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Sasha Age 8
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The light from the sun shone on the old home in the middle of that green field. A younger Sasha played around in the grass and sun, rolling around in the front yard and tossing leaves around. Watching her on the porch were her mother and father, sitting in rocking chairs, drinking iced tea while basking in the sunlight.
As Sasha played around in the summer heat, Marcus and his wife began to speak to each other, with the latter starting up the conversation. Sasha was just far enough to be out of earshot but not far enough to not be seen, so it was perfect for them.
"Fourt grade, huh, four more, and she'll be in the eight. Time flies too fast; I can feel te gray hairs sneaking up on me."
Marcus chuckled at his wife's comment and took a sip of his iced tea. He knew that things were changing, the world was changing, and that even though the two of them were in their mid-fifties, they still had to prepare a child for the real world.
"Yep, damn sure, going way faster than when we were growing up. That means we gotta act quick, Adanna."
Adanna looked over to Marcus and seemed a bit confused on what he meant by "act quick".
"What do you mean act quick?"
Taking another sip of his ice tea, Marcus thought about how different the world had become from when he was growing up and even when he was in his young adulthood. The decisions in the world and how people were, it wasn't exactly a place that he wanted his daughter to be in.
"Gotta prepare her for the world she's about to be entering. Things aren't like they were before the second Korean War; people aren't the same as they used to be. They're a lot more... hostile."
It seemed that Adanna wasn't all too happy with what Marcus was saying as her expression changed to discontent.
"She's only 8 Marcus, and she already had those Muay Thai classes; let her be a kid for a couple more years."
After thinking about it a little more Marcus decided that it would probably be best to follow his wife's advice this time.
"You're right, which is why I'm not going to start now. But I do want to see where her head is at and how she sees the world, because when I do prepare her for it, I don't want to be creating a little monster."
Adanna definitely wasn't liking what she was hearing, but that could be the maternal side of her coming into play. She never really thought that Sasha could ever become some kind of monster.
"Monster? You think she'll become a mass murderer or something?"
Looking out towards the field, directly at Sasha. Marcus knew that Sasha wasn't going to do anything crazy to that degree; he and Adanna were going to make sure that she had an upbringing where that never happens.
"Hell no, definitely not one of those. Our daughter is a lot more intelligent than you give her credit for, which makes me proud but also concerns me at the same time. People like that, people like here, can either do good in this world... or flip it right on its head."
After he spoke, Marcus took another sip of his ice tea, and the sounds of gunshots, explosions, screaming, and death rang throughout his mind. Even if they weren't there in this quiet space, they were there, like a recording being played back to him. He looked at his hands to the faded letters that spelled the words "keep calm" plastered on each individual finger.
"Wars are started because of people like her. Call me paranoid, but if she doesn't have the right outlook, the right guidance, or the right mindset. She could probably do some horrible things when she grows up. You know all about that kind of stuff too."
While Marcus did have a point, Adanna thought that he was being overly cautious. She never saw Sasha as ever getting into that position and just shrugged it off, drinking her iced tea before chiming in after he was finished.
"You're as paranoid as a schizophrenic on mushrooms."
Marcus chuckled to himself again. He knew that Adanna was serious, but he couldn't help it. Her bluntness and the way she put it just forced a laugh out of him.
"Damn that hurts. If I'm so paranoid then i guess you won't mind a bit of a wager."
This came as a bit of a surprise to Adanna, as she wondered just what kind of wager Marcus could be talking about. Out of sheer curiosity, she entertained the idea and asked about it to see where he was going with this.
"Oh? And what kind of wager could this be?"
Getting up from his seat, Marcus walked inside the house and looked around for a bit. Eventually, he found a pencil and a notepad and came back outside onto the porch. He sat down and began to draw something; it looked to be a train track with two paths, one leading to a collection of five people tied to it and the other having one person tied to it. Finally, he'd draw a small trolly cart at the very start of the track, and once he finished, Marcus would explain the wager he was going to put up
"Alright, which do you think Sasha would pick? If you end up being right, then I'm paranoid, but if you're wrong, then we'll begin to train her and teach her how to conduct herself in this world when she turns ten. Deal?"
Adanna sneered at the wager, thinking it was pretty foolish. It was that old trolley question that everyone's seen a million times, and there were only two options to pick. But to entertain her husband's antics, she pointed to the five people Marcus drew on the notepad. She didn't think anything of it; picking the five people would make the most sense in her mind, and if it would get her husband to stop worrying, then she might as well play along.
"Fine, she'll choose to save the five people."
After hearing his wife's answer, Marcus whistled loud enough for Sasha to hear him, and as soon as she did, she ran right over to him. Looking at him with starry eyes, she wondered if her time in the sun was over.
"Huh? is it time to go back inside?"
