by Brian Cody
“What are you doing?” drove David to spin. He inhaled and thrust his right hand for his mouse, but his gaze, once widened and manic, diminished, and his shoulders, once arching, sank. Bryen stood across from him, rigid and with shoulders locked in ninety-degree angles. Bryen’s expression was blank but insouciant as he stood beside his desk; his mouth was a straight line, and his eyelids squinted to cover a third of his gaze. His eyes turned from side to side, stopping at the edges of his eyeglass frames and scanning the room, while David looked on.
“You’re really good at sneaking up on people”, David stated, breaking that silence and giving an uneven smirk.
“So…” Bryen replied, his eyes glancing left and right as he remained in place, “what are you doing?”
“What’s your mom doing!?” David grunted.
“Sleeping, I guess… She usually wakes up early for church”, Bryen remarked.
“…Cool!” David barked, his right hand slinking over the lid of his computer and then slamming it shut. “I’ve got one more day before classes start, and I’d like to use that day to prepare”, David explained as he stood. “I’m heading to bed, and I suggest you do the same!”
“…Sure”, Bryen replied as he sat at his desk and opened his laptop.
“Yeah! ‘Sure’ is right!” David replied as he pulled back the covers to his bed.
***
A square of blue light reflected off of the ceiling over Nate’s head. He held his phone in his left as he reclined along his loft, eying the time—3:00 a.m.—before lowering it to his side. He hoisted himself to sit and bowed to avoid scraping his hair along the ceiling. Then, he looked to the top bunk and to Darren, who rested in an unmoving somnolence while facing the wall. Nate listened to Darren before picking up a wave of inhalations which ensured that he was, more than likely, in a deep sleep. With a quiet and smooth kneel, Nate rose to his feet, rearing forward and then crawling to the foot of his bed before leaping over the edge and descending the five, haphazard prongs perpendicular to his desk at his room’s far corner. He stopped again as he detected motion from the bottom bunk, and from Shawn; however, he watched as his second roommate also turned to face the wall. Nate then waited for the next minute, not moving and steadying his breaths. Then, suggesting that Shawn, too, was more than likely in a deep sleep, Nate backed away, slinked towards his closet, and reached for its back wall.
The door to Room 107 was then opened, with the white glow from the dimmed hallway lights leaking into the room before Nate stepped out in a black, zipper-less hoodie, black and white basketball shorts, and grey sneakers covered in tears and blotches of orange clay. With a seconds-long pull, he closed the door, producing no audible sounds as he released the knob and backed away. He looked left and then right, searching the hall for discernible activity—the visible motions or the detectable sounds of nocturnal students within their rooms, the bathrooms, or the far sides of the hallway. He remained for several minutes, listening and glancing to the most miniscule of soundings, the distant ruffles of a student unpacking along the right side of the hall and the clatter of a shower in the farthest bathroom fifty feet off. Nate then sighed, reached into his hoodie’s pocket, and pulled out his phone to catch the time—3:10 a.m.—before returning it and starting towards the back entrance.
Another five minutes passed, and Nate found himself one hundred yards east of his dorm, descending a stairway that stopped alongside of the road leading to campus’s center. He knelt along the grassy slope, his darkened silhouette unmoving and unnoticed as one of the campus patrol cars—a Dodge Charger that Nate had reasoned accounted for a decent portion of his tuition—glided past. Nate inhaled, angled into a runner’s start, exhaled, and pushed off. After bolting downhill, he crossed the road with blurring speed, rushing over the two lanes and between parked cars, and then bounding into the trees sitting beside the highway between main campus and the eastern line of dorms. He dashed through the trees, leaping over a fallen branch, sliding down another slope, and stopping alongside of the highway. He glanced down both sides of the road and, for that moment, found no vehicles in view. He recommenced his race, darting easterly as he crossed the first two lanes, bolted across the median, and passed the second two. He leapt, clearing twelve feet before latching onto the stone wall lining the highway. He pushed off, clearing the remaining gap, flipping, and then landing in a kneel alongside of a two-lane road beside the four-story eastern dormitories. Nate caught his breath for the next ten seconds, looked down the road to find it empty, and started into a third race.
