eunica otani, 2012
TWO YEARS LATER - PRESENT
Looking at Laura, whose brown eyes are locked on her crystal clear reflection in the lake, I realized how amazing it is for a girl to look innocent and deadly both at the same time.
If her eyes and thin pink lips could trick people into thinking that she's a sweetheart, her blonde hair that's streaked with the colors pink, black, and green could get all those people thinking whether or not she was worth talking to.
While I, on the other hand, is gazing over her like a seventy year old pedophile who seeks the accompaniment of a sixteen year old girl.
"Do you remember Moody?" I ask randomly, as to assure her I wasn't just completely staring her out.
The girl beside me snaps her head to my direction, her face baffled. "He saved me, jerk. Of course I remember him."
"Yeah, well, I did something to him," I state hurriedly, part of me wishing she hadn't heard it.
But of course, she did. And when her pupils dilated, I quickly storm my brain for words to say. "Yesterday, actually. But, um, he didn't die."
"What the hell, Wolliam McCarey?" she queries, her eyes almost bulging out of their sockets. "What in the name of my dead family did you do to him?"
Never in a normal day she would mention anything about her deceased family, but I guess my little news surprised her. After all, before all these, before she discovered what something special she had, and before we met in the woods of Canada two years ago, Moody (a very famous talk show host from Sweden, if you're wondering) stood as her fatherly figure. During Moody's stay at Canada, he decided he'd keep Laura during the days she had nowehere else to go. It could be easily said that Laura had once become a member of his family, but only in numbered days, because like I said, when Laura figured out what she was (not entirely, of course. We don't even know what we are ourselves) she immediately ran away and then, in a very fortunate event, bumped into me.
"I did not kill him, okay?" I say quickly as to assure her, because gosh dang it, the blood on Laura's face drained instantly, her face now looking pale. "I didn't. How could I do that when I know how important he is to you? And you could kill me if you figured out I did."
Her tensed-up body relaxes. She let out a lengthy sigh that she had obviously suppressed in for a while "What's he got to do with whatever you were doing, anyway?"
"Well, your papa was dealing with this Mexican druglord Darth had a bad business with," I say. She raises her eyebrows, begging me to continue. "And you know Darth well enough, he told me to finish the Mexican dude, so I did."
Darth Garvin (I swear the first time I heard his name, I laughed at his face) - a nineteen year old boy from Mississippi - is the leader of this little group called "The Family" in which Laura and I are part of. What the heck is The Family, you ask?
The Family consists of nine superhumans - mostly teenagers - from across the world who had been gathered and collected by Darth himself.
Yes, you read all that right - Laura and I are definitely not the only two who's got this special thing. There are eighth of us, and counting. In The Family, there's Darth Garvin, Laura Cavanaugh, me, Chris Sanders, McKyla Reid, Jasen Choi, Kendall Gray, and Cara Hicks. Each of us possess extraordinary abilities, and some of us can control more than one power. Darth can do four, and Chris Sanders can do two.
What our group does is simple. We do what we think is right, sometimes what we think is wrong, what we think people deserve, and most importantly, what we have fun doing. Basically, anything we ever want to do, regardless if it's legal or not - it doesn't really matter.
In simpler words, we're the dirt of humanity - reckless children who like, cause, and start trouble. Villains, as most people like to call it. And to the name, we own up.
"And Moody?" Laura asks, her left eyebrow arched up in a rather skeptical and concerned way.
"Nothing," I say without a moment's pause, my fingers fiddling with the bottom of my shirt.
"Come on," she says, half-groaning. "Tell me, and I won't electrocute you, I swear it to the stars."
Pointless. It's pointless to swear to the stars. They're dead, so it's just like swearing to the dead. And when you swear to something that doesn't exists, it's useless. But I'm gonna tell her anyway.
What I did to Moody is completely humane. I did not shower him with Hersheys and let ants feast on him, or cut his balls off his LSD-high body - no, that would be unorthodox and gross. What I did to him was simple. I just tied him up on a chair per tradition, covered his mouth with cloth so he would shut up about the aliens he was "seeing", and injected him with this serum McKyla (Mckyla Reid, another superhuman from The Family whose superpower is intelligence beyond human capability. The girl could seriously create anything in a snap) designed which specializes on making the target forget about his activities and memories from the last 24 hours.
But of course, Laura's reaction to this is a little bit off.
"You stupid, repugnant, inhuman being!" her voice is shrill as she tries and fails to reach me. By the time I have sensed her anger uprising, I quickly jumped up and teleported to the either side, far from her. I didn't want to get electrocuted, it hurts like a bitch - especially when Laura is mad.
But oh, I remember, she can produce fireballs, too.
"You think that doesn't--" she shoots a fireball to my direction, but it misses me as I yet again dissappear, "harm Moody in any way--" she does it again, and misses. "Well you're wrong, because that serum, that serum, Liam--" then she conjures the third fireball, and as what everyone says, the third time's the charm.
