(WARNING: This is a long one)
ARIANA MAYWEATHER
Indigo City. It’s been a little while. Well only a school year’s worth of time, but that feels REALLY long when your use to a city like this. The fast pace just makes everything seem to go so much faster than any other city in the country, the world even. Maybe it does.
I lived in Indigo my entire life, up until my freshman year of college in Byrne’s Lake (The polar opposite of Indigo). It was strange going from such a huge city to such a small one, but it’s nice to have experienced both sides of the spectrum.
Those new indigo colored taxis zoom past me, even though I wave my hands frantically and exclaim my words frequently, no one pays me any attention. “TAXI! TAXI!”
I notice 3 teenaged boys giggling as they watch me fail to catch a cab. It must look very idiotic, a 20-year-old girl hopping up and down as her hands flop around above her head. It’s not only embarrassing, but also uncomfortable. These skinny jeans aren’t very movable, though they look great on me. One of the teenagers – who I now realize is a girl - bites their lip before walking off with the other two. Weirdoes.
I wish I could be sitting at home right now with my Mom, Dad, and my younger brother. I haven’t seen them since Christmas. I would’ve seen them in March, but I decided to spend my spring break in Miami, to my parent’s dismay and my brother’s envy.
Instead my first stop of summer break 2015 is the Cool Café, a café in Central. I’m going to meet up with some friends of mine from High School…or should I say acquaintances? Maybe associates? I’ll just go with classmates. Of course we did save a bunch of lives, kick Blight a$$, and discover our…carrier-ness(?) together, but that doesn’t make us friends. Does it? Should it? Whatever.
I finally get a cabbie’s attention. I plop down in the car when the driver asks me, “Where ya going miss?”
“Cool Café. Ya know where it is?” I answer.
“Of course. I could tell you were going there just by lookin at ya!”
“Uh, how could you tell?”
“Ya just look it ya know.”
“…K…”
After a couple minutes of Meghan Trainor music the cab stops.
“We’re here.” He says.
“…Oh. Thanks.”
I pay him in cash and walk inside the Café. As soon as I step through the wooden doors I’m greeted by the sound of an unfortunately familiar voice.
“Ariana Mayfield! You look better than ever!”
The voice I hear belongs to Gunner. God I hate him so much. He’s such a d-bag. He examines me up and down and bites his lips. I should have just gone home…but at least now I know why those teenagers were staring.
GUNNER
“Oh look! Only one seat left. I guess you have to sit next to me.” I say to Ms. Mayfield as if we all don’t know that I didn’t purposely leave that space open.
Blake Goodman and Samuel Agbaje roll their eyes. Adri Kora does nothing, as usual. Ariana slowly sits down in the seat next to me. She only has one cheek on the seat.
“Don’t be scared Ari.” I assure her.
“Ya can’t blame her.” Blake snaps, putting a smile on Ariana’s face.
“Hey! Nobody asked you.” I respond.
“And nobody asked you either!” Blake retorts.
“Thanks for standing up for me Blake, but I got this.” Ariana says, like the confident woman she is, “And it’s MayWEATHEAR” She adds.
“Oh I’m sorry! Because that’s something I really give a crap about.”
“Guys! Stop. Ariana’s here now so we can begin.” Samuel interjects.
“Yeah um…begin what exactly. Why are we here?” I ask, simply for clarification.
“Did you not read the e-mail?” Blake asks condescendingly. Do you have to lean all up in the table to do it Goodman? Ya gonna knock over the d**n coffee!
“No I didn’t. I just saw that YOU were coming and I just HAD to be there.” I answer Blake in the fashion of one of those idiots he used to date back at ICHS.
“HEY!” Adri shouts. Dang I haven’t heard her that loud since TGI. “Everyone shut up! Stop measuring d*cks and let Samuel talk.”
I cross my arms and sit back in my seat. Everyone looks at me. I wave my hand and say, “…Go on!” Yeesh. Had to uncross my arms for nothing. No good reason.
Samuel shifts around in his seat and takes a sort of deep breath. He looks like he’s about to give that speech that the losers of the Presidential race give at 12:00 after their opponent has beaten them.
“Okay. I brought you all here because recently I’ve been thinking about the great impact. Y’know, more than I usually do. Specifically what we did at ICHS that night. It’s impossible that you all don’t remember the events. After the mist came we all woke up to see Blights running around campus, terrorizing those who weren’t affected by the mist. So we did something about it. Each of us used our newfound gifts and somehow beat the crap out of those over rated zombies. It was…nothing short of awesome, and yet terrifying and confusing at the same time. Recently though, I’ve been recalling that night every time I go to sleep, and they’re nightmares. I don’t wake up thinking ‘Wow, we were like the Response out there, kicking boootay!!!’ I wake up thinking ‘I could’ve died. What do my powers mean? What do their powers mean?’ But the strongest feelings I have when thinking about TGI are ‘Was it coincidence we all ended up with similar powers?’ and ‘Is it luck that the CBTF have not yet found us?’ I honestly believe no is the answer to both of those questions.”
Wow. Powerful shiz. Then I think of something, “Wait similar powers? Maybe I’m just stupid-”
“Yes you are.” Blake interrupts. I flip him the bird and send a tiny blast at his coffee cup. It falls to its side, spilling on to the floor, just barely missing his leg.
“Maybe I’m just confused, but how do have similar powers? Sammy you move stuff with that big ol brain of yours. Adri can fly, Ariana can go invisible, and Blake over here is generic superhero #675. He has the powers of a main character in the Fast & Furious movies. Really strong and practically invincible. How do those relate?”
Samuel leans in to the table a little bit, like he’s about to tell us a big secret.
“You ever heard of telekinesis?”