He crossed that road and rushed alongside of a near-vacant parking lot. He blinked and found himself passing a space between two dorms. He blinked again and found himself running uphill towards the edge of the mountainside’s forested slope. He inhaled, tightened, and sprinted past twenty miles per hour, then thirty, forty, and fifty. He maintained that pace as he moved uphill, and, every few moments, bounded over a stone, a fallen tree, or a small indent. Five minutes passed of his alacritous race, his breaths level as he crossed the mountaintop and descended it. Finding a clutter of trees denser than the surrounding straits, he knelt, lunged fifteen feet, landed atop a branch, and jumped down to a flattened space, barren and at the nadir of a crater-like formation.
Nate reared up and looked around, searching the tree line for signs of disturbance or discovery, and finding none. He cracked his knuckles and turned to his left, where he found an unearthed boulder with a flattened face ten feet in diameter. Cut into the boulder were concentric circles, and, in the centermost circle were the overlapping indents marking where the bulls-eye was located. He then looked to the opposite side of the clearing where he found a glass-less, indented, and malleated four-door sedan.
“Okay”, he muttered as he started to stretch his right arm, but stopped as he felt a sharp burn in the top of his shoulder. “D*** it, stupid Mustang”, he grunted before lowering his arm. He leapt, catching a branch ten feet above the ground. He felt another sting as he held the branch, but held his breath to ignore the burn and to complete thirty pull-ups before his pain caused him to drop. He then lay on his back to initiate a set of sit-ups, performing fifty, jumping to his feet, and then turning to the vehicle. After catching his breath, he squeezed his fists, with an ambient glow forming around his fingers which erupted into a blazing yellow-blue radiance of bolts. He tightened his grip, and the sporadic energies condensed into a blinding, spherical aura. He wound back both arms, stepped, and thrust, with the concentrations striking the vehicle.
Nate pulled back his right, and, in a groaning tear, the driver’s side door was ripped from its base and dragged through the air before hovering over his head. He then outstretched both arms and pushed them together, magnetically folding the piece of metal and upholstery in half. He wound his arms and motioned his fingers, condensing, folding, and then angling the door into a yard-long and foot-wide single-edge blade. Nate then tightened his right fist and jabbed. The makeshift blade, in turn, bulleted into a tree. Finding about half of its length having pierced the wooden strait, Nate grinned and fired an electric surge that struck the blade and then exploded, with the surrounding trunk being pulverized and the tree being felled.
“Very nice.” He grabbed his phone to check the time—3:35—returned it, cracked his knuckles, and looked for his next conditioning act. Another hour passed, with a dozen flashes of light and half a dozen blasts echoing through the mountainside. Gasping and kneeling to rest, Nate looked to the rock where his target had been drawn. His bulls-eye, by then, was a heated gape, half a foot in width and glowing a deep orange. His hands were numb, his body sore, and, as he reared up, Nate found his right shoulder irradiating an added burn.
“That should do.” He turned towards Igneous’s campus. Then, he knelt, spread his legs, and positioned himself into a runner’s stance. “Three…two…one_”—he pushed off, with his first footstep drilling into the ground. He thrust his left leg for a second bound, but, before he could further his sprint, he
felt an anomaly—pain along his left side. As Nate looked on, he moved rightward by a force vigorous enough to overwhelm his forward motion and to blur his surroundings. He inhaled, closed his eyes, and opened them, with the wind, the scrape of passing branches, and then the tenebrosity being registered as he moved through the air and then impacted. He bounced and rolled for one hundred feet before he smacked, back-first, into the bottom of a tree and hit the ground.
Nate dragged his arms to hoist himself, with his form engulfed in a light burn that brought with it a delay in motion. He squinted at the ground, with the leaves blurring and fading as he struggled to concentrate. After several moments, he dragged himself to his knees, rose as a gust echoed in his ears, and stood as tearing leaves sounded overhead. Nate blinked, and a stomp tremored in front of him. He opened his eyes and found a crater in the forest floor, but he, instead concentrated on the occupant kneeling within it, a man just under six feet dressed in green and yellow basketball shorts and a black short-sleeved shirt. Nate’s eyes widened as that man reared up and stepped, and Nate’s mouth fell as the man exhaled in a shoulder-lowering gasp, his honey-colored eyes squinting as he squeezed his fists.
