lethal //phan

t e n

It was Joe's loud chatter that broke the silence, Dan only knew of him through people talking about the stupid pranks he'd pull. He was rather immature but somehow for him it worked.

"Are you ever quiet?" called out a person a few tables away. The voice belonged to a student named Alfie. Dan couldn't stand him, the fact he even had friends seemed an unbelievable concept to him. Whatever the reason was for all the attention he got, he had allowed it to go straight to his head.

"I'm quieter than your mum was last night!" he yelled back, the responses making everyone around him laugh.

"Childish." Zoe muttered.

"You can say what you like about my mum but she didn't give birth to two auxiliums like yours did, now run along aufero."

Dan turned to see Joe and Zoe turn away, obviously upset.

He considered that to be a step too far even by his standards. From under the desk he clapped his hands, but lightly to avoid making a noise. There was now a moderately large sized rain cloud sat in his hands, around the width of Alfie's body. He used his hands to move it up towards the ceiling, people were too occupied comforting the Joe and Zoe to notice.

It was now suspended a few metres directly above Alfie's head. He clapped again and water poured through it, the torrential downpour soaking Alfie from head to toe.

Dan then stamped his foot, the ground underneath Alfie's seat shook, causing the chair and the body on it to fall to the floor. Alfie looked like a toddler mid-tantrum more than anything. He was covered in water, sat on the floor, glaring up at everyone angrily.

Everyone looked at Phil. He was thankful they didn't think it was him.

"It wasn't me, I can't do that, I can only control and move things around, not create them like just then." Phil said, and turned his head to Dan with a confused look, everyone else then turned to him.

"What? I'm not a total ass you know."

He decided to ignore the reply made by PJ under his breath, somewhere along the lines of "you could have fooled me."

It was hardly unexpected that PJ disliked him.

"Joe, Zoe: Phil wants to know what Alfie was calling you." hollered PJ.

"Subtlety, PJ!"

"Aw, his mood's gone orange."

"You're both very invasive." Phil uttered through laughter in a futile attempt to sound serious.

"Well, Alfie called us auxiliums. Auxiliums are people who possess abilities to assist, change or take away someone else's power; they're common in lower generations. Aufero means remove, the power I have is to take away someone else's power." Joe began to explain.

"I'm known as an invorto. Translated it means 'change', I can temporarily or permanently switch people's powers around so they have each other's. It came as a surprise to my parents when my dad could make himself invisible and my mum could fly.
Our powers are sixth, maybe seventh generation so I guess we're unlucky in the sense that this is the ability we're stuck with." Zoe added straight on queue. "You do know they get shittier the further down the line you are, right?"

"So in reality it's what we are, but it's not a nice way to put it. The words are just labels that mock us for contributing to other people's powers and not having our own unique ability - I suppose it's a type of slur, they're not really used to describe us anymore."

"So, it's like 'mudblood' in Harry Potter? Obviously, it means something different but it's used by snobs as a way to make themselves superior when they're not?"

"Essentially, yes."

The conversation after that was predictable: the reassurance that "you and your powers are still important.", "we love you no matter what power you have." and Dan's contribution of "Alfie's a twat."

When the class had finished Phil came up to Dan. He knew what it'd be about, it was a repeat of what happened the last time he decided to do a good thing. Being honest seemed to be the better option, Phil wasn't stupid and Dan was an awful liar.

"Why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"What you did to Alfie in class."

"Because we all know what it feels like to be an outsider, so I'd never allow someone to force another to relive what they'd sooner forget."