in the shadows of buildings and stayed very still in their huddled positions, as if trying to blend in with the shadows.  They seemed scared of something.

Kyo finished washing himself and dried his body off with the towel.  He came out of the bathroom where Amaya was making a bed out of blankets and pillows.  She turned around and shrieked in surprise at Kyo’s naked body.

“Put these on, put these on!”  She threw him a shirt and another pair of pants, that he quickly put over his legs and chest.  “In America, it isn’t proper to parade around naked like that.  That’s okay for when you’re by yourself.”

Kyo was confused.  He had to wear these festival clothes all the time?  When he asked, Amaya responded, “These aren’t fancy clothes, Kyo.  Everyone wears them.”  She smiled, hoping he would understand.  He smiled back, though he thought this America was getting stranger by the moment.

Amaya finished making the bed, and checked a piece of metal on her wrist.

“Time for bed, Kyo.  It’s been a long day…I’m sure your exhausted.  Me and Hiro are just down the hall if you need anything.”  She pointed to a door near the bathroom.  “Good night.”

Kyo slept fitfully that night.  His dreams were full of screaming and his brothers crying for help.  The two men laughed on and on in the background, constantly waking Kyo up panting and sweating.  Finally after he woke up for the fourth time, he decided to stay up.  He took the charm around his neck and examined it more closely.

It was made up of six lines, which swirled and met at a point where a blue jewel sparkled.  Engraved on each of the spokes was the symbol for the element that spoke represented.  Fire, earth, air, water, good, and evil; his mother was a water spirit which was why the blue gem was in the middle.  It seemed to glow at all times, even when their was no light for it to reflect.  It was warm too, as if inside was its own beating heart.

In the morning, the three sat down at a table in their home, a space which they owned above their restaurant.  They served Kyo oatmeal, a somewhat familiar dish to him.  They wanted to know all about what had happened to bring him here to America.  They were totally unprepared for the tale Kyo told them.  Kyo struggled through the story, over words and over details that were still hard for him to think about, let alone retell.  They listened patiently, however, and when he was done everyone sat quiet for a few minutes.  Finally, Hiro spoke.

“Do you want to find your family, Kyo?”

Kyo looked up at him from his oatmeal which he had been staring at during the moments of silence.  “More than anything.”

“Well, we are here for you.  I know we are probably a little strange to you still, but we hope that we can get to know each other better.  You see… we’ve never had a child of our own, and we’ve so desperately wanted someone to care for.”

“We hope you’ll stay with us, though by no means are we requiring you to accept our offer,” Amaya interjected.

“No…  No, I am so grateful for your hospitality.  I would love to stay if you would let me.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!  We are more than happy to invite you into our home.”

“Where is this?  I’ve never seen a place so strange…”

“Well, there is no place like here—this fair city is Capitol City.  ‘City of the Future’—billions of dollars have been poured into the construction of this city.  It is the leading city in the country in almost every field: medicine, science, architecture, engineering, you name it.  It’s a metropolis, a utopia.  Or that’s what they said when the first built it, anyways.”  Then Hiro eyes got wide.  “But its most interesting feature is very special.  It is home to the largest concentration in the world of a very special type of a person: superheroes.”  He said the last word in an excited whisper as if the word was sacred.

“Superheroes?”  Kyo tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

Amaya got up and from a drawer pulled out a newspaper.  On the front in big bold letters was the words, ‘Super Saves the Day!  Hundreds Saved!’  The picture was of a tall, handsome man in red and white spandex.  His face was covered by a blue mask with stars near the top where his shiny black hair flowed out.  He was smiling a large, toothy grin and rested his fists on his hips in defiance.

“That was one of the best.  Flagstaff!  He was an idol for every boy and girl in the city.  Until he died, so tragically.”  Hiro shook his head, his mouth in a deep frown.

“How did he die?”

“He was trying to stop a bank robbery, but it was a trap.  Hundreds of villains lay in wait for him, and when he burst through the doors, they jumped him.  He fought them off for a long time, but there were too many.  Even he couldn’t take them all.