“Piekarsky!?” Nate gasped as he lifted his arms. David was silent, his fists tightening, and his visage staid as he stepped. “Is that you?” Nate asked as he lifted his hands, “Am I dreaming…or…having a nightmare? I’m having a nightmare, aren’t I? Because I’m pretty sure you just flew_”
“Oh, ho, ho”, David coughed as he stopped. “Now you’re acting surprised, right?” he asked as he crossed his arms.
“…What?” Nate grunted as he stepped back.
“I finally figured it out, Klinge!” David bellowed as he uncrossed his arms and thrust his right pointer, “why you’ve been such a freakin’ jerk to me for the last two years!”
“This is a nightmare”, Nate remarked.
“You’ve been trying to piss me off!”
“…What?” Nate grunted as he lowered his arms.
“You were sent here, to this college, and you followed me, you followed me to Dorm 10, all so you could do everything in your power to piss me off! You wanted me to ‘lose it’ and use my powers in public; then, you could tell your military friends that I used them without authorization, and for what, Klinge? All because I turned down some invitation to be the army’s new secret weapon!? You tell your bosses to shove it, and you also tell them that what happened on the bridge was necessary! I was saving people’s lives!”
“…What?” Nate repeated as he scratched the back of his head. “So…I think I’m missing something…”
“Bull crap! Let me guess, this is where you’ve been training? I became friends with you, and all this time, you’ve been preparing to beat the snot out of me when I refused to join the military! Do you want to kill me, Klinge?” David roared.
“O-kay, you’re confused”, Nate remarked. “I don’t know what’s going on, and I never thought about joining the military, but if you really want, I’ll fight you.” Nate shrugged while spreading his legs. “But I’m warning you: the strength difference is going to be a lot more dramatic since I’m not holding back, and let’s just say, it’s not in your fav_”—Nate gagged as he watched David, once thirty feet across from him, vanish, and, within the same moment, reappear three feet in front of him. Pull back; you’re still dazed! Nate stepped back, but then stopped. Pull back? For real? This isn’t a basketball game—the advantage is mine. He clasped his fists. He jabbed his right, but David tilted his head, evading the blow; he uppercut his left, but David reared back; he swung at his gut, but David turned to the side; he spiraled for a right backhand, but David ducked.
After three dozen evaded punches and swats, David sighed, pulled back his left, opened it, and thrust. His hand moved past Nate’s fists, bulleted towards Nate’s torso, and slapped into the center of Nate’s chest. As the air was forced out of his lungs, Nate seized. He inhaled, but, by the time he could regain full breath, he was launched across thirty feet and against another tree.
“All right, Klinge”, David called as Nate rolled to the ground. “Just because you’ve been my occasional workout partner, I’m going to give you the opportunity to get away with your life. Leave town and go tell your bosses I’m staying right here! I’m not doing whatever they want just because the government’s trying to muscle me into working for them! Understood!?” Nate pulled himself to his knees. “Well!?”
“F*** that”, Nate muttered as he looked down and cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry, I think—I think I just misheard you”, David humphed. “What was that you said?”
“F***…that”, Nate blared.
“Nathanael Klinge, you’d better watch your freakin’ language!” David growled.
“A**!” Nate howled.
“Klinge!” David darted for Nate, and Nate flung his arms. Nate blinked and found David a yard in front of him with his left fist pulled back; Nate tensed, and, as David swung for his chest, a sharp glow bled from Nate’s right hand, tightened, and then erupted as an electric blast that speared into David’s gut and launched him backwards for fifty feet. David spun as he hit the ground, his eyes closed as he held his breath, and his breaths short as he stopped.
