This was written by Christopher "Wani" K and may only be used on my site (http://skistory.atspace.com). SKI, Super Kids Initiation and all other names are trademark of Waniou. If SKI or SCI, or any event in this series take place, or are used somewhere else, it is entirely by coincidence. --- Story #51 --- Dedicated to my grand-dad. Rest in peace, we all miss you. -Prologue- "Mr Matthewson," Ann said, "meet James, the newest member of SKI." Mr Matthewson, a thirty-something man, looked up and down at me. "Nice to meet you, James, I'm the coordinator here. What can you do?" I glanced at Ann. I'd told her, although I wasn't sure why. Melissa later (much later) told me it was a Monster trick, similar to what she does. "What he does isn't important. We've decided he deserves to be here." "Uh huh. Why?" Mr Matthewson asked, looking suspicious. "We don't need to give a reason, Jeff," Ann said. "James is in the SCI or we leave." "Okay, okay, if you say so, no need to threaten," Mr Matthewson said. "Come on, James, I'll show you around." Come to think of it, the poor guy never did find out what I can do. ---*Secrets Reprise*--- When I awoke, I was blindfolded, gagged and tied in some way I couldn't see but was incredibly uncomfortable. I knew I was lying down. "-way, I'm doing my own thing," I heard a voice from behind me, then a laugh from in front. "Don't parents just suck?" the voice from in front said. It sounded young, no older than Dharma. "Mine, yeah, but yours will let you bring any random chick home to infest her," Behind-voice laughed. Oh God, I'd been captured by rebellious teenagers. As long as they weren't emo... Anyway, time to escape. Very simple, I just needed to remove the friction on the ropes and they'd come right off. I focused... nothing happened... "Whoa, hey, this guy's awake," the guy behind me said. "And trying to do something. Nice try but we've bound your powers. You can't do anything. So might as well just sit tight." "Mmhmm," I managed to say through the gag. Ugh, the thing tasted like socks. Probably was a sock. Eww... Suddenly the two guys stopped and chucked me into a cell. Then they raised me to my knees and undid my gag and blindfold and pushed me over before leaving me, closing the door with a loud clang. Well, at least I could see and didn't have to taste sock. The cell was, well, boring. Made of large stone bricks with a toilet in the corner. Either they were going for the cliché prison look or they had no originality. I rolled onto my side and managed to slide over to a corner where I propped myself up against a wall. Whatever they'd done to bind my powers was still in effect. I was stuck pretty well. I glanced down at my belt, only to see Rita and Amy's remote control whatsit had been taken. Makes sense, but Rita and Amy wouldn't be too happy about that. I glanced up at the ceiling. More stone. Perhaps they were trying to make me go crazy. Like a white-out, except a stone-out. Which sounds like smoking marijuana... I sighed and began humming "Run to the Hills". Two hours and many Iron Maiden songs later, the cell door opened. I was knocked to the ground, blindfolded but not gagged, and carried out of the room. "So, where are we going?" No answer. "You are Monsters, right?" Still no answer. "Am I being carried by a mute?" "Quiet!" a voice from in front of my shouted. "You are being taken to a member of the Inner Circle! You will be silent!" "Ah, so you are Monsters. So AvengeCorp and the Monsters are working together?" No answer. "This is the bit where you accidentally tell me too much." "No, this is the bit where you shut up," the voice in front said. The two stopped suddenly and dropped me on the ground. "Hello, James," a new voice said in front of me. I sighed. It was one I recognised. "Hello, Deicos," I said. "Ah, you remember me? Well that saves lengthy introductions," Deicos said. "Remove his blindfold." I blinked a few times in order to adjust to the light. Deicos was sitting on a simple metal chair in front of me, wearing a sort of black plate mail. Apart from him, I couldn't see anything else. "Nice outfit. Going for the evil overlord look there? Actually, this whole place is very nice. Well decorated, you have the whole evil prison look done very nicely. Well done." "Your talk bores me," Deicos said, standing up. "Do you know why you're here?" "I could think of a few reasons," "I could guess what you're thinking of. But you're most likely wrong. You're here because you interest me. You, James, are an enigma. Mike, Dharma, Rita, Amy, Duncan, Tom, even Olivia, Melissa