The Core of Our Existance

Prologue

            The core of humanity. What is it? What part of our being makes it? I know what your thinking. What the hell am I asking? Well, it's very simple really. I'm talking about the core. Only a selective group of humans possess it. It gives them the ability to control, manifest, or connect with any, all, or part of the elements. None of us are born with it. We just grow into it. My name is Aurora. I was three when I grew into mine.
    My sister has one. Hers appeared before mine did. This is probably because she is two years older than me. Hers appeared when she was three, and I was one. Even though I was really young, I can still vaguely remember what happened.
    We just got a kitten. We had  named her Vanilla. I don't know why we named her that. I barely knew how to say my sisters name (Bethany), let alone Vanilla. I kept on calling my sister 'Besty,' and the cat 'Vinnla.' Though this was quite an accomplishment for a one year old.
    Me and Bethany were playing with our new pet, letting her chase a shoelace we found underneath the couch. It was Bethany's turn to use the lace. That's all she was doing when she literally transformed into an exact replica of Vanilla. Vanilla puffed up at the intruder that replaced her friend. I squealed in delight at the new trick my sister did. She had the core for land animals.
    We had a bestfriend that lived next door. Her name was Venus. She was the same age as me. She was like part of the family. We have known each other since we were born. Her birthday was two months before mine (ok, so maybe just known each other since I was born). It turns out she has a core too. She discovered it two weeks before my third birthday.
    This story also involves Vanilla (That poor cat must have gotten really confused). Me and Venus were playing with Vanilla. Nothing exciting… Until Vanilla went screeching down the hall, soaked from head to tail in water. Water that magically appeared out of nowhere. Venus had the core for the element water. I mean she could literally make water appear out of nowhere, she could control it, she could also pull it out of humid air. Her core became useful for many situations.
    Mine appeared four months after I turned three. Me and my dad were playing our favorite game of tag in the back yard. My Mom was sitting on the back porch teaching my sister how to play checkers. Even though I was only three, I will never forget every detail of that day. It was a cool spring day, but I was feeling unusually warm. We were playing around the big oak in our backyard. I even remember the familiar musk of cologne I could smell from my father.
    I was it. I was running as fast as I could, trying to catch up to my dad to proudly tag him. As I was running, I could feel a heat building up in the center of me. I just ignored it. I thought it was probably just from running around. My dad was slowing down, letting me tag him. And that's what I did. I reached out for is arm and tagged him. He screamed.
    Almost instantly after I tagged him, I felt the heat in the center of me moving into his arm. I watched my dad's arm turn from a healthy tan to a sun burnt red, to a blistered deep red, to a crisp black. The stench of burning flesh met my nose, and I started screaming. I had no idea what had just happened, and my dad was hurt.
    It was a twelve hour wait in the hospital. The burning was so bad that it even damaged the center of the bone. That arm had to be removed. I still haven't forgiven myself. My dad forgave me almost as instantly as his arm burned. He was proud of his daughter to have a core.
    At first we thought I had a core for fire, but I could never keep fire under control. I could set things on fire, but only by focusing on the heat hidden within the object I wanted to set on fire. I am mostly able to control the heat of anything. Everything has some kind of heat in it. Everything except for ice and snow that is. Turns out I have a core for heat.
    On TV I have heard of a wide variety of cores. From transforming into animals of a certain element to controlling bits and pieces of an element, to controlling a whole element. I have personally met an ice core, and iron core, and a vine core. Though, through all of this core information, I have never heard of a heat core. This is a core that can potentially be part of all of the elements, and can have an unlimited variety of ways it can be used. The possibility of this kind of core was never even thought of. Throughout the years, I have excessively done research, trying to find evidence of another heat core. So far I have found nothing.
    For the next four years after I discovered my core, life was wonderful. The progression of my core was fast, and I learned a lot about it. I learned that I could increase the heat temperature of anything with heat to the point of it being vaporized. I could send heat from one object to another. I could even collect heat from multiple things and throw that heat like a ball. I also learned that I  seem very immune to anything related to heat. Like the fire I was stuck in in grade 1. That's not much of a story, but I survived saving the classroom hamster.
