The Zodiacs

11. Aharon of Aries

"This is absurd!" Aharon shot up from his spot against the cave wall, where they'd all been sitting in silence for the past couple of hours. Nobody was sure what to do from here.

Everyone turned up to look at him from their spots on the floor, following the dark-skinned boy walk around the room. His dreadlocks were pushed back along the top of his head and fell to his shoulders as he stomped aggressively around the put out fire in the center. By now, even he'd begun to get bothered by the presence of dirt, bugs, and heat all around them. The dust was rising up on his pants and it felt like bugs were crawling all along his exposed arms and down his black tank top.

Akil sighed, already aware of the scene that the boy was going to cause by the way he seemed to detest everything that they did ever since they left the capitol. Just like him, the others shifted uncomfortably at the building aggravation on the explosive boy.

"We're just going to sit around all day in this run-down cave like a bunch of homeless failures," he exclaimed, kicking one of the wooden sticks placed around the extinguished flame. "Are we going to just spend the rest of our lives here because we happened to be born better than everybody else? They should be afraid of us, not the other way around!"

Looking around the silent cave, Akil decided that he should be the one to answer considering they all knew him better. He was the one who took them out of their homes in a rush to save their lives. "What do you want to do then...?"

"Aharon," the boy finished his sentence. "Aharon of the Aries fire sign. We're all fully capable, more capable of the people out there! I say we go show them who has more power and who should fear who. If I wanted to, I could wipe out their entire village with on swish. But instead, we're over here hiding like criminals on the run."

"We are on the run, Aharon," Akil answered, not even bothering to look up at the boy. Instead, he had his forehead draped onto the arms that he had positioned on his spread legs. "You're the one who decided to come with us into hiding. Nobody forced you."

The boy kicked another stick that skidded on the ground, stopping just a few feet from Akil's place. "You're the one who's making us all hide! I don't even know why they're listening to anything you say, you're just an air sign: the weakest of us all."

It was then that Akil looked up from the floor at the blatant disrespect in the boy's tone. He wasn't the oldest, but Akil knew that he was older than most of them and he was sure that Aharon was younger. Yet he was speaking like he was better than all the other Zodiacs sitting in the room. "Watch how you speak to me, I'm not your friend and I'm not going to tolerate your childish tantrums."

"I'm twenty," Aharon snapped.

"I stand by what I said."

Suddenly, Akil's shoulder began to burn and he flinched. It took him a moment to notice the boy's focused gaze, clenched fists, and clear strain as he burned him. "Hey," Odion began.

Akil easily sensed the heated air particles around him as they began to race around with the growing temperature that the boy was controlling. But he didn't fire back, spinning that same air around himself to join the heat with the naturally humid atmosphere of the cave to dissipate the heat.

Everyone watched with growing interest. Around Akil, a circular tornado had collected with the wind that chased after each other to rid itself of the unnatural mixture of heat.

But Aharon continued, straining even further to increase the concentration of warmth that engulfed the boy in a desperate attempt to prove his superiority over an air sign. It was true, fire signs were believed to be stronger than air signs, but a cool-headed air sign could win any battle against a rash fire sign. Especially with the difference in age and, thus, experience between the two.