“His death began a movement for superheroes across the world.  Hundreds flocked to this city to avenge the man who had been an inspiration for them all.  The villains were tracked down and taken in to custody one by one.  After they were all rounded up, the heroes stayed.  Of course this place attracts villains, too…  It’s a rite of passage for many evildoers to do their work here.”

“I want to be a superhero.”

Amaya and Hiro were taken by surprise by this sudden comment, stated so matter-of-factly.  It took them a little to realize what he had said, and then they both broke out laughing.

“What?”  Kyo stood up from his chair.  “I can do it—I need to do it.  To save my brothers.”

Both of them silenced suddenly and were solemn again.  “There are other ways to save them, dear,” Amaya encouraged.  “You don’t have any special powers.  Do you?”  She realized she actually didn’t know.

“Well, no… well… yes.  Yes, I do.  My mother gave me this,” he held his charm out.  “She said it makes me more resistant to damage.  She said I am tougher because of its magic.  I just need to learn to fight.”

“Well, if that is as magical as you say it is, you may just have a chance.  And to learn to fight, you’ve come to the right place.”

Amaya shook her head.  “Oh no!  Don’t get started with this again, Hiro!”

Hiro just smiled.

Hiro stood from his seat in excitement, and grabbed Kyo’s arm.

“Come, come, I must show you this!”

He lead Kyo down a hallway and down a flight of steps Kyo had not noticed the night before.  The railing was dusty, and the steps creaked.  Hiro fumbled for a string that hung from the ceiling, and pulled it to light up the staircase.  At the bottom was a door and after jiggling the handle for a few moments, it swung openly noisily.  Kyo looked up and saw Amaya shaking her head, before he was pushed into a dark room by Hiro.

It was musty inside, and it smelled like mold.  There were no windows, and without a light fixture the place was completely dark.  Kyo could tell from his bare feet that he was standing on some sort of hard surface, maybe wood.

“Is there a globe of light in this room, Hiro?  I cannot see a thing.”

“Yes, yes, one moment, Kyo.  Now where is that darn switch.  Ah!”

With an audible click! Hiro flicked the light switch.  It took a second for the lights to warm up, then they flickered on.  Kyo looked around in amazement.  Scattered throughout the rooms were weapons and machines of every variety.  He saw bows with corresponding targets, staves, swords of varying lengths and thicknesses, some with curved blades and others with two blades, one on each side of the handle.  Along the wall were bars fastened to the cement with industrial bolts and ropes laying in the corner.  Hand weights and bar bells of every size you could imagine took up a whole entire wall.

“Welcome to the dojo,” Hiro grinned.  “I used this all the time when I was younger.  Alas, with my age it got harder and harder for me to apprentice young heroes—”

“Wait.  You trained heroes?!”

“Oh yes, I suppose I forgot to mention that before,” Hiro blushed.  “I’ve trained some of the best martial artists the world has seen.  And you’ll be my next!  Take a weapon of your choice.”

Kyo started to the swords, but Hiro ran over and stopped him.  

“Ah, I forgot—we’ll be working with these for now.”  He guided Kyo over to a cupboard in the corner.  He opened it, revealing a duplicate set of all the weapons Kyo had seen before, except the metal was exchanged for wood.  Slightly disappointed, Kyo picked a long, thick and heavy sword.

“Ah, the broadsword.  Interesting choice indeed.

“Alright, get ready then; defend yourself!”

Without warning, Hiro grabbed two smaller and much quicker swords from the cupboard.  He lunged at Kyo and hit him across the chest with one sword sending him crashing to the ground.

“First lesson, young boy: always stand ready for a fight.  Get up, let’s try again.”

Again Hiro lunged at Kyo, but this time he was ready.  He brought his sword up to meet Hiro’s and deflected the blow.  Hiro’s strength was hard to counter.  Though he had hit away his two swords, Kyo’s own sword swung clumsily with its weight, and Hiro quickly recovered and thrust in at Kyo jabbing him in the chest hard.

