Future

Chapter 1: Wake

"Well if Sparkly here could do anything useful..." My hands were really huge. Like massive. Which was kinda weird. Why the hell were they so large? I stared at my hands, trying to remember anything about them. Anything at all would be helpful here. Anything that could help me figure out why they were each big enough to carry, like, 12 kittens.

"Pipe! Maybe he can! You don't know that!" The longer I stared at my hands, the brighter they appeared, like when you stare at something dark then stare at a blank wall. An optical illusion, made by your brain being lazy and subbing in colors it's not actually seeing. Except every time I looked away, then looked back, my hands got brighter. I rubbed my eyes. Compared them to the skin on my ankles. (I was wearing lightning-patterned combat boots, and leggings. And a skirt. Apparently I was a fashionable dude.) I turned to Holli and Pipe.

"Uh, guys?" I asked, holding up my freakishly large, freakishly glowing hands.

"Holy sh-"

"Quick! Press them to your head! It means you're about to have an important vision!" Holli cried excitedly. I did as she said, even though she sounded like she was spouting off nonsense (vision?? what??) and suddenly the world exploded with light and sound.

A tall, out-of-shape (to put it nicely) man in a navy, official-looking uniform strolled authoritatively down the hall. His footsteps echoed, and keys jangled at his hip. He was carrying a tray with food on it. Mystery meat and watery eggs. Yum. He walked to the very end of the hall, unlocking the door at the end. He had to go through three different keys to unlock each layer of security, then do a face scan and type a passcode.

"Here ya go, freak," He yelled, tossing the tray into the cell. "Enjoy!" He cackled cruelly, then paused, waiting for a smart-ass remark that he would un-wittily reply to and then think he was so clever. No such remark came.

"Freak?" His voice echoed into the dark corners of the cell, to no reply. He stepped into the cell, searching the shadows. Leaving the back of his head unattended. A dirty, blue-haired boy swept up behind him, pressing a finger to the man's throat. A terrified croaking noise escaped his mouth.

"Beg," The boy demanded.

"Please! I have a family! A daughter-- I promised I'd attend her performance! She's a sugar plum fairy, please, I can't leave her without a father!" He cried.

"Should've thought about her before you kept me in the literal dark, fed me shit, and called me 'freak'," The boy growled, drawing his finger across the man's throat, and, with no visible blade, snipped his jugular. The boy then strode confidently out of his cell, his face twisted into what appeared to be a smile, and wiping the man's blood on his legs of his orange prison uniform. Cell doors flew open as he passed.

I woke up gasping and shaking, and in Holli's arms. Her skin was surprisingly soft. I wasn't sure how to feel about this.

"What did you see?" Pipe demanded. I described the terrifying scene to her. It was confusing to me. The man was cruel, but then, so was the boy. It's like you didn't know who the good guys and the bad guys were.

"Oh, hell yes!" Holli cheered. She and Pipe high-fived triumphantly, definitely not the reaction I had been expecting.

"Um, what?" I asked.

"He's one of our fighters! And since you predict the future, well, it means he's comin' to bust us out!" Pipe cheered.

"Yeah, but he killed that guy. With his bare hands. A guy on his way to his kid's performance. A kid who's now without a father. What kind of things are you fighting for?" I challenged. Holli and Pipe looked at each other, a shared glance that conveyed hours of argument on my behalf.

"I told you his strong morals would be an issue," Pipe hissed.

"Shut up! He'll be perfect once he sees the kind of shit the other guys pull!" Holli protested.

"I'm literally right here," I interrupted. Pipe turned to me with a pleasant, I'm-going-to-tell-you-that-Santa-doesn't-exist look.

"Kid. Sparkly. Honey. This is a fucking war. We do what we have to," She sighed. "Yes, we've murdered dads and stuff. But they've murdered entire families. Babies. My baby sibling. My friends. We don't kill anyone unless it's necessary. They kill us for no reason other than that we're different from them." Pipe turned, huffing and running her hands through her hair. It was clear thinking about these kinds of things frustrated her.

"This isn't a perfect world, Spark. People die. They started this war, and we've got to finish it. We can't just sit back and watch them exterminate us" Pipe finished her speech.

"Fine," I sighed, "But you can't ask me to kill anyone. And I can't say I'll just be quiet every time you kill someone."

"Deal," Pipe and I shook hands. She squeezed my hand so hard that I thought she was going to snap some of my freakishly large finger bones.

"What now?" I asked, pretending the hostile handshake hadn't happened.

"We wait until Kail busts us out," Pipe said.

"Kail, like, the vegetable?" I piped up. The two ignored my perfectly valid question.

"Know any good jokes?" Holli sighed, sitting down. She started braiding one of her long, pink pigtails.

"Knock, knock-" I began, but Pipe cut me off.

"Not you. I can already tell your jokes are going to be bullshit." Ouch.