Marcus put the notepad on the table next to him and motioned for Sasha to get closer to him by waving his hand. Once she stepped forward, he picked her up and sat her down on his lap before handing her the notepad.
"Nope, you can go right back to playing after you take this small test. There's a trolley coming, and on one side you have one person tied to the tracks, and on the other you have five people tied to the tracks. You gotta pick which you want to save. Will you divert the tracks to hit the one person and save the five, or will you save the five and let the tracks hit the one person?"
Sasha looked at the notepad for a moment and thought about her answer and how she wanted to go about this. She started to tap her chin with the pencil that her dad gave her and really focused on what was being asked of her.
"hm..."
With a bit of thinking done, Sasha seemed to figure out just what she wanted to do about the train problem, and so she took the pencil out of her father's hand, seemed to erase the only person on the first track, and then re-drew them off of the track as a stick figure that wasn't tied up anymore. Then she drew the track going towards the now-open track with nobody on it.
Looking at what Sasha did, Marcus had a shit-eating grin on his face as he looked towards Adanna while she sat there, shocked and concerned. Marcus, wanting to even further show Adanna what he was speaking about, questioned Sasha on her answer.
"What did you do Sasha?"
Turning her head up to her father, Sasha simply smiled while kicking her legs about in the air and spinning the pencil around her finger.
"I took the the first guy off and let the trolley go where the guy used to be!"
Hearing the answer out loud only made Adanna slightly more confused because that wasn't an option. That wasn't something that was supposed to be part of the question, and she had to let out her problem with the answer.
"That's not how the question works, you're supposed to pick between the two."
Sasha looked over to her mother, confused. Her childlike mind wasn't sure why she had to choose between the two options when she could just erase and redraw the first one.
"But why would i pick between them when i can just untie the first guy since he's only one guy?"
Marcus, still trying to prove his point, decided to ask another question, but this time it was in relation to Sasha's response to her mother.
"Oh, well if that's the case why didn't you untie the five guys on the other track instead?"
Now that she had heard her father's input on the answer Sasha looked back down at the notepad and tilted her head to the side.
"I didn't think i had enough time to untie the five people so i just untied the one. But now that the trolley's gone i should untie them too."
Right after that, she erased the five drawn people tied up on the second track and then redrew them as stick figures, just like the first guy. Marcus only shook his head and smiled, while Adanna rolled her eyes.
On one hand, she didn't want to lose the wager because she didn't want her daughter to be trained by herself and her father at such a young age. But on the other hand, she was impressed with how her daughter thought about the question, so much so that she made a bit of an alteration to see how this could go.
"Alright, so what if you have five people on both tracks? You don't have enough time to untie either of them."
Sasha had to think about that one since she couldn't just untie five people like she could with a single one. It took a couple of minutes, but after some more thinking, she managed to come up with something.
Picking up her pencil yet again, she erased part of the track itself in front of the trolley and then drew the trolley tilted on its side outside of the track. Marcus laughed to himself upon seeing the answer, while Adanna kept her composure. Derailing a train would work, but doing something like that in an actual situation was a lot easier said than done, so Marcus asked about it.
"How are you going to do something like that without a derailer? I don't think you can just carry one with you at all times."
Almost immediately Sasha had an answer for the question since she learned something about train tracks at school before the summer started.
"I'll throw my bike at the tracks."
One thing Adanna didn't know was that bikes are durable enough to derail trains if thrown onto the tracks, but Marcus knew that, so he asked another question, trying to see why she would throw the bike.
"But you love that bike, why would you throw it at the Trolly?"
As Sasha looked down at the notepad once again, she seemed a bit saddened at the thought of throwing her bike at the train but then she smiled again after a couple of seconds and replied.
"I do love that bike but i can always get another one."
Again, Marcus had that shit eating grin on his face as he looked over to his wife, silently antagonizing her with his goofy gaze. Sucking her teeth Adanna asked another question.
"What if you can't derail or stop the Trolley? You don't have your and ya can't be chucking stones at it like you're in first century."
This was another question that Sasha had to think about, now that she had less options available it was going to give her more trouble. But just like the other questions, she came up with a solution to them.
"If i can't stop the Trolley and i can't derail it... then i guess I'll just have to move five guys off of the tracks."
Adanna thought that sounded like an impossible task. How would she move the five guys off of the track? This sounded like something part of a child's imagination rather than an actual answer so Adanna really needed to know what Sasha was going to do to accomplish it.
"And how are you going to do that?"
The answer was almost immediate yet again; this time Sasha thought back to one of the toys in her room. A barrel full of monkeys that were all chained together by their arms, and then looked at the notepad again, thinking about how her father drew the men tied up on the tracks before giving her answer.
