Chapter 2
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkyDb01uq2r
Three Months Later.
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnnfyPKqVvv
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.” Adrian said. “Your powers are totally wasted on you.”
They were in the ally behind the corner shop down the road from their school and Ben was holding a packet of microwave salted popcorn. Taking a quick glance around to check that no one was watching, he drew in the heat from the surrounding area and channelled it through his hands. In two minutes he was happily munching from his now roasting hot bag of popcorn.
“It sounds to me like you’re jealous.”
“Hey; I can bend space-time. I don’t want to manipulate energy.”
This conversation was old enough to practically be rehearsed: Ben, Rachel, Alisha and Adrian had all realised pretty quickly that side effects from the Storm had been more than a couple of migraines and some singed hair. Within the next few weeks, they had found that they had all gotten certain talents from what they could only assume had been the lightning. Alisha could turn invisible and go through solid objects like they weren’t even there. Rachel was able to shapeshift; turning into different people, even sounding like them. She could also use her powers to turn her limbs into all sorts of different shapes and - Adrian could only assume - weapons. Ben could manipulate energy; heat, light, kinetic, electric, whatever. Often using it to microwave popcorn. Adrian (in his opinion) had the coolest power; space-time manipulation, which is basically a mash-up of teleportation and time control. He could appear and disappear in a blink of an eye, slow to a crawl, reverse and even stop time, freezing everything in place except him. Although to be fair, if he used his time powers for too long, he got a pretty bad nose bleed and the mother of all headaches. All their powers were cool, although they were pretty sure that they couldn’t be the only ones to have gotten powers, no one else seemed to be showing anything strange. But that was to be expected; they were mostly being careful. They hadn’t talked about it to anyone except each other, not even their parents. Sometimes that was hard, though. But it wasn’t as if they had really done a whole lot with their powers, something Adrian was constantly badgering them about. He remembered one time, about a month ago…
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvMn115DmjX
They had met up in town for lunch. After wandering around for forty-five minutes, they had eventually settled on getting Subway.
They had all gone upstairs sitting in a booth table, when, through a bite of his B.M.T Adrian had said: “We should be Superheroes.”
Rachel was the first to respond. “The hell?”
Adrian shrugged. “Well we do have, you know superpowers. Maybe we should, like, use them for something good.”
Alisha patted his arm. “That sounds like a… good idea. But be realistic, Adrian..”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “I mean – I read comics and I love superheroes but –“
“But what?” Adrian asked.
“But in what sort of screwed-up world would that be allowed to happen?”
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3Nanpq0NVf
“Hi, guys.” Alisha said, snapping Adrian back to the present.
“Hey.” They both chorused. She frowned. “Where’d you get the popcorn microwaved?”
Ben smiled. “New trick. I sort of suck all the heat out of the air and then project it into the bag.”
Alisha was quiet for a moment. Then, “Your powers are wasted on you.”
“Ha, that’s what I said!” Adrian said happily.
“Again, you two are just jealous; someone goes to hit you, you turn intangible or you teleport out of the way. Me? I fry them.” Ben stated, bluntly.
“You know,” Alisha said, “Not everything we do with our powers has to do with violence.”
“True,” Adrian replied, “but, come on; that is the most fun.” Ben nodded in agreement while Alisha sighed
By this point, they had gotten most of the way to the bus stop; the had all agreed to go to Ben’s house after school; partly to do some work, but mostly just to hang out. Rachel would have joined them, but she was staying after school for a Wednesday detention: she had forgotten to hand in her fourth homework in a row and her French teacher had had enough.
Having fun? Adrian texted her.
A few minutes later the reply came; Shut up.
Adrian smiled. He probably nearly got her in trouble for having her phone out, but it was worth it, despite her inevitable anger later on.
His phone buzzed again. Adrian, who thought that it would be Rachel or his parents, was surprised when he got the following;
YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN DANGER.
CALL THIS NUMBER IF YOU WANT TO LIVE
07866711954.
Assuming that it was either a troll or a hacker. He paid it no attention.
He really probably should have.
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjft9tNetgU
The bus journey was uneventful; they paid for their tickets, they rode it until their stop at Ben’s house. That was all.
They walked up the lane to Ben’s house, where Ben opened the door with his key.
“Mum isn’t in.” He said. “What do you want to do?”
“Well,” Alisha said, “we could work.”
“Always the busy little bee” Adrian muttered
“Shut up. I was also going to say we could, uh, practise.”
Ben smiled. “Why not?”
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsObLJtBDJO
They all went out into the garden, after Ben had gotten changed and Alisha and Adrian had taken off their ties and blazers.
“What do you want to practise first?” Ben asked
“We could try and see how much kinetic energy you can absorb.” Alisha suggested.
“Uh, sure, okay. There’s a couple of shovels in the garage over there.” Ben pointed.
After Adrian and Alisha went and got the shovels, they hefted them in both hands, as Ben raised his arms. This activated a sort of bubble that would absorb the force of any moving object coming at Ben.
“Go!” Ben said.
Alisha and Adrian started swinging their shovels at Ben; they only got to about a metre away from Ben before the shovels just stopped, being robbed of their momentum. Every time this happened, the air kind of rippled where the shovels stopped.
They kept this up for around seven minutes before the shovels started to edge closer and closer to Ben.