Kyo fell to the floor for the second time.  He held his hand to where the sword had hit him.  He was lucky it wasn’t real metal.

It took a long time to travel through the portal.  Kyo had the stomach-flipping sensation of falling though no wind was whistling in his ears.  He was blinded by the pure whiteness of the universe around him and shut his eyes most of the journey.  Finally, a cold wind rushed across his face, and he opened his eyes.  Lying in a dirty alleyway, he hadn’t felt the impact of the ground.  He peered onto a path of hard, black rock—asphalt, some power told him— where shiny animals—cars, again he heard a voice correct him—whizzed passed him and people with flesh as white as the beach sand walked back and forth.

Nowhere did he see anyone without some sort of clothing.  He thought it must be a religious festival and like the Muwamban tribe often did, wore colorful pieces of cloth in celebration.  Kyo felt impolite that he wasn’t dressed up for the holiday and looked around for scraps of cloth to cover himself with.  On a pile of garbage he noticed two tubes of clothing that were attached at the top—pants.  They were covered in brown and green splotches which reminded him of the forests of his home.  He pulled his legs through the two holes and clumsily tried to push the round piece of plastic through the hole at the top of the pants.  They were very baggy, and he had to hold them up with his hands to keep them from falling.

Staring back into the street, he realized that in light of the religious festival, not too many people seemed very happy.  It was a sunny day, and Kyo figured there should be cause for much rejoicing, but many stared at the ground, bumping into others that walked with the same hunched over position.  Still others screamed at yellow cars until they would stop.  They would open some sort of metal door and climb inside, and the car would zip off again.  The speed made Kyo sick just looking at them.

Remembering his mother’s amulet, which was still in his hand, he raised it above his head and put it around his neck.  Taking a deep breath, he walked from the safety of the shadows into the light.  The people who took the time to notice him looked at him with disgust and many with hatred.  There was nothing Kyo had done to provoke their anger, and he hurried down the street away from the people.  Buildings taller than he could imagine stretched to they sky.  Many others went even higher up, piercing the sky with their pointed tips and steeples.  Almost all of them had brightly colored signs in their window, in the same language that he had heard the two men speak in.  Somehow the villain had gifted him with the knowledge of this language, most likely just so they could understand his death threats.

He passed one building with hundreds of signs in their front.  The glass was plastered with reds and yellows and bold black lettering.  Signs were squeezed into the smallest of openings until there were only a couple empty spots in the window.

“Separate but equal,” one sign read.  Kyo looked at it confused, staring uncomprehendingly at its words.

He began on again, and stopped this time at the only shop he saw that didn’t have the same signs as the other shops.  This one was old and dirty and the people that passed it barely noticed it next to the tall glass and steel structures that reflected the sky.

The building’s sign, a large board of wood with painted gold letters was in a language very much unlike the one he had seen on all the signs and unlike, he assumed, anything the villain had said.  Its characters were made up of many intersecting lines, and the figures were complex but elegant.  Starting towards the door, he saw inside a large plate of meat on the counter.   Food!  He had forgotten how hungry he was with all the confusion of the day.  He pushed at the door with all his might but it would not budge.  He stopped, and thinking for a minute, pulled this time, as hard as he could.  The door swung open without resistance, and Kyo fell back on his butt.  Embarrassed and hoping no one had seen, he got up and this time pulled the door back gently.  He slipped inside.

The atmosphere was warm and smelled good.  There was no one else in the restaurant, but from behind the counter he heard people talking.  He couldn’t understand what they were saying and they spoke in loud voices.  Kyo approached the counter where the food was, and looked at it greedily.  He was about to take a piece when the talking in the back stopped.  Someone asked a question and he could hear footsteps coming from the back.  Kyo hid his hand quickly, ashamed of almost stealing the man’s food.

“Ah, a customer!” he heard the man say in the familiar language.  The source of the voice rounded the corner from the back.  When he saw it was Kyo, a young black boy, half clothed, his smile vanished.  “What do you want?” the man snapped.