    Unfortunately, Bethany was not so fast at progressing her core. The only this she is was able to do was turn into Vanilla as Vanilla grew. Other than that she has been unable to turn into any other animal, no matter how hard she tried. She told me that she honestly has no idea how she was even able to turn into Vanilla, let alone another animal.
    On the fourth year after I discovered my core, the rebellion started. I was seven, my sister was nine. The rebel group must have been planning this whole thing for some time, because when the rebellion started, it was a very organized and destructive event. They had technology that I have never seen before.
    I remember me, Venus, and Bethany, sitting in the living room. Our parents were watching the news. Venus and her family were over for dinner, and we were just waiting for pizza to be delivered. I had Vanilla in my lap, stroking her silky long fur as she purred contently.
    Most of the things on the news were pretty normal. A robbery of store, the shooting in a town square. Just the regular violence crap. At around eight  o'clock, the weird reports starting coming.
    The reporters were just talking about this weird guy who wanted to run for president when a video feed disrupted them. It started with loud static.
    A person came on the screen. He/she had a mesh masking covering their face. The background was just a plain black shadow. The masked stranger stayed on the screen doing nothing for about a minute. Then came the threat.
    "There will be ashes. There will be death. We will prevail. She will lose."
    The video cut out, and the reporters were back on air, displaying their confusion. That's when we saw them get another report.
    "During the disruptive feed, there was a bombing in Washington DC. A school of a known 6000 students. No news on survivors, but it is suspected that there will be none. No visuals as of yet."
    This report was delivered with solemn faces. Later on that night, the unanticipated visuals were shown. It was clear that there was no possible way that there could be any survivors. The whole building was practically leveled out, leaving a shelled out crater were it once stood. The explosion was so powerful that chunks of the school damaged buildings in the surrounding block. I had just turned seven when this started.
    A month after that, there were reports of the rebels killing families and kidnapping the children. Turns out those kids had cores. It seemed the rebels were creating their own core collection.
    Then the world started seeing the frightening machines that the rebels concocted. Silver machines that warp around the victim decomposing all the tissues within minutes. Microchips that implant in the brain to dissolve it to mush. Even more machines that I had no idea what they were supposed to do.
    Even with all this rebel activity, normal lives were still possible. The rebels have only been active in certain states and countries. So far, our city has not been targeted. We figured our city wasn’t important enough to target.
    Two years passed after the rebellion started. Getting information from the nightly world news, we watched the progression of the destruction insured by the rebel group. They destroyed schools, they destroyed public places, they killed thousands of people. Their technology progressed with every attack, getting more frightening by the machine. They never did reveal why they are rebelling at this time. It just seemed like they were rebelling just to kill. This is when the world started finding out about me.
I was pretty good and making sure my core never made a public appearance. I promised myself I would never use it out in public, unless absolutely, positively necessary.  The only people who knew about my unusual core were my family and Venus’ family. That was it. Well, that was until some stupid idiots decided to try and hold my school hostage for ransom.
    Our school was a pretty boring school. I have no idea why those jerks had an interest in our school. It was full of kids, and full of teachers, and full of school things. Ew. Anyway, they must have been pretty dangerous, because they attracted not just a swarm of police cars, but also some SWAT and some military. I think some FBI was even involved somewhere in the mix. Obviously, later on I found out that they were prison escapees.
To make a long story short, them breaking into our school resulted into a failed lock down and all the people in the school herded into the gymnasium. This resulted in one of the jerks (I am going to refer to them as jerks and asses) getting pissed off at a persistent teacher, thus resulting in us finding out that this ass had the core for iron. Must have been a fairly strong core too, because the jerk pulled an X-Men and killed the teacher by stripping the iron from the teacher's blood. Believe me, the movie very much sugar coated the gore.
