The Gifted

Gifted

Crashing. Falling. Landing. Everything was so hectic to me. First I bump into a woman with a serious hothead (literally) and then I'm roasting her and her daughter in a warehouse full of oil and gas and other highly flammable, highly explosive materials. The concussion blast alone should have killed me from where I was standing, let alone the heat. I guess death just doesn't like me today. After roasting the first two elementals, I'm now on the run from the other two. Enter, the Father and the Son. Neither of them are holy, unfortunately. After saying all of this, I should probably back up a little bit. About 5 years ago, a rift opened up in the Atlantic. A bottomless waterfall, radiating light. A day after it opened, the first Gifted appeared. A man with power over the Earth itself, who brought down half a city. Since then, more and more ordinary people go to sleep normal one day and wake up the next to find that they have extraordinary gifts. The most powerful of the Gifted, are those who can control the 4 primary elements. Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. I know, it sounds a lot like Airbender. the only difference between that and the real world, is that it's more modern, and these powers are way more dangerous. As in, your 8 year old kid burning down your house because your lighter won't work. Either way, the Gifted appeared. Gifted like the family that's after my guts. They were after me because I was walking on the same side of the street as them, and as I was walking by them, I tripped very athletically and fell straight into the middle of them, and because they were Gifted, they thought themselves better than everybody else. There were many Gifted who thought like this, splitting the population in half about it. Then you have the Elementals. Gifted who (for the most part) believed themselves to be literal gods. This was a family of such Elemental Gifted. There were 4 of them. A classic family setup, with a mother, father, son and daughter. Except the mother could control fire, the daughter could control air, and the father could control water. Now you'd think that the son would control earth right? Wrong. He controlled lightning. I did mention that I roasted two of them so I guess I'll explain that part. For some reason, the family split off into pairs to chase better, and I ended up running into a warehouse filled with the afore-mentioned explosives. The daughter got greedy with trying to make mini tornadoes indoors while in competition with Mrs. Hothead, who was trying (and succeeding) to fry off my eyebrows. Turns out, all I had to do was add some extra fuel and both the mother and the daughter either went up in flames or ran out of air. I'm not sure which, since I didn't stick around to find out. At this point you may be wondering why I keep calling this family "the mother, the daughter, the father, and the son" (again, none of them are holy). I have no idea what their names are. All I know is that they want my head on their wall. Or at least, the guys do, seeing as how the girls are now out of the equation. Fast forwards to the present, and I'm getting tag teamed by the father and the son. Tag teamed? More like they think I deserve my own hurricane with enough lightning to make Zeus himself jealous. Very, very jealous. They ended up herding me down an alley, and a few turns later, a bolt of lightning came streaking out of the sky to strike a dumpster off to the side, sending me flying through the wall. Not entirely sure on how that one happened. Brick and plaster came tumbling down around me, and I found myself on my back in a staircase. I could hear someone running down the alley towards me, shouting "I hit him father! He went through the wall!" In reply, I heard a louder and much, much deeper voice say "Then stop lollygagging and get after him." I can already foresee amazing endings from being caught (not) so I got up and started running up the stairs. I burst through the door at the top and on to the roof, only to find the father waiting for me, with a hurricane above me letting lose a torrential downpour. Despite the volume of it, I could hear the father clearly when he called out and said "I would have let you live for your arrogance in forcing your way through my family, but after the deaths of my wife and daughter, I cannot allow your insufferable life to carry on any longer. My condolences." Water swirled around me, and I felt myself being lifted off of the roof. I looked over to the father and saw that he had become very shimmery. Almost ethereal. I guess because he could control water, he can become water as well. That's not important. What's important is that I was getting buffeted around on a roof top by an elemental, who was clearly mental. I stopped getting thrown around by the water, and i was confused as to why until I got thrown sideways. Over the edge. By now, we have caught up to the present time. Crashing. Falling. Landing. Crashing through the roof of an abandoned building, falling into the building, landing on the floor. I have no idea how I'm still even functioning, let alone alive. As I lay there, I felt every hair on my body stand up straight. Lightning strike. I rolled to the side and noticed that the abandoned building i fell into was a theater. Or at least, it used to be. The lightning bolt did in fact strike exactly where I had fallen, but lucky me, I only got hit by a small tendril of lightning that split off from the main bolt and hit me square in the chest, blasting me off of the the theater stage and into the orchestra pit. I got up just in time to see the son land where I had landed, except he did it much more gracefully than I did, landing on his feet instead of his back.  "Nowhere to run" I heard him say. I couldn't really go anywhere, and it's not like I had any weapons to defend myself, so I did the smart thing. I stood there like an oaf and waited. Here's a big shocker: the son moves really fast. As in, i saw him tense, and then he disappeared into a bolt of lightning, which streaked towards me. It kept coming at me, but as it got closer it formulated into the son, and he stopped right before he hit me, grabbing onto me instead. "Have you ever been hit by lightning?" he asked. His breath stank of sweat and bagels. Not a good combo. I thought that his question was stupid. "Of course" I said. "I've been hit by lightning repeatedly today, thanks to you. I must say, it's an outstanding way to keep the heart rate up." He apparently didn't take too kindly to that, because then he started screaming at me. "Your first mistake was wiping off your commoner filth on us! We are gods among men, and you are not fit to even look where we step foot!" While sparky was giving his most glorious speech (not) I realized that for one, there was no way I could talk my way out of this. Then again, I guess I crossed that line back at the warehouse. Number 2, I had absolutely no plan whatsoever. Go me. All at once, all of my problems were solved. And by solved, I mean they escalated very, very quickly. "You think you know power but you do not!" said the son. "I will show you true power!" His eyes flashed brilliant blue, and lightning started coursing through the roof and into his body, travelling through it like a power conduit, the lightning going into my body, making my muscles seize up. The pain was on a level like I had never experienced before. My mind, my thoughts, all retreated back into a hole in my mind i never knew existed. I was at peace, floating along in the darkness, only half aware of the pain and electricity. I opened my eyes to find myself standing on the top of a hill in the middle of a desolate wasteland, the wildlife gone. What was left was either dirt, or burned. As I looked closer, i started to notice the stench. I turned, and below me I saw bodies strewn about carelessly, like some tornado had come through. I realized after a few seconds that these bodies were children. I don't mean children between the ages of 5 and 6, i mean children among the ages of 13 to 18. Teens, but still children. I guess I could be considered a child as well. I heard a loud boom come from behind me, across the field. I turned to look but didn't see anything else other than the burned fields. All of a sudden, I heard a woman's voice echoing across the fields to me. 