ADRI KORA
Samuel goes on to explain to us how he thinks we all have different forms of telekinesis. Surprisingly it actually all makes a lot of sense, if his theory on Telekinetic fields is right. Samuel is a really smart dude, and I admire him for taking it upon himself for gathering us together and trying to solve a common problem. See Blake and Gunner’s pride’s might get in the way of telling you, and Ariana might not want to open up to people she barely knows, but we all are having constant recollections of that night. I can tell by the way the others look when Samuel speaks of his. I too feel like everywhere I turn someone’s watching me. Like the CBTF will jump out and arrest me at the first sight of my powers. I’m scared of being taken away to a place like one of those camps or the Beneforce in New York. That’s terrifying.
“So what does all this mean?” Ariana asks Samuel, “We all have similar powers and all gained them in the same area. That must mean there’s something about ICHS that’s special. The CBTF haven’t hunted us down like dogs yet, so that must mean they’re watching us. What do we do with this? Are we gonna become a carrier terrorist group and just blow everything up? We gonna start being superheroes or something?” Ariana laughs the idea off. She then sees Samuel’s embarrassed and disappointed countenance and realizes, “Oh…did you want to blow everything up?”
“No he wanted to be a freaking superhero team!” Gunner breaks out in to hysterical laughter. Ariana looks kind of guilty about laughing off his bad idea, but a fake guilty. Blake gets mad for whatever reason.
“So you brought me here to pitch me the idea of being in a freaking SUPERHERO TEAM? What a godd*mn waste of my time.” Blake clearly has some anger issues, “You wanna run around in tights and fight crime? That doesn’t turn out well for most of us. Yeah there are those success stories, but they either started working for the CBTF or just got lucky. If the CBTF has been watching us for almost two years now, they’d be the first to show up at the scene of the crime waiting to take us in. But guess what, you’re WRONG! No one’s watching us, we ended up lucky, and we shouldn’t be superheroes. This is BS. I’m outta here.” Blake gets up and heads for the door.
“Blake wait!” Ariana calls out. Blake stops in his tracks, though he probably wouldn’t have for anyone else. Ariana grabs her purse and stands up, “I’m coming with you.”
She makes her way over to Blake and they walk out together. Low blow Mayweather. Low blow.
“Well that went swell,” Gunner says as he jumps out of his seat, “Deuces!” Gunner leaves.
Samuel looks over at me expecting me to get up and go. I stare back at him. He makes the next move or we just sit here.
“Damnit!” Samuel says under his breath as he slams his fist on the table. He jumps up from his seat, and so do the items on the table. My head darts to the left and to the right, hoping nobody saw that brief display of his abilities. Samuel walks out of the Café.
I put enough money on the table to pay for our drinks and then leave myself. I never liked the CC anyway. I’m not the type for that place. Someone like an Ariana is the type though. Most definitely.
-||-
SAMUEL AGBAJE
My plan failed. God I don’t know why I even thought I could convince them to help me get to the bottom of this. I just want to get the CBTF off our a**es! Heroics aside, I’m tired of having these nightmares and I want to know why we’re having em. I don’t know why they’re so against it either, or should I say why Blake’s so against it. Gunner and Ariana laughed it off, but I could’ve convinced them to help me if Blake didn’t loose his shiz and flip out about tights and luck and crap. We don’t have to wear dumb costumes, especially if we’re going to have to change them every other day like Wind Duster did when he was first starting out.
I walk down the sidewalks of Central Indigo towards my apartment. I wonder if Sharon, my roommate, is up yet. She sleeps in for a long time every day. Of course she works at night, as a bartender, so I can excuse it. She usually wakes up between 11:30 and noon, and then watches Netflix til 3:00. Let’s see if I can guess what she’s doing right about now.
I reach in to my pocket and whip out my phone. I lightly press the home button and see that it’s now 1:14pm. She’s probably in the shower by now. Note to self: don’t go in the bathroom when you get home if Sharon isn’t in her room. She tends not to lock the bathroom doors, and walking in on her isn’t the best experience for either of us.
As I go to put my phone back in my pocket it vibrates. There’s a message from “Unknown Number”. I swipe my finger across the notification, punch in my passcode, and proceed to read the message.
UN: You were RIGHT
“What the-”
BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT!
Before I can finish my sentence, I get 4 new text messages. There’s one from Gunner, one from Adri, one from Ariana, and one from Blake. Each is different, and yet very similar. Gunner’s text says,
G: Yo I got dis txt from sum random # that says you wer right???
Ariana’s text says,
AM: Hey I got this mesage that said I shudnt have walked out. Is this you.?????
Blake sent a screenshot from a conversation with “Unknown Number”. The message says,
UN: You were WRONG
After sending the picture, Blake said,
BG: Dude…wtf is this?
Finally, Adri’s only sent a screenshot. It too is from Unknown Number. The message consists of simple directions:
UN: Screenshot this and send it to Samuel Agbaje. Don’t ask why just do it. All will be answered in time.
I stop in my tracks and look up. Who the heck is this person? How did he get my number? How’d he get all of our numbers? He’s clearly referencingour convo at the CC, but how did he know what we were talking about? This person must be spying on us…oh my gosh it’s the C-BZZT!!!
I look back down at my phone to see another text from Unknown Number.
UN: No I’m not a part of the Carrier and Blight Task Force. Very far from it actually. I'm just here to tell you, and your teammates, that there are multiple CBTF agents within a block of your current location all following you. This isn’t pure surveillance. They plan on capturing you all before you reach your next destinations. The other four have received this exact same text. Do with this information what you will - Database
My mind is racing, but I manage to piece together a response to the Unknown Number.
SA: How do I know this isn’t a set up?
UN: You don’t.
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