1.2
While the majority of those present only cared about my apparent selective mutism, quite the number were upset for a very different reason; that of their parents' betrayal. I could understand why those not from my clan would feel like that, but there was very little reason for the rest to be affected to such an extent as they were.
My clan is from a culture that has very different values and beliefs than outsiders, and parental kinship was not the highest valued trait. Our parents would undoubtedly get a great benefit from allowing us to participate in the tests, so why would they refuse? Surely these children knew that.
I acknowledge there are exceptions, such as the relationship between myself and Shira, but those are rare and not readily accepted by others. The servants' refusal to acknowledge Shira as my daughter is a prime example of this. Even I only care as much as I do about Shira because of my relative solitude and loneliness, not to mention intense emotional stress. It’s far more likely those children are simply clueless or dense. Or maybe their outsider parents just had a greater influence on their life than my own.
In any case, there was a small group of traumatized and mentally unhinged children smouldering in anger and betrayal. Children with superpowers capable of fantastical and disastrous feats. Children that wanted retribution, and with no one nearby even taking notice of them or their feelings. Except for me, but they didn’t know that. Things ended badly.
“Why are you all so carefree!?” yelled one of those who actually cared.
“What are you talking about?” said some idiot.
“Why don’t you care, that our fucking parents brought us here!” said another superpowered unstable kid.
“They were obviously offered something in return. It must have been worth it to them. Besides, we do care. What happened here was horrible. Of course, we care about those that died.” so said another idiot. These people clearly couldn’t read the atmosphere, could they?
“WHY THE DON’T YOU CARE THAT IT WAS OUR OWN FUCKING PARENTS THAT BROUGHT US HERE!?” screamed a third… you get it by now, don’t you? Things ended badly… to put it mildly.
I had forewarning, being slightly more intelligent than an idiot. I could see where everything was going. I had slime-guy’s bucket in my arms and was halfway down the hallway - running for my life - by the time someone exploded. Metaphorically, anyway.
I wasn’t alone, at least three others had copied my example. They too had grabbed an immobile before running for their lives. Well, less immobile and more very very slow. Slime-guy isn’t going to be moving all that much no matter how you compare him, but birds, snakes, and spiders don’t tend to move very fast either. Okay, birds can move pretty fast, but she’s injured. It won’t take long to heal, but there's simply not enough time.
I don’t know why they turned into animals. My power made at least some sense, given the context, but as far as I could tell they were just unlucky. They didn’t even get some miraculous superpowers, they just turned into animals. No super regeneration or anything! Like I said, really unlucky.
And I’m just now realizing I’ve only ever described the powers of the people I found interesting, completely ignoring everyone else. I’m a terrible commentator. That is what I am, right? Or am I a narrator? The protagonist? What the fuck is the right word? Dam, that’s gonna bother me for a while. And fuck, I’ve already gone off on a tangent.
There are too many people for me to list all of them, not without boring you to death, but I can generalize. Of the 20 awakened; four are animals or animal-like, one’s a slime, two are aetherial - not the right use of the word, I know - and all the rest are superpowered semi-humanoids. There's too much variation in that group to divide them properly. I’m ignoring the seven non-awakened for now, no idea if they’ll live yet.
You already know the two aetherial; Tuka the virus and Galu the spirit. The slime is obviously slime-guy, who I still don’t know the name of. The last animal I haven’t talked about yet is some kind of werewolf. Stereotypical, I know. Nothing I can do about it.
Among the human-like, I’m the one of the closest to looking human, and even I’m pretty far from it by now. While I didn’t directly change during my awakening, my mutagen seems to be more active now than ever before. Changes I’d thought would take months or years are taking minutes or hours now. I suddenly have the beginnings of wings and tail, and I’m more girly looking than ever before. I’ve also shrunk by a marginal amount. I’d probably fit in better with Shira’s species than among humans.
Okay, enough with the explanations I should have said earlier, let’s get back to telling the story. So, I and three kids were running away from all the other kids. Each of us was carrying at least one immobile kid, and we were being followed by quite a few non-awakened.
Barely half of them had the good sense to run away before the fighting started, and I'm assuming everyone else paid dearly for their stupidity. I don’t know exactly what happened, it was out of range of Galu-net after all. But whatever it was, it was LOUD. And not the burst your eardrums kind of loud you’d expect from an explosion, more like the constant ringing you get from tinnitus but an order of magnitude worse. Covering your ears did nothing.
I know the way I described my power was… a bit overdramatic. While just going by my descriptions you’d assume I was some kinda super-kid with amazing powers that are going to save the day and rescue everyone. That’s about as far from the truth as you can get, in reality.
Yeah, sure, I have a power. Technically. But it’s almost useless. I’m a storage container for the dead, for fucks sake! What good is that in a fight? How do I use that to defend myself? Attack? It’s perhaps the most support-oriented power out of anyone here!
My point is, I'm weak. And so are all the other unawakened that followed me. No doubt the sonic attack was weaker because of the distance, but that hardly mattered in the face of its sheer power. I didn’t envy whoever the attack was actually aimed at.
Then other attacks came. Explosions, massive gusts of wind, loud noises, and the floor shaking soon became abundant. The walls were collapsing and the roof was falling on us. We needed to get out of here ASAP.
Thankfully those guys from earlier basically cleared the whole building. I doubt we’ll encounter anyone by the time we escape. And with that assurance in mind, we ran like hellfire was on our heels. And it kinda was, since one of those that stayed behind had some kind of fire ability. We might have actually had to run from hellfire.
Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. The testing chamber was literally the second door on the left down the right hallway. It took us all of half a minute to burst out the front doors and into the waiting arms of those armed guys. A few of our followers bolted away from the building as soon as they were able, most didn’t even realize their path was blocked and barreled on into someone.
I would like to say I slowed down and calmly walked over to greet our saviours, but I would be lying. Instead, I ended up trapped in the bearhug of the largest man I’ve seen in my life. I squirmed and wriggled, but without serious effort, I won’t be free anytime soon. Not that I tried all that hard, these people saved us and he was kinda… comfy, as embarrassing to admit as that is.
When only a few of us actually ended up exiting the building, the bossmanguy of this group sent a bunch of goons to retrieve the rest. And then it was just damage control from then on. They started loading us into their vehicles, and they spoke assurances to us while doing so. Many of the kids needed to be knocked out to be transported safely, and most struggled at least a bit. I didn’t.
“Sorry about the rough treatment,” the guy holding me said gruffly, strapping me into a makeshift seat.
“Hmm?” I mumbled in askance.
“We weren’t prepared for this,” he explained, ”any of this. It was supposed to be simple, go in and steal some data. We weren’t supposed to bring anyone with us.”
“Hmm,” I mumbled in acknowledgment.
“We weren’t even supposed to come in contact with anyone. It should have been all stealthy-like, but no.” he continued solemnly.
He sighed at my lack of response and got up to leave. He stopped abruptly when he noticed my hand holding a strap on his armour. “What wrong?” he asked, soothingly. Like I was a young child that needed to be cared for. I was, though, in a way. I was some kind of weird conglomeration of dead people, and many of them were indeed very young.
“Please stay,” I murmured softly, playing into the role. It wasn’t inaccurate, and I really did want him to stay. His presence was comforting, and his voice was soothing. Also, my body looks like I haven’t even gone through puberty yet, so acting mature would be strange from his perspective.
He looked concerned for a second, then said, “okay,” and sat at my side. I just leaned into him and tried to fall asleep as the rest of the sketchy murder-van was slowly filled with sleeping children. I eventually succeeded, though it wasn’t until the stranger started gently brushing my now long hair that I was finally able to fall asleep.