This is when I knew I had to take action. At first I was to scared to do anything. I really did not want to follow that teacher to a gruesome end. So I did nothing. Until the idiots (jerks, asses,  whatever) decided to use Venus as a bargaining piece. They had a gun pointing at her head, facing a window for the cops to see. The jerks were not winning the auction, and were starting to get threatening. Getting no where, they cocked the gun. Huge mistake.
     I freaked. I ran up to the one with the gun and kicked him were he felt it. He dropped the gun and fell to the ground. Another jerk decided to point his gun at me. That's when I used my core. I focused on all of the heat in his body and started raising it. At first he just started sweating. Then he started turning red. He dropped his gun, breathing heavily and whimpering. When the first few blisters appeared and he started screaming, I stopped. I may have been mad, and he may of been a jerk, but I did not want to kill him. The cops did the rest, though they did keep their distance from me.
This incident boosted my popularity in school, and with the reporters. I expected this, because my core was something that was never seen before. Than a scientist came. She never told me her name, but she looked young, with long brown hair and unmistakable bright blue eyes. Her voice was warm comforting too. She questioned me about my core, and I told her about it. I even showed her a few things that I could do. I liked her.
Despite all of this, the publication of my core caused some future problems. Our lives were still fairly peaceful, up until I turned 13. That's when the rebels started attacking our city.
I knew many cores in my school. There were about ten, including me, my sister, and Venus. We didn't know all of them personally, but we heard about what they could do. One of them was the vine core. I have spoken to her on many occasions. Her name was Sarah. She was shy and kind. She was very likable. She was the first one to be kidnapped, and her family killed.
It didn't stop there. The others were taken, one by one. No one would do anything about it. No one would help. Everyone was too scared that it would be them next. There was nowhere to run, no place to hide.
One of the last ones to stay, he was an ice core. His name was Mystigen. After all the others were taken, we stuck together. Me, Mystigen, Venus, and Bethany. We have come to know Mystigen as a friend. He had chin length, tousled black hair. His eyes were an icy blue, to match his core. He was a fun loving jokester. We fought like we were siblings. And, yes, I had a tween crush on him. (Can't blame me. He was hot, and every girl in our school knew it.)
He was the guy I had my first kiss with. He was taken the next day. We were crushed about it. He became almost part of the group.
Our families came next. They even attacked both our families on the same day. I remember it well.
Me and Bethany were out in the backyard. I was doing homework, she was reading. We tried to ignore the fact that our lives that we love will possibly be changed forever. No matter what we did. No one would help, and if we ran, we would put others in danger. Our families are going to die. We are going to be victims of the rebels. Our friends were taken by them. No one will help us. We were sitting ducks. I tried really hard to ignore this.
I was subtracting 108 from 375 when we heard it begin. There was a bang. A scream. Than a burst. It was coming from the direction of Venus’ house. Over the fence we saw her house, her house burning. We saw her parents, in the living room window, burning. I couldn't see Venus.
Despite the fact that I knew this was going to happen, I panicked. “Mom, Dad!” I screamed at Bethany. We had to go and try to save them. We had too. She looked at me, and we shared an understanding. We ran to the house.
I reached for the back door handle, and was thrown backwards into Bethany. Our house exploded. Along with our parents. There was no way they could of survived that. Bethany had to hold me back as I struggled and screamed.
They started swarming into the backyard. These people in black, blue and red combat suits. They had these guns with weird icy blue glowing orbs lined up on the bottom of them.
One of the intruders shot one of the guns at us. These guns sucked, like really sucked. It was intensely easy to dodge out of the way of the strange gun and its ammunition. They shot at us… no, me, with the pathetic gun. One of the strange objects inside the gun case at me and landed on the ground as I dodged it. It was a glowy blue orb thingy inside of a silver disk. That's the best I could explain it. If I weren't so fucking angry, sad and scared at the same time, I would of probably laughed at them. What was the point on having guns that didn't work very well?
When the guns failed, they started closing in on us. I guess these guys really did not know what our cores were, or they were misinformed, but it was really easy to take them down. It took everything I had not to kill them. Though I am not denying the fact that they may die later.
That was four years ago. Now me and Bethany are still on the run.