Powerless: The Synthesis

by Jason Letts

  “This ceremony is “The Synthesis,” when we look upon those experiences and the feelings they spawned with mature eyes. We will come to a new understanding of their purpose, and that will allow forgiveness to take root. Only then can you go out into a world that knows nothing of justice and offers little sympathy for the weak.

  “I invite you to think for a moment about your greatest failure. These memories never lie far from the surface, but bring it up and let it stay with you here in the night. Remember that moment when everything collapsed around you and everything you wanted slipped away. Who stood over you triumphantly? Who conquered you, even if just for that instant? No doubt that person is here tonight. Whoever it was, he or she was the best teacher of the world that you could ever imagine. To face a loss, to know defeat, and to feel the stinging anguish of regret, these are what await you beyond. Without knowing it, you have all worked tirelessly for each other’s benefit.”

  Under the flame, Mira thought back to her helpless and pitiful loss to Vern. She couldn’t see him, but she wondered if he thought about her too, or how many others experienced their greatest defeat on this day.

  “You should thank that person for the service they did you. Though you were not the winner, that lesson will prove to be a much greater prize. Search that person out and thank them now.”

  Surprised by the command, Mira started to venture into the darkness. The sound of feet shuffling through the grass and nervous chatter came nearer though, and so she stayed near the flame. Faces became visible, and they began to look for each other.

  “Thank you,” one voice said, and then another, and then it came from everywhere.

  “Remember that time when we were seven? Thank you.”

  Mira saw Aoi thank Chucky, and then Roselyn popped into view.

  “Thank you,” she demurred. “You taught me that I can’t just rely on my gift.”

  Mira smiled and nodded at her before seeing Vern in the distance. They caught eyes and walked toward each other.

  “Thank you,” they said at the same time. The chatter died down, and Mira heard her classmates shuffle away.

  “Good,” Corey resumed. “Remember this and realize you have always had each other’s best interest at heart, even if your mind carried something else entirely. The bonds between you must be unshakeable, because someday they may be the only thing you have left. Now, your time as a student of this academy has come to an end, and I release you to find a mentor for personal study before joining with the great forces of our land to defend our freedom. Take up your torches.”

  Corey instructed them to circle around the tower and light their torches from Mira’s. As each student approached her, and they locked eyes for a moment, they were to say, “By my burning spirit, I exist in light.”

  The glowing embers fanned out and formed a ring. Holding their torches out in front, they felt the heat on their skin. Each face carried depth and promise with the yellow and orange tones.

  “Fire is just like water. If you put two drops of water together, they join in a way that makes it impossible to tell they had ever been separate. And fire is no different. On my command, move inward and lose your flame to the indistinguishing blaze, and in so doing cast off your selfishness and your pride!”

  Following his instructions, each student took a step forward at the same time. After each step, they chanted, “When my light is gone, all that remains is shadow.” They took several steps in, letting the words echo through their ears and minds, but then Corey released an unexpected, alarmed gasp and stared off into the night.

  “Quickly now, throw your torches in!” he ordered.

  Confused, the students did as he bid them. Without chanting or emotion, they tossed their torches on the spire. They expected Corey to say something, and an ill feeling sank into their stomachs when he did not. It seemed to Mira that no one would say anything if she did not.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.

  An anxious tension replaced the warm, communal feeling so suddenly. As the logs ignited and the bonfire grew, the students stood without purpose or thought. Fortst got up and joined the group, trying to figure out what was the matter. Corey’s frozen pose gave way to a terrifying roar, straining the veins in his neck.

  Everyone else covered their ears and watched any last delusions that things were ok vanish into the night.

  “We are not alone,” Corey said before discharging another ear-splitting growl. But while his roar seemed like a warning, it was actually a signal, and soon the sound of cracking branches and panting shattered their solitude. Something erupted from the dense brush and spilled out onto the ground. Its legs and arms thrashed voraciously to rebound it onto its feet.

  The group shied away from the rapid intruder. Only when it came within range of the fire’s light did Mira recognize Yannick, who had been stripped of his metal and ran like a deranged lunatic. Breathless and cut up, his legs gave out in front of Corey, leaving him to clutch the robes with his filthy hands and sputter between hyperventilating breaths.

  “Followed them…after Mira…had to warn…Cloud Cottage.”

  He coughed and spat, whimpering and shaking.

  “What are you trying to say?” Corey asked. “I can’t understand you.”

  “I understood well enough,” Fortst said, reaching into his trench coat and removing a thick, rusty tube. Those around him backed away as he held it firmly in his hands.

  “My parents!” Mira said. “ I have to help them!”

  But before she could take a single step, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Vern standing in front of the rest of the class.

  “We have to help them,” he said.

  “Come along now. I’ve saved my best lesson for last!” Fortst said, measuring his dark tone with an unmistakable pleasure.

  As the group sprinted out of sight, Corey’s words raced past them back into town.

  “Natalie, sound the alarm. Get everybody inside the outpost, and I’m going to need some help out here. It’s finally happening.”

  The man at his feet had passed out, and the logs in the bonfire burned thin like raw bones.