“Most people aren’t even conscious after the first shock”, Nate remarked as he stood, “you’re pretty much unscathed though. That’s impressive, I’ll give you that, but it can also be changed.” Nate slammed his fists, summoning and circulating an electric blaze in his clasped hands. David opened his eyes after breathing, and, with a gradual but steady rise, returned to his feet. Nate spread his legs and wound back, and David started forward, first into a jog and then a superfast sprint. Nate flung both arms and fired a combined surge, and David was halted by an electric torrent. David, however, was unmoving, and, as the moments passed, he took his first step into the blaze, his second, and his third. He charged. Nate stepped back as his attack ballooned, and he started to strengthen his blast—then already strong enough to kill several dozen men—but, in a flash, David appeared once again, and as Nate watched him stand tall, he found his electricity diverted towards him.
Nate howled as the electricity surged through him, but that sharp burn was overwhelmed by a sharper pain as the sensation of cracking bark pulsed in his back and travelled up his spine. He bounced off of the trunk’s center, leaving a horizontal crater a foot in depth, and he slapped onto the ground and cradled his torso.
Across from him, still standing, David sighed. “Gosh, I’m freakin’ joking!” David called as he flailed his smoking arms, “I’m not going to kill you. Killing is wrong…and also…against the Igneous Way. If you leave me alone, I won’t keep wailing on you. Is that good enough?” Nate was silent as he remained on all fours. “Dude, are you out?” David asked. Nate lifted his left hand and closed all but his middle finger into a fist. “Okay, now you’re just trying to piss me off”, David remarked as he cracked his knuckles. He lifted his right arm and balled his hand. He stepped but was stopped.
David spun as he felt a constricting hold over his wrist. Wrapped around it in a half-inch deep concentration was a bleached-white line. David felt its coarse texture across his skin and the increase in its grip with each attempt he would make at freeing himself. He traced the shackle and found an extension of the same material stretching behind him in a tight, hanging rope. Even in that nocturnal span, David could recognize it—it looked like toilet paper, and it felt like toilet paper, but whereas toilet paper should’ve severed from the simplest of movements from most adult human’s arms, that line refused to tear or to even contort as he pulled and tugged with superhuman vigor. With a partial about-face to his right, David traced the paper line across eleven yards, to another’s grip, and past it, where it ended after wrapping around that other’s wrist.
That shape, human as David presumed, was, at that moment, kneeling; below the shape’s neck was a black outfit, perhaps, as it appeared from a distance, a black, long-sleeved tee shirt,
black sweatpants, and black sneakers. Atop that shape’s face, however, was a mask of crimson bars molded into rectangular form and bearing gaps between those bars. “Can I help you?” David asked as he tugged his right arm, while the shape, in turn, tugged to keep David in place.
“I’m only going to say this once”, the masked shape replied as he stood, the outline of his 5'7" body being recognizable to David. “There are people nearby, and it wouldn’t be too good for them if this fire started burning.”
“…What?” David humphed. “Do I know you?”
“Shawn?” Nate coughed as he dragged himself to his feet.
“Who?” the figure replied as he placed his left arm by his side.
“Albert!?” David gasped as he stepped towards the masked shape.
“False; you must have me mistaken for an acquaintance I am not familiar with”, the masked individual replied.
“No, that’s Shawn”, Nate sighed.
“Shut up, Nate!” the masked individual blasted.
“And how do you know my name?” Nate asked.
“Maybe I’ve seen you on Facebook before!” the masked individual retorted. “Heck, maybe we even have mutual friends!”
“That doesn’t make sense”, Nate remarked.
“You don’t make sense_!”
“Okay, bull crap!” David interjected. “Is my life a lie!? You’re both telling me that you were sent here to watch me? That everything that’s happened in the last two and a half years was set up so I could make some stupid mistake!?”
“What?” Shawn grunted as he lowered his right arm and tilted his head.
“Piekarsky, I don’t know if anyone’s told you this yet, but the world doesn’t revolve solely around you—your nose isn’t that big.”
“Klinge, you know what? I’m really starting to like the idea of almost killing you”, David remarked as he spun to Nate and lifted his arm, but was stopped, once more, as the paper line was tightened. “Shawn!” David grunted as he turned.