“Please… I have lost my family.  I do not know where I am…  I…”  Kyo didn’t know the language too well and gave up and frustrated, began touching his amulet.

The man saw the amulet and his mouth fell open.  He spoke back into the kitchen, this time in his own language, and a woman came out.  He pointed to the amulet and they stared at each other.

“What is your name boy?”

“K—Kyo.”

“And where did you get that necklace, there?”

“My mother… well, she’s a spirit mother—”

“A spirit, you say?  My god…  Amaya, this is the boy…”

The woman named Amaya spoke for the first time.  “Kyo, we are Amaya and Hiro.  I had a dream last night that a boy would come seeking shelter.  He had come a long way from his home—where are you from?”

“The Muwamba tribe.”

“Well, I’m sure its far away, but I don’t know where that is—do you, Hiro?”

He shook his head.

“Anyways, this dream gave me the task to watch over this boy, and we believe that boy to be you.  You said you have no parents?”

Kyo nodded, sadly.

“We will take care of you then, dear, at least for now.  Please, come with me.”

Amaya led Kyo to the back kitchen where the smell of food was strong and intoxicating.  Pots bubbled happily and the hiss of something sizzling on pans could be heard loudly.

“First we must get you something to eat.  I’m sure you are starving.”

Kyo nodded fervently and she laughed.  She was a small woman with tan skin.  Her eyes were an extremely light blue.  Her hands were delicate with long fingers which worked nimbly with a knife to cut vegetables that she had taken out of a cupboard.  Hiro came then.  While Amaya was a small, delicate person, Hiro, though not fat, was tall and broad-shouldered.  His hands were rough from a lifetime of work, and his eyes were unremarkably brown, almost the same shade of his skin, which was darker than Amaya’s.

Kyo sat down on a stool that he found in the kitchen, and looked around nervously.  Once again his life was going faster than he could keep up with.  He had only spent a few hours in this strange world and he had already be taken in by these people.  He wondered if he could trust the two of them, but decided he had no choice.  They were offering him food and shelter, two things he would not be able to get on his own very easily.

Amaya brought a plate over to him, piled high with rice, vegetables, and chicken.  She brought over chopsticks, and saw Kyo hold them awkwardly, confused.  She hit her forehead and chuckled.  She took them back and brought a silver fork.  Yet still Kyo was unsure of what to do with it.

“You have come a long way, dear.”

She took the fork, and making sure he was watching, slowly stabbed a piece of chicken and brought it to his mouth.  She gave the silverware back to him, and he tried himself, scooping at the rice and stabbing a slice of zucchini.  After he had  mastered the utensil he ate with a savage fury, clumsily getting rice all over the floor and on himself, which he apologized for once he realized what he had done.

“Oh, don’t worry, Kyo,” Hiro assured him as he handed Kyo the broom.  “Just sweep it up into this dust pan.”  Hiro chuckled and winked.

Kyo didn’t mind cleaning the floor, though.  It gave his mind time to think while his hands worked.  He couldn’t believe what had happened in such short a time.  He had no idea how far away he was from his home, or where his family was.  He wished his mother was with him again.

After he had finished, Amaya showed him the bathroom where he could clean himself.  She showed him how the shower handles worked and how to change the temperature, and she gave him a hot towel to dry off with afterwards.

Kyo walked into the white shower cautiously and studied the handles Amaya had shown him.  The red one was what he wanted, he remembered.  Turning it to the right, he tested the water.  Realizing how quickly the water heated up, he turned it down a little.

Everything in this new world—America, his mother had called it—amazed him.  The warm water that came without buckets and changed its temperature without fire.  The strange men and women of different skin colors.  He had never seen someone as pale as those on the street.  He had seen only a couple people that were almost as dark as him.  For some reason, they seemed the poorest of anyone he had noticed.  They sat on the corners of streets in the shadows of buildings and stayed very still in their huddled positions, as if trying to blend in with the shadows.  They seemed scared of something.