“Hey; coming up on my limit here.” Ben said, his face tight in concentration, his arms starting to waver.
“Might want to try and use that energy there Ben.” Adrian suggested to Ben, who nodded. He waited a few more swings before doing anything. When Adrian’s shovel came around, Bens hand shot out, faster than it normally could have done, and backhanded the blade of the shovel with enough force to pull it (and Adrian) to the ground. Then, he thrust his other hand out towards Alisha and a small wave of invisible energy rippled out and into Alisha’s chest sending her stumbling backwards, dropping the other shovel.
Ben, breathing a little heavily said, “Well, that was quite good.”
“Can I go next?” Adrian asked. The other two both agreed that he could.
“Okay. Right. Go get some small stuff to throw at me and I’ll try to teleport out of the way. Then I’ll try and do some time stuff.”
Alisha and Ben both ran off to grab a few things. They came back with four balls, two plastic cups, eight forks, three butter knives and several of Ben’s old cuddly toys from the attic.
“Ready?” Alisha asked.
Adrian nodded and they started to chuck stuff.
The first thing to come at him was a cup. Adrian quickly envisioned himself about a metre to his left and teleported. Teleportation still felt weird. Sort of like being pushed down a slightly too narrow passage way; a bit tight, but manageable.
Adrian appeared to his left and the cup sailed harmlessly by. The other two instantly adjusted, changing their angle of attack. A fork, a ball, a toy, a knife, another cup and more. Adrian dodged them all. It was once he got to the tenth minute that he started to slip up, narrowly avoiding the objects and then eventually just getting pelted with them. “Okay; okay, you can stop now.” Adrian said, covering his face. “Let’s try some time stuff. Ben, try to hit me.”
“What?” Ben asked, puzzled.
“Try and hit me; didn’t you hear? You try to hit me; I try to reverse you in time.”
“Dude; if I connect, it’s going to be like getting hit with a brick. You might even break something.”
“I’ll be fine,” Adrian said, exasperated. “Even if that does happen, I should be able to rewind myself.”
“Fine.” Ben said “On your own head.”
“Guys, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Alisha protested.
“I’ll be fine.” Adrian said.
“It’s his fault if he gets hurt.” Ben said at the same time.
“Your concern touches my heart.” Adrian said, dryly.
“You’re welcome!” Ben said with a smile.
Adrian positioned himself about five meters away from Ben, then, once he was ready, gestured for Ben to come at him.
Ben powered towards him, fist raised. Just as he was about to smash into Adrian, Adrian leapt backwards shoving out a hand. Ben slowed. Ben stopped. Ben went back. Moving in the exact reverse movement of the past five seconds, he stopped moving once he got back to the position he was in before he had went to hit Adrian. Seeing that he had succeeded, Adrian punched the air, whooping.
Ben frowned. “What are you doing?” Then he realised. “Oh. So, you managed then?”
Smiling, Adrian said that he had.
“Well, that was cool and all; but come on,” Alisha said. “It’s my turn now.”
They decided to first do something similar to Adrian’s teleporting test; Ben and Adrian were going to throw stuff at Alisha, and she was going to stay intangible for as long as possible.
That went rather well; Alisha managed to keep up her intangibility for about fifteen minutes, a record for her. She could never quite articulate what it felt like, having objects going right through her, or vice versa; almost like her whole being rippled, before settling again.
Invisibility was slightly more interesting. What they did was basically a version of hide-and-seek; Alisha would turn invisible and then Adrian and Ben would have to try and figure out where she was. Ben was rather good at it, although, technically, he might have cheated; by draining it from the area around him, made little orbs of very bright light that he threw around the place, until one eventually cast her shadow.
After about ten minutes, they stopped.
“Just got a text from Rachel,” said Ben. “she said that she’s going to come over to meet up with us.”
“Oh, cool.” Adrian said.
It was at that point, the big black vans rolled up outside of every house on Ben’s street. Not that the three of them could see them. Nor could they see the swarm of figures pouring out of each van, each with a bottle with a rag stuffed in it.
They did see, however, the effects of what happened after the people threw the bottles.
Adrian’s phone buzzed. He whipped it out, frowning when he saw that it was the same mysterious number that had texted him earlier. This time they said:
I BET YOU WISHED YOU CALLED NOW, DON’T YOU?
ON OUR WAY.
YOUR WELCOME.
357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUb4s6bCaRy
Rachel was not especially happy. She had gotten a detention, just for forgetting a couple of homeworks’. Then, in said detention, she had to do as much of each of the four French homeworks she had forgotten to hand in as she could in an hour. She had managed to finish the first and move onto the second, but that only meant she had three to do next Wednesday. And the next. And the next, until she finished them all. She really needed to get a handle on the stupid homework; it was starting to become a huge problem. She and her Parents had had a row about it the previous day. One of many that seemed to be popping up. Sometimes she wished that she had Adrian’s power; going back in time, undoing everything that went wrong.
She sent Ben a text to say that she was on her way. Then she waited for a few minutes at the bus stop, plugged into her iPod, listening to something by MUSE.
When it arrived, she rode the bus to Ben’s stop.
It was only when she got to Ben’s street, did she realize that something was terribly, terribly wrong; so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she didn’t realize two incredibly important things.
One: there were people that must have come from the big black vans parked haphazardly along the street were swarming everywhere.
Two: Ben’s, and every other house on the road was burning.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