"Monkey chain! I'll have the five guys lock their legs together while they're tied up; that way I can just pull one of the guys out of the way, the other four would be pulled with him, and they can all pull each other with their legs once they're off track, so it isn't that hard. Daddy only tied them up from the waist up, not the waist down."
Pressing her index finger and thumb against her forehead, Adanna seemed to get frustrated with how this was going and was just about to ask another question.
"What if-"
But before she could finish, Marcus took Sasha off of his lap and placed her on the floor of the porch before taking the last sip of his ice tea and sending Sasha on here way.
"Alright Sasha, you can go back to playing outside, that's all we wanted to know."
Sasha's eyes lit up after hearing her father say she could go back to playing outside but she also wanted the notebook and pencil so she could go off and draw on it.
"Ok!, can i keep the notebook and pencil please?"
Laughing to himself Marcus just let Sasha keep the notepad while he looked over to Adanna who was clearly in a state of dissatisfaction with her placing her hand on her forehead and taking a deep sigh.
"Sure, why not?"
Once her father gave the okay to take the notepad, Sasha ran off with the two items into the front yard. She drew away at the notepad while Marcus was left to talk to his wife about the whole thing. Adanna took a sip of her drink only to taste nothing but ice as she had run out of her iced tea and hadn't realized it, something Marcus would comment on.
"You seem a bit mad? Is it because we're out of iced tea?"
Not seeming to laugh at Marcus' quip, Adanna answered while leaning back in the rocking chair she was sitting in.
"No, it is because i let you talk me into taking part in another one of your schemes."
Cracking his knuckles and leaning back in his own rocking chair, Markus looked forward towards the front yard and watched Sasha draw on the notepad while speaking to his wife with his arms behind his head.
"This world will bite at you and bleed you out. It'll change you into a dark mirror of yourself if you let it. Someone like Sasha can either be some of the best people on this planet or a person that could bring down civilizations in fire with sheer determination."
Rocking back and forth in her chair, Adanna calmed herself and faced the front yard as she heard her husband's words being said to her. After those questions and the answers Sasha gave them, she realized that he may have been correct in a sense. She still thought he was paranoid, but as to who Sasha was, she wouldn't disagree with it. Marcus would continue on, slowly rocking his chair with his wife while continuing to speak.
"Who knows what could happen to the world we live in? Who knows what we could be bringing into the world? And you know what's the best way to keep this world from biting on that little girl until she bleeds every bit of happiness out of her?"
Marcus looked over to Adanna while she moved her eyes over to Marcus still facing the front yard. He was smiling with his teeth showing and finally finished his thought.
"We teach her how to bite the world back the right way, before she chooses to bite it back in the worst way possible."
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Current Day
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Sasha and Cameron continued to walk through the halls, with Sasha explaining to him the entire story of how she started to train and learn different fighting styles.
"Eventually they'd tell me why they decided to train me, but my dad taught me most of the different fighting styles I know, while my mom taught me how to use different weapons."
Continuing on, Sasha went on to explain that things kind of changed when her father got his powers. As she was explaining, her voice changed. Her face seemed to maintain that same confident smile, but her voice was a lot more somber.
"After my dad got his powers, he started portaling me to different places in the world to refine my training. Get the best of the best straight from the source... Back in middle school, most of my time after hours was spent all over the world."
Cameron wondered just what made Sasha who she was now. From the story she told him, it sounded like she had a pretty good set of parents, but he noticed the tone of her voice when talking about the training.
"Well did you enjoy training in those different parts of the world?"
It took a second for Sasha to answer the question, as she was completely caught off guard by it. It was like she snapped back into where she was, and from the sound of her voice and how she cut herself off, it sounded like she was going to say something else.
"i didn- erm... yeah, i thought it was pretty fun."
["Why did i tell him all of that?"] Sasha seemed to be a bit confused as to why she even explained all of that to Cameron. Cameron noticed the change in tone and cut off in her sentence. Picking up on it, he was just about to ask another question, but just before he could speak, the two of them stopped at a wooden door that Sasha would knock on before shouting at it.
"Aye Izzy, whaddup girl!"
The door creaked back, slowly opening to reveal a small room with pink carpet flooring. Inside were a couple of couches and a desk with a computer from thirty years ago sitting on top of it. Sitting at the desk was a young woman with short, dreaded hair, some of it tied into a ponytail, while the rest flowed freely down the sides and top of her head. Her sepia skin contrasted her purple eyes, and the moment that door opened, the woman spoke in a carefree, relaxed tone.
"First day isn't even over with and you're already making the front page."
Cameron looked confused upon hearing the woman speak. From her attire, she looked kind of important, but she didn't look any older than himself or Sasha. In the meantime, Sasha continued on with her conversation with Izzy, sarcastically asking about how she knew that it was her.