Kyo finished washing himself and dried his body off with the towel.  He came out of the bathroom where Amaya was making a bed out of blankets and pillows.  She turned around and shrieked in surprise at Kyo’s naked body.

“Put these on, put these on!”  She threw him a shirt and another pair of pants, that he quickly put over his legs and chest.  “In America, it isn’t proper to parade around naked like that.  That’s okay for when you’re by yourself.”

Kyo was confused.  He had to wear these festival clothes all the time?  When he asked, Amaya responded, “These aren’t fancy clothes, Kyo.  Everyone wears them.”  She smiled, hoping he would understand.  He smiled back, though he thought this America was getting stranger by the moment.

Amaya finished making the bed, and checked a piece of metal on her wrist.

“Time for bed, Kyo.  It’s been a long day…I’m sure your exhausted.  Me and Hiro are just down the hall if you need anything.”  She pointed to a door near the bathroom.  “Good night.”

Kyo slept fitfully that night.  His dreams were full of screaming and his brothers crying for help.  The two men laughed on and on in the background, constantly waking Kyo up panting and sweating.  Finally after he woke up for the fourth time, he decided to stay up.  He took the charm around his neck and examined it more closely.

It was made up of six lines, which swirled and met at a point where a blue jewel sparkled.  Engraved on each of the spokes was the symbol for the element that spoke represented.  Fire, earth, air, water, good, and evil; his mother was a water spirit which was why the blue gem was in the middle.  It seemed to glow at all times, even when their was no light for it to reflect.  It was warm too, as if inside was its own beating heart.

In the morning, the three sat down at a table in their home, a space which they owned above their restaurant.  They served Kyo oatmeal, a somewhat familiar dish to him.  They wanted to know all about what had happened to bring him here to America.  They were totally unprepared for the tale Kyo told them.  Kyo struggled through the story, over words and over details that were still hard for him to think about, let alone retell.  They listened patiently, however, and when he was done everyone sat quiet for a few minutes.  Finally, Hiro spoke.

“Do you want to find your family, Kyo?”

Kyo looked up at him from his oatmeal which he had been staring at during the moments of silence.  “More than anything.”

“Well, we are here for you.  I know we are probably a little strange to you still, but we hope that we can get to know each other better.  You see… we’ve never had a child of our own, and we’ve so desperately wanted someone to care for.”

“We hope you’ll stay with us, though by no means are we requiring you to accept our offer,” Amaya interjected.

“No…  No, I am so grateful for your hospitality.  I would love to stay if you would let me.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!  We are more than happy to invite you into our home.”

“Where is this?  I’ve never seen a place so strange…”

“Well, there is no place like here—this fair city is Capitol City.  ‘City of the Future’—billions of dollars have been poured into the construction of this city.  It is the leading city in the country in almost every field: medicine, science, architecture, engineering, you name it.  It’s a metropolis, a utopia.  Or that’s what they said when the first built it, anyways.”  Then Hiro eyes got wide.  “But its most interesting feature is very special.  It is home to the largest concentration in the world of a very special type of a person: superheroes.”  He said the last word in an excited whisper as if the word was sacred.

“Superheroes?”  Kyo tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

Amaya got up and from a drawer pulled out a newspaper.  On the front in big bold letters was the words, ‘Super Saves the Day!  Hundreds Saved!’  The picture was of a tall, handsome man in red and white spandex.  His face was covered by a blue mask with stars near the top where his shiny black hair flowed out.  He was smiling a large, toothy grin and rested his fists on his hips in defiance.

“That was one of the best.  Flagstaff!  He was an idol for every boy and girl in the city.  Until he died, so tragically.”  Hiro shook his head, his mouth in a deep frown.

“How did he die?”

“He was trying to stop a bank robbery, but it was a trap.  Hundreds of villains lay in wait for him, and when he burst through the doors, they jumped him.  He fought them off for a long time, but there were too many.  Even he couldn’t take them all.