Where the armies and legions have fought, They will pick a side.

Choose queen or slave, fight with winter's might.

Faces long forgotten will resurface.

Bound to the Chosen to service

Fire and Ice, Combatants

Until only Death has power.

Storm clouds formed unbelievably fast above me, and lightning shot across the sky, thunder booming afterwards. I saw more lightning streak across the clouds, but it didn't die away. Instead, it gathered, and grew, and got brighter and brighter by the second until it all exploded in a single bolt, heading straight for me. All I could do was stand there and gape until it hit me. This was nothing like sparky had ever done or could do. He didn't even comprehend power. This was true power. The lightning coursing through my body and into the ground, the ground cracking, and through a blue haze, I saw it even coming out of the fields around me, exploding back into the sky. The power was intense, and it hurt so much, I could barely scream with how much there was. Gradually, my vision died away, and I could hear a second scream as well as mine, except it was much more higher pitched. My eyes opened, and I was back in the abandoned theater, sparky's hands on my shoulders. One thing had changed though: I was getting shocked less and less, and it would appear that sparky was the one getting sparked. I'm sorry. Won't happen again. Either way, he was thrashing about, even though he was still standing up and also still had his grip on me. Problem was, at least for him, he had lightning shooting out of his eyes and mouth, his head tilted back. I'm pretty sure that he wasn't doing it on purpose, because his grip became nonexistent as he took a few steps backwards, arms out perpendicular to his body. He screamed and screamed, getting so loud until he hit a point where he couldn't scream anymore, though he was still shaking and emitting the lightning. There was a loud boom, and the light was gone immediately, his body falling to the floor, limp. Lightning came down through the hole in the roof of the theater, and struck his body for a full 5 seconds, before then blasting out of his body and, you guessed it, straight into my chest. Even in death, this dude was still trying to kill me. Like all of his other attempts though, it didn't work. In fact, instead of being blasted back, it just felt like getting sucker punched in the chest, and I ended up only taking two or three steps backwards. I stood up straight, and I felt, taller. Stronger too, more energized. I could hear the people outside, screaming. Screaming? Oh right. Aquaman was  still outside. How long have I been in the theater? I guess it didn't matter now. He was coming. I could hear him blast open the front doors of the theater and make his way through the entrance hall and lobby, his shoes making a loud clacking on the floor with ever step. Water started seeping through the doors at the other end of the theater, until a full force wave blasted the doors straight off of their hinges. The father strode in, looking regal, with his hands splayed out beside him, and his clothes billowing around him, though there was no wind. "I see my son has failed in his simple task" said the father. "I we both should have known better than to send him in alone. Or at least, I should have known better." He regarded me with utter contempt, not a trace of the pity I saw earlier. "For the death of my son, your death shall be slow and painful. I'm not sorry this time." With that, he rose on a pillar of water, well above my reach. His eyes flashed a deep green, and the water around us rose up, forming tidal waves that would envelop me and crush me. I had nowhere to run, and like with not-so-sparky, I had nothing to defend myself with. The tidal waves came crashing down, and I was swept up in the water.