"Oh come on, how'd you know it was me?"
Getting up from her desk and putting on a pair of circular glasses, Izzy stood around three feet taller than Sasha and walked over to her. She put her in a playful headlock with one arm and shook up her hair with the other in the form of a fist.
"An explosion in the cafeteria, full on free for all? If that isn't you then i guess i should just quit this job."
With minimal effort, Sasha broke out of the headlock with a smile on her face. Lifting her up off the ground by her waist and forcing her to release the lock she had on her head.
"Then i guess you're not going anywhere."
Now Cameron was even more confused than before. He still had no clue as to who Izzy was or why they just had this room to themselves. Obviously, he wanted some kind of answer to what he was seeing.
"Uh, so who is this?"
Putting Izzy down on the ground, Sasha explained who this was to him since she was technically important to the school and was someone he would have to get to know sooner or later.
"Oh right, Moneybags this is the school councilor and my Auntieeeeeeee."
Her playful extended use of the word auntie would cause Izzy to pout and cross her arms in a show of being offended by it.
"I told you to stop calling me Auntie, makes me feel old."
Having her smile widen, Sasha continued to go on with their rather playful conversation. Even Cameron was surprised with how Sasha was talking to someone who she should have a bit more respect for in his eyes. The two of them didn't even seem like aunt and niece; they looked more like sisters.
"You're older than me that's all that matters."
At the same time, Cameron wasn't all too sure what this councilor did. They seemed pretty casual with Sasha, which he could somewhat understand since that was her niece, but at the same time, she still had a job. In the middle of his thoughts, Izzy would continue to speak to Sasha, making a comment that would give Cameron a bit more context as to why she's like this.
"My brother is old, I'm only a few years older than you little girl."
Again, someone called Sasha short, which would cause her to jump up in "anger." She swore up and down that she'd be taller when her birthday rolled around, but only time could tell if that was the truth or not.
"Just watch, I'll be taller than you when my birthday rolls around!"
While all of this was nice and all, Cameron and Sasha still needed to be fixed up, which was the whole reason they were here in the first place. So to break up the conversation, Cameron began to speak up so they can get rolling.
"E-excuse me but uh. Are you the Izzy person who is able to help us?"
Izzy finally noticed Cameron after all this time and took a good look at him for a moment. Just like a lot of the students in the school, she immediately noticed who he was, although it was for a much different reason than what the norm was.
"Yea- wait no fucking way. Oh my god no fucking WAY! You're Maximillian's kid."
Chuckling to herself as she looked at Cameron, Izzy shook her head, just wondering what someone like him would be doing in a school like this. She thought that Maximillian had lost his mind and began to speak about how her brother absolutely hated Cameron's father.
"My brother can't shut up about your dad. He's got one hell of a bone to pick with him."
Cameron would apologize for whatever his father had done to Izzy's brother, something he was all too familiar with doing as he effortlessly came up with something to say to her in hopes that she would help him.
"Whatever my father has done i humbly apologize for. It was wrong and i pray he does not do it again. But could you please fix Sasha's tooth and my hand if you can?"
Izzy walked back over to her desk and opened up a drawer to see that it was full of a strange red powder. She grabbed a hand full of it and kept it on her before she walked back to the two of them and spoke.
"Her I can fix, but you... it's gonna cost you."
Cameron left his jacket in the cafeteria, and given his experience with the school so far, he wouldn't be surprised if it was already stolen. All of the cash that he would have had was with his bodyguard, who still hasn't found him.
Looking down at his one remaining shoe, Cameron kicked it off and placed it onto the desk in the room.
"This shoe is worth eighty-thousand dollars, you can have it if it's acceptable."
Squinting at the shoe in complete confusion, Izzy looked back at Cameron, questioning what in the world was wrong with him.
"Do I look like my last name is Schneider? Get ya shoe off my damn desk."
Taking the shoe off of Izzy's desk and putting it back on his foot Cameron wondered what he was going to have to do to pay Izzy for whatever she planned on doing.
"Just get me some cash to pay off a few debts. In the form of BILLS please, not shoes."
Lifting up her hand that held the red dust, Izzy blew it at Sasha and Cameron, which would immediately cause them to start coughing as they breathed it in. In a matter of seconds, the bones in Cameron's hand would begin to violently crack and reform as they fixed themselves.
An entirely new tooth would begin to grow in Sasha's mouth and after a couple of seconds, they would be all fixed up.
Now that the two of them were all fixed up, Sasha and Cameron were about to leave, but not before Sasha waved goodbye to her aunt.
"Thanks, Izzy, catch you in a couple of months!"
After the two of them finally left, Izzy went back to her desk and got on her computer. She clicked on an icon that looked kind of like the school and cracked her knuckles as the application loaded.
"Now then, back to my parlays."