"Ow!" I yelp, grasping the portion of my left arm which the fireball had hit. The burning sensation is stinging inside, my flesh feeling like they're being eaten by a micro-zombie inside. I give Laura a look of remorse as I fall flat on the ground.
"That serum - I'm guessing you stole from McKyla's lab - is defective, you hear me?" she shouts at me, and I find myself wrinkling my forehead.
Defective - how could that be? When I sneaked in McKyla's lab the serum clearly had the correct specifications, and as far as I could remember, there was no X written all over it.
"Surprised? Well, yes, it's defective." Laura continues, her arms crossed against her chest as she forces out a dry laugh. "Yesterday McKyla panicked and said her latest invention called Erase Serum was missing, and warned us if that if we found it, we wouldn't want to use it because she hadn't built it correctly. Instead of wiping the target's memory from the past 24 hours, it could erase the target's memory of a lifetime! A lifetime! You reckless piece of shit, you wiped out Mr. Moody's memory!"
Her voice cracks. She looks away immediately, swallowing deeply.
"I - I didn't know," I say quietly, looking at her intently. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"That guy saved my life," Laura says weakly, a hint of smile on her lips. "Now, I'm sure he doesn't know who the hell I am anymore."
I sigh, sitting up. Damn, my arm feels numb. "Look, I'm sorry. If I've known, I really wouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to--"
"Sir, we're on The Lake, Sir!" a faint voice sounded, cutting me off. I look around, and the voice speaks again. "Targets still not acquired, Sir. The team is on it."
Laura and I look at each other's faces quickly. Without a single word spoken out, she and I stand on our feet and race to the opposing direction to where we heard the voices from, my hand on hers.
As we run, I glance over my shoulder, and I see about four figures with guns on their hands, running behind us as fast as they could. I even hear one saying, "Get them!"
They are Government agents, no doubt. Our enemy.
"How the heck did they find us here?" I ask between heavy breathes. Laura acknowledges through a slight shrug.
Right at this very time, I could just go teleport anywhere to get rid of the chasers. But with a fairly hot girl holding my hand, it doesn't work that way.
No, just kidding. Really, though, I can't take anyone with me when I teleport - I haven't learned how to manage it yet.
One heavy hand lands on my shoulder, causing me to stop on my tracks. I quickly let go of Laura's hand and signal her to go. She hesitates, but when she catches sight of another one heading to her, she proceeded.
My captor grips my arms tightly, turning me around. He looks at me with his dark green eyes, a smirk on his face. His gun is pointed on my forehead.
"You have nowhere to go now, you little fuck." The man says, victory sounding in his voice.
My eyebrows shoot up over the way that statement sounded utterly and undeniably dumb. I laugh quite long, and he just looks at me weirdly.
"Why - what's so funny?"
I certainly didn't expect government agents to be this dumb. Movies made them a hundered percent snappier, and I think that's sad.
"I really hope you realize I am a superhuman," I say, still laughing. This time, his devilish grin slowly turns into a scared frown. "And just so you know, since that I am one, I can actually do things."
I take his single blink as a signal to teleport to his back. I hit his head with my fist as he turns around, and then I give him another set of good knockers when he tries, and fails, to counter my attacks. He slams on the ground headfirst, and then blood from his nose starts to spill. I'm taken aback. Blood. I hate it. I always did. But then I'm going to need to do something, so I forcefully kneel on my knees, ignoring the pestering smell of the liquid, and start to search his pockets. I then successfully recover his identification card.
Standing up, I scan the card. The ID says the man is Agent Creed Wilson, an operative from Federal Bureau of Investigation Supernatural Section. My lips involuntarily twitch. Who knew there was a Supernatural Section in the FBI?
The coast is clear, and I am about to head to The Camp (a place where The Family lives) to bring Darth my latest discovery, when I realize that Laura is still running from those men. I immediately set my mind twenty meters east from my current location only to find myself behind Laura and in front of the chasers.
Jackpot, baby.
All three men were shooting bullets to our direction, and in exhange, Laura casts fireballs and flings it to her behind. Basically, I feel like I'm only in a middle of a war, technically useless, so I teleport beside Laura, and Laura is an unbelievably fast runner, so I can hardly keep my pace.
"Liam," Laura shouts, glancing at me. "You can go, I can handle myself."
"No way," I say between gasps. "I'm not going to leave you here."
"You're acting like I can't take them down," she grunts, continuing on attacking the chasers with her fireballs. "Go, now!"
I break into a halt, suddenly realizing that yeah, she can obviously handle this without my help.
One of the drifting agents who are after Laura accidentally bumps on me, and then he stops, staring at me with - what do you call it, fear? - fear on his eyes. I don't know, maybe the man has already sensed his demise. Poor little thing, he is. I steal the gun from one of his waist packets and pull the trigger to his knee. He stumbles and then falls, crying in pain.
In this violence, I've decided to leave Laura alone in her journey. Heaven and hell both know she can handle this.