  Mira pushed herself forward along the moonlit forest paths with the web glowing overhead. The others struggled to keep up and wondered at the speed of her nervous sprinting. But she had learned every rock and root on those trails in the woods behind her house. She couldn’t feel anything but the wish to find her parents, and she ran on it.

  She swallowed the hill and all of a sudden she was there, cresting behind the garden with the back of the house beyond. Putting her hands on her knees to catch her breath, she stalled because she hadn’t thought about what to do next. Feet rushed up behind her, and they waited as well.

  Though the lights in the house were off, the sound of heavy banging, crashing, and yelling rippled through the air. Though they couldn’t see anything moving, the air carried a scent that was very much alive. Fortst made it up the hill, but he did not stop like the others. He charged at the house as if an army of millions followed behind.

  “Did you bring your notebooks?” he hollered before cocking back his weapon and charging through the glass doors. The glass shattered and fell to the ground.

  “What do we do?” Will asked Mira.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You’re in charge now. You have to tell us,” he said.

  “I don’t know. Um, let me think. Ok, Mary, how many of them are there, and where are they, and where are my parents?”

  Mary shook her hands as if they were wet and sucked her teeth.

  “Your parents are in their room. I think they’ve walled themselves in. There are a couple of them upstairs and a few downstairs and several around the house, on it, and out in front near the road. Probably a dozen total.”

  “Ok, ok, that’s great. Do you have any ideas on which ones can do what? I think we’ll have to split into two, half going in through the back and half working to the front door from
each side of the house,” Mira said.

  “Ok, but there is someone in the forest on this side of the house. He can do something…it’s like geometry. I feel shapes. There are too many to tell clearly, and I need more time. But there is one inside the house who changes his skin,” Mary said.

  “Math?” Aoi chuckled. “I’ll go let him know he’s in the wrong line of work.”

  “Ok,” Mira said. “Will, Rowland, Dot, and Jeremy, go with her on this near side. Vern, Roselyn, Mary, Chucky, and I will approach the back of the house, and the rest go around on the far side. Stick together, be careful, and don’t wait to find out what they’ll do to you.”

  Everyone nodded and the groups split up. A few struggled to catch up with Aoi who raced along the tree line, jumping in as soon as she heard a noise.

  Mira and her group left the safety of the trees to approach the gaping hole Fortst had left, but she had to continuously look back and urge the third group along. Taking her precautions to heart, they tiptoed around to the far side.

  Running through the garden toward the house, something hit Chucky in the shoulder, knocking him to the side. Another plop hit the ground just near them.

  “There’s someone on the roof,” Mary said.

  “I think it was a shingle,” Chucky said, holding his shoulder.

  “I got him,” Vern said. Stepping forward, he motioned to the man standing on the roof. Sidestepping the shingles he flung, Vern tried to pull him down. The man on the roof jerked forward, slid down in an avalanche of shingles, and dropped onto the ground. He crawled through the shattered glass door and disappeared within the house.

  ***

  Aoi had expected to see some superhuman monster, but instead she saw only a man hiding behind a tree. He saw her too, but he didn’t withdraw his face. She could even see that he had brown eyes.

  “You should’ve stayed in school,” she taunted. He stepped out from behind the tree, and Aoi could see a yellow insignia that looked like a sun and a cloud on his black uniform. Not wanting to waste too much time on this weakling, Aoi charged at him and swung for his face. He leaned back about two inches and Aoi’s punch missed him completely. Her fist passed across his face and carried her off to the side.

  Angry that she had missed, she threw another punch at his stomach, but he slapped it away. Again and again, she tried to punch him, but he moved just far enough out of the way to avoid it. Growling, she grabbed a large branch that lay on the ground and swung it at him. He hopped in between the fork in the branches.

  Aoi spun and kicked at him, but he curled around the kick and sent the heel of his foot behind her other knee, knocking her to the ground. But before she could complain that this was the second time she had fallen today, she felt his hands twist her ankle and his foot press into her throat.

  She tried to yell for help, but little came out. She struggled to breath through her nose with her face smushed into the ground. She felt something crawl on her hip and cringed. A hairy wood spider crawled over her onto the man’s side and skittered up near his shoulder. As soon as it hit the skin on his neck, it took a big bite. The man screamed and Aoi got out from under him. She kicked him while he writhed on the ground, sending him rolling down the hill.

  Aoi saw Jeremy’s patronizing look when she emerged from the forest and stuck her tongue out at him. They snuck through the narrow area along the side of the house. Looking quickly through the window, they couldn’t see anything. Rowland peeked around the side, and he could see two enemies standing in the road and one on the porch.

  “Is that guy holding a wheel?” he whispered.

  “I think he is,” Will said, craning his neck. “Dummy thinks he’s driving a boat or something.”

  Aoi yanked on their clothes and pulled them back behind the side of the house.

  “Ok, this should be easy. How about Jeremy distracts them and then we all run out and stomp them?”

  Everyone consented, and soon moths and mosquitoes were fluttering around the enemies’ heads. Aoi and the others listened to the sound of clapping in the air.