“His death began a movement for superheroes across the world.  Hundreds flocked to this city to avenge the man who had been an inspiration for them all.  The villains were tracked down and taken in to custody one by one.  After they were all rounded up, the heroes stayed.  Of course this place attracts villains, too…  It’s a rite of passage for many evildoers to do their work here.”

“I want to be a superhero.”

Amaya and Hiro were taken by surprise by this sudden comment, stated so matter-of-factly.  It took them a little to realize what he had said, and then they both broke out laughing.

“What?”  Kyo stood up from his chair.  “I can do it—I need to do it.  To save my brothers.”

Both of them silenced suddenly and were solemn again.  “There are other ways to save them, dear,” Amaya encouraged.  “You don’t have any special powers.  Do you?”  She realized she actually didn’t know.

“Well, no… well… yes.  Yes, I do.  My mother gave me this,” he held his charm out.  “She said it makes me more resistant to damage.  She said I am tougher because of its magic.  I just need to learn to fight.”

“Well, if that is as magical as you say it is, you may just have a chance.  And to learn to fight, you’ve come to the right place.”

Amaya shook her head.  “Oh no!  Don’t get started with this again, Hiro!”

Hiro just smiled.

Hiro stood from his seat in excitement, and grabbed Kyo’s arm.

“Come, come, I must show you this!”

He lead Kyo down a hallway and down a flight of steps Kyo had not noticed the night before.  The railing was dusty, and the steps creaked.  Hiro fumbled for a string that hung from the ceiling, and pulled it to light up the staircase.  At the bottom was a door and after jiggling the handle for a few moments, it swung openly noisily.  Kyo looked up and saw Amaya shaking her head, before he was pushed into a dark room by Hiro.

It was musty inside, and it smelled like mold.  There were no windows, and without a light fixture the place was completely dark.  Kyo could tell from his bare feet that he was standing on some sort of hard surface, maybe wood.

“Is there a globe of light in this room, Hiro?  I cannot see a thing.”

“Yes, yes, one moment, Kyo.  Now where is that darn switch.  Ah!”

With an audible click! Hiro flicked the light switch.  It took a second for the lights to warm up, then they flickered on.  Kyo looked around in amazement.  Scattered throughout the rooms were weapons and machines of every variety.  He saw bows with corresponding targets, staves, swords of varying lengths and thicknesses, some with curved blades and others with two blades, one on each side of the handle.  Along the wall were bars fastened to the cement with industrial bolts and ropes laying in the corner.  Hand weights and bar bells of every size you could imagine took up a whole entire wall.

“Welcome to the dojo,” Hiro grinned.  “I used this all the time when I was younger.  Alas, with my age it got harder and harder for me to apprentice young heroes—”

“Wait.  You trained heroes?!”

“Oh yes, I suppose I forgot to mention that before,” Hiro blushed.  “I’ve trained some of the best martial artists the world has seen.  And you’ll be my next!  Take a weapon of your choice.”

Kyo started to the swords, but Hiro ran over and stopped him.  

“Ah, I forgot—we’ll be working with these for now.”  He guided Kyo over to a cupboard in the corner.  He opened it, revealing a duplicate set of all the weapons Kyo had seen before, except the metal was exchanged for wood.  Slightly disappointed, Kyo picked a long, thick and heavy sword.

“Ah, the broadsword.  Interesting choice indeed.

“Alright, get ready then; defend yourself!”

Without warning, Hiro grabbed two smaller and much quicker swords from the cupboard.  He lunged at Kyo and hit him across the chest with one sword sending him crashing to the ground.

“First lesson, young boy: always stand ready for a fight.  Get up, let’s try again.”

Again Hiro lunged at Kyo, but this time he was ready.  He brought his sword up to meet Hiro’s and deflected the blow.  Hiro’s strength was hard to counter.  Though he had hit away his two swords, Kyo’s own sword swung clumsily with its weight, and Hiro quickly recovered and thrust in at Kyo jabbing him in the chest hard.

Kyo fell to the floor for the second time.  He held his hand to where the sword had hit him.  He was lucky it wasn’t real metal.