and Blade have reasons for their powers but you? No, you are an enigma. You can do all these things and I don't know why or how. I want you to tell me," "Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you," "I was afraid you'd say that," Deicos said. "Well, not really afraid, more hopeful because this is the far more interesting way of doing things," he said with a smile, then nodded to one of the lackies. He came and put a helmet of some kind on my head. "We've been doing some research into the way the brain sends signals and I think you'll like the results. Well, probably not. Let's find out. "Oh, I should also warn you, don't bother trying to use your powers, they're still blocked." The lackie gave a small device to Deicos, about the size of a palm pilot. "Now then, we can activate different areas of the brain using this device. Let's try this one," he said, touching the device. Feelings of absolute joy bubbled through my brain and I fought the urge to giggle. "Pleasure, as you can tell. Now let's try this one." I screamed as the pleasure was transformed into an intense pain. I felt as if my skin was burning off me, my bones were broken and I vomitted over the ground. Deicos lifted his finger off the device and the feeling disappeared instantly. Still I sat shaking at the memory of it. "Interesting... It seems our research has worked. Let's try this one," he said pressing another button. A dot appeared in front of me and I jerked back. Then a dot appeared next to it, then a mouth underneath it. "Very cute," I said in a shaken voice. "You like it? That's your sight of course, so it works in a same was as Mr Nicholson's powers do. But, unlike him, I can do this too..." The smiley face disappeared and a putrid smell filled my nose before vanishing. "Smell. Taste too, but that works in much the same way." Then a high pitched squeal appeared in my mind and I cringed. It was so high, higher than any note I'd heard before. "Hearing. You know, by bypassing the ear, we can create a sound much much higher than the ear can actually hear. Very fun. Are you enjoying it too?" "I'm just enjoying your company," I tried to say and finally the noise stopped. "Now this one is my favourite of the senses. Let's try this," he smiled and an itch appeared on my neck. I tried to scratch it before realising my hands were still bound. Then the feeling began to move down my body. I struggled harder to get my hands unbound so I could stop the itch. It was there! Everywhere! Filling my body! "Ah! Stop it! Make it stop!" I cried out, leaning forward, hitting the ground desperate to make it stop. "No, no, leave him. I'm enjoying this. Okay, that's enough now," he smiled and the feeling stopped. The two lackies had run to my side and now picked me up and sat me back on the ground. "Okay, that's enough of that now. Let's try something else," he said, pressing somewhere else on the panel. Nothing was happening. How strange, I thought I'd suddenly be in some kind of pain like had happened before but nothing knew had happened, unlike the other feelings, some of which were fine but the itchiness was just terrible, it felt as if a million ants werecoveringmybodyandIcouldn'titchitanditwashorribleand "Ah!" Ishoutedoverthenoiseinmyhead. "Get out of my head!" Icried. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. Deicos was laughing. "I wasn't sure how stimulating your conscious thoughts would affect you but that was great! Okay. That's enough fun and games. I think... this one." he said and everything went black. Deicos's voice appeared in my mind. It was a week ago. Dharma had snuck around to my room in the SKI place and we were making love. I moved my hand to her top to pull it off and she kissed my face. A month earlier. Olivia was dribbling a basketball. I was defending the hoop. She shot! I jumped to block it, ignoring gravity, and suddenly the ball burst into flames! "Ah!" I cried, flying out of the way too slowly. Olivia laughed as my arm caught fire, then she extinguished it. Dharma glared at us from the sidelines. Still earlier. We were investigating someone we thought the Monsters were targetting. So we had to creep across the lawn, invisibly due to Duncan's powers. However, he can change what different people see, so to add humour, he'd made us look like World War II soldiers. We had to try not to laugh before Dharma hit him over the head. Lee uncomfortably arrived at the SCI. "Hi, my name's Lee. I'm a, uh, electrokinetic. Hi." Dharma's first day at the SCI. She was much more confident. My first day at the SCI. I remembered