  “Are you ready?” they said to each other, excited and smiling. Altogether, they poured out of their hiding place and hurled themselves onward with whoops and hollers. The man with the wheel in his hands, looking out from the front steps, watched them emerge onto the lawn. A mean-looking girl veered at him, and he twisted the wheel.

  In a second, all five of them dropped to the ground and took all manner of strange positions as they tried desperately and unsuccessfully to get to their feet. Their war cries turned into painful moans. The drop of liquid that everyone has in their eardrum, which gives a sense of which way is up and which way is down, swished about frantically. The man with the wheel looked down at them. His victims were dizzy to the point of complete ineptitude.

  “Tie them up,” he said.

  ***

  Back behind the house, Mira approached the sliding glass door with a despair she never thought she would experience upon entering her own home. The light of a full moon and a twinkling array of stars helped them look inside, but the place looked trashed and vacant. The shelves had been emptied onto the floor with broken glass and dishware. Mira didn’t want to go inside. Seeing her home like this caused such deep pain. She was about to swallow her fear and step through when a sudden crash came from her right.

  A man flew through what had been the bathroom window, clearing the house by several feet, and smacked into the ground. He quickly flipped to his feet, turned, and saw the group about to enter. Mira knew it when he recognized her, and something ugly and vicious came over him.

  He ran at her, and she backed up, thinking a little shock would not deter him. He fell forward over his feet, however, as Vern pulled him in, and then Chucky stepped in to put all of his weight behind a crushing blow that landed as the intruder’s momentum turned him right-side up. The girls cringed at the impact and looked away, but the sound of the body dropping onto the ground penetrated their ears.

  “He’s sleeping,” Chucky reassured them, and he entered the house with Vern. The girls followed them in to the sound of thumping through the ceiling. They tiptoed around the wall, decorations and pieces of broken furniture strewn about on the floor. Mira noticed the door to the basement had been shut, and she tried to remember if she had shut it or not.

  Chucky led the way, with a surge of adrenaline. Just as he turned to go up the stairs, a large and brutish figure popped out, causing Chucky to stumble back and smear oil all over the wall as he tried to regain his balance.

  “Looks like they’re cooking something up here,” Fortst said, waving them on. “Let’s hurry.”

  They all sighed with relief at the familiar face. The sound of thumping and scraping came from above, and Mira fretted about what state she would find her parents in.

  ***

  Outside, things seemed even worse.

  “She keeps breaking through the rope,” a deep voice said.

  “You have the worst rope…I’ve ever seen!” Aoi gurgled.

  “We didn’t come for hostages anyway,” the man with the wheel said. He set it down on the ground and removed a long knife from his waistband.

  “No!” Will yelled, before collapsing back against the ground. He blew wildly with no effect but to further disorient his peers. A colossal swarm of insects similarly performed a bizarre and unhelpful dance in the distance.

  The man kicked Aoi flat to the ground and then raised his knife to stab her. His teeth gritted, a rock struck the side of his face, forcing him to stumble to the side. Dot’s arm swabbed the ground for another stone to throw. Holding a smaller one in her hand, she threw it and hit his temple.

  At that moment, the other group raced from the other side of the house behind a wave of hollering.

  “That one! That one!” those languishing on the ground ordered, and Dennis grappled the man with the knife from behind as the others attacked his comrades. Dennis over-extended his enemy’s elbow joint, causing him to fling the kn
ife down. Rowland, managing to get a hold of it, turned the blade into a smooth round ball. Others in black uniforms with suns and clouds on them came from the roof, the forest, and through the front door of the house. As they wrestled and fought, those on the ground slowly regained their senses. Though they fought clumsily, the students managed to make it an even fight with their numerical advantage.

  They battled back and forth, an intruder would throw off one student only to have two more jump on him. They fought with their gifts as much as with their hands. Icicles grew from under the arms of one man. He hurled them at Dennis, but they turned to slush by the time they splashed against his chest. Aoi tore the wooden pillars from the porch railing and launched them at her combatants until someone dropped down on her from the roof. Will blew him off balance and then Aoi threw him into the side of the house.

  Together, the students piled their opponents in the center of the lawn, and Jeremy imprisoned them within a thick wall of swirling insects. Aoi wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and saw she was bleeding. The others looked beaten up as well, but no one complained of anything too serious.

  They looked at the front door, left wide open, and the dim light that trickled through. The light from the moon shone down on the second floor windows, and they could see one window covered from the inside by a thick white mist.

  ***

  Fortst and the students behind crept silently up the stairs. The thumping sounded more like hacking, and they could hear the floorboards creaking under the weight of footsteps. At the top of the stairs, Mira peeked down the hallway to her parents’ room. The door had been ripped from its hinges but a dense cloud filled the doorway completely.

  The sound came from the study at the end of the hall, which shared a wall with the master bedroom. They crept past Mira’s own room, which had been trashed much like the living room below. Fortst stopped and turned back to the students. Without saying a word, he signaled that he would make a charge. He pointed to Mary and then the study. She nodded and held up two fingers. He turned and signaled to Vern and Chucky to follow him in and for Roselyn to watch for anyone escaping into the hallway.