Angel of Darkness: Chapter 1

Layla was ready. She was always ready to kill. She enjoyed it. Well, no, she didn’t enjoy killing but she did enjoy the thrill of running under the dark covers of night and slipping through the shadows to sneak up on some poor unsuspecting person. She’d always enjoyed sneaking up on people. It used to drive her adoptive parents and brother crazy. Tonight, though she wasn't just innocently sneaking up on someone to pounce and giggle as they shouted and flailed. Tonight, her victims would be lucky if they had enough time to shout before they hit the ground. Still, for her, the only difference between the two was the pay it was much better for actually killing them. Layla looked up at the full moon. It was a little brighter than she would have liked but it would not upset her plans in the least. After all, her skills were way too good for a little more light to really affect them. Even so, she did enjoy the darkness. It really made her skills come out. Layla smirked internally. Her brother had no idea how suiting his nickname for her actually was. As the Angel of Darkness, she was most comfortable when there were fewer lights. Her main ability as an assassin had nothing to do with her skill at weapons. Many of the higher level soldiers could easily match her at that. What made her special was her ability to almost literally become one with the shadows. Even in broad daylight, she could just vanish and make herself unnoticeable by shrouding herself in the darkness of the shadows. She was able to not only hide in shadows but become one -- quiet, dark, and relaxed. Most of her employers would keep their houses fully lit with torches so that she would not be able to sneak up on them.  Little did they know that it would not hinder her much. It insulted her that they thought that it would stop her. She wouldn't kill them though not unless she was paid to do it. That was why Layla's favorite employer was Mr. Khalid Adjo. He seemed to trust her a little, leaving his mansion dark. He seemed to have dealt with many assassins before and was aware of the fact that just because she was an assassin did not mean that she wasn't trustworthy.
As Layla rushed away from his house, through the quiet streets of the town surrounding the palace, she made herself as unnoticeable as possible. The houses were small and dusty much unlike the brilliant fortress they surrounded, their only duty bring to provide the palace with anything it needed. All the other cities in the king’s domain were a few miles off into the desert so that an army entering would have to trudge through a lot of sand to get to the palace and would not have a chance to get more supplies. This, of course, didn't bother Layla, who was a desert rat, and a little sand was no problem for her. As she ran through the narrow, winding streets, a huge palace loomed out of the darkness. The domes on top of the sand colored towers were red and decorated with small plates of gold that curved into beautiful patterns. Tall walls surrounded the palace but walls were never a problem for Layla. As silent as shadows, Layla crept up to the wall and slowly hoisted herself up, finding tiny handholds that others couldn’t have been able to use. Once on the wall, she centered her point of gravity so that climbing the vertical wall became more like crawling along a flat marble floor. It involved centering herself in a way that brought most of her weight towards the wall instead of towards the ground. She had learned the trick when she had tried to escape some guards by climbing up the side of a rock face that should have been way too steep for her to do. She had managed after a lot of tries to thrust all of her weight against it and push herself up. Afterwards she had worked on her skills to hone them.
She made it to the top of the wall with ease and looked across the grounds of the palace. It was the only place in the desert with a thick carpet of vegetation. Irrigation systems and imported soil allowed a soft pillow of grass to cover the gardens. There was a small forest of trees surrounding the palace, which would make sneaking in without being seen so much easier. The moon let off a soft light that allowed her cat-like eyes to see almost everything. Layla allowed herself to drop from the top of the wall, landing on the balls of her feet and bending her knees to absorb the impact. Quickly, she flitted through the jungle of trees over to the palace. It was a little past midnight so the eastern side of the palace was obscured in shadows. Layla surveyed the nearby door that she was going to use to get into the palace. Two guards were standing in front of it. One looked ready to go to sleep but the other stood tall and alert. His hand was on his sword and his eyes scanned the landscape around the palace. He would be annoying to deal with, but not a challenge at all. Layla stole through the trees to the wall adjacent to the door and started to creep along it slowly. Normally she would have climbed the wall and dropped down behind them or climbed through a window but there were guards everywhere in the palace and her dark clothes would stand out harshly against the creme-colored pillars even in the dark of night. She kept on moving towards the guards slowly. Her ability was not infallible. She could still be seen if someone looked directly at her or saw her as she moved. She had to stay still until the guard was looking the other way. The tall guard turned his head her way and she froze, allowing every muscle not begin used to keep her standing, to relax. It was the first thing that she had discovered about walking in shadows; people were less likely to spot her if she ignored her instincts and relaxed. The guard’s eye passed over her without pausing and then it started to turn the other way. She started to move again but before she had even gone two feet, his head started to turn back to her. She stopped again and relaxed.  At this pace she wouldn’t make it to the door till morning. As the guard’s head turned the other way, she slipped a knife out of her belt and threw it at a tree. Her aim was perfect and it hit one of the higher branches with a soft thump. Both men tensed, ready for a fight. When nothing came running out of the trees at them, the taller guard said,
“I’ll go check it out,” in Kemetic.
He moved away quickly and Layla darted to the door. The other guard’s shoulders were slumped and his eyes were dull as he settled back into the same stupor that he had been in before. Layla wouldn’t even need to knock him out. The door he stood in front of was open. In the desert people never closed doors so as to avoid the heat and stuffiness that built up quickly inside closed spaces. Layla thought that she might have forgotten how to open doors and if she ever encountered one, she would have to break it down.
She kept on moving, her boots barely making a sound on the small walkway that surrounded the