Ann trying to get me in without saying what my powers were. Nervously waiting on the plane flight to Africa. Who was I? Would they find out I wasn't suppose to be on this plane? What would they do if I was found out? The flight attendant walked over to me, assumed I was afraid of flying and tried to calm me down. It worked, she was nice. My first memory. I awoke in a dark alley... where was I? How did I get there? I stumbled out of the alley, my head sore and looked around. People... so many people... what did they want from me? Everything went blank. I heard Deicos's voice cry out. The pain! I could hear something, like a faint whisper, but a pain in my head! It was unbearable! I looked around at the stone floor beneath me... so three blurred figures where Deicos had been. I couldn't see, the pain... I passed out in a pool of my own vomit and sweat. A man walked down the road. He didn't stand out too much, although it was obvious he was important, not only by his suit and briefcase, but by the way he carried himself. He was important and he knew it. He had short grey hair, but that was the only part of him that made him look old. He had no wrinkles on his face and his body looked strong. I'd never seen the man before, yet he was familiar. I knew him, I just didn't know how. He suddenly turned down a side street. Graffiti covered the walls and in the distance a group of four boys, ranging in age from 13 to 18. They were hoodlums and the man knew this. "Oi, check out this guy," one grinned and the group spread out to surround the man. The man stopped, glancing at them. "You seem to be in my way," he said, looking at the one who seemed to be the leader. "What's in the case?" the leader replied. "Nothing of any importance to you, nor anything you could understand," the man said. "Hey, this guy is f-ing dissin' us!" another guy shouted. "We should f- him up!" The man sighed. "You still seem to be in my way, so if you could please leave." The same guy pulled a gun out and held it to the man's head. "We'll leave when you give us the f-ing case and anything else you have." "You swear too much. Do you think it intimidates me? Really, all it does is waste words." "You f-ing talk too much! Drop the f-ing case!" the leader shouted, drawing his own gun. "Guns. Tch. Such a useless weapon. You should use knives, they're much more effective. You know why?" "Shoot the son of a -!" "Because they make much less noise, much less mess and even better," a gurgling sound came from the throat of the boy with the gun against the man's head, "you can kill someone before they even know they've been hit." The man withdrew his knife from the boy's heart and the boy dropped to the ground, dead. The leader raised his gun, but before it reached its destination, the man had dropped to the ground, spinning around, slicing his gut open and stabbing one of the two remaining gang members in heart. Then he withdrew his knife and stabbed the last, the thirteen year old, in the arm. The boy screamed in pain, dropping his gun. The man withdrew his knife, wiping the blade on the boy's sleeve before folding it and returning it to his inside pocket. "You're lucky, you get to live. If I were you, I'd find something more productive to do with your life." "Who... who the f- are you?" the boy cried, clutching the stab wound. "I didn't introduce myself? How rude. Let's see... you can call me, say, Shaitan." I opened my eyes to find a brilliant golden light above me. I tried to move my arms to shield the sun's rays but they refused the order. "You're awake," a voice came. That voice... I knew it... It was familiar... someone important... I tried to recall but my memory failed me. "I'm sorry, I had to sedate you but only for a few minutes. You can't know who I am, not yet anyway. But don't worry, I've given you back all the equipment they stole from you so Rita and Amy will find you shortly," I tried to say something, to look at the person by my side but my body wouldn't listen. My voice came out as a groan. "Shush, don't use your energy. And don't worry about finding me, you'll find me when the time comes. Good luck, James," he said and walked away from me. Who was he? Whoever he was, he told the truth. Within five minutes I struggled to my feet before the rest of SKI ran to my side. "James!" Dharma called out, hugging me, almost knocking me over. Amy pushed her out of the way and began checking how I was. "You look pretty worn out. What happened to you?" "The Monsters took me... they wanted to know who I was," I said, then passed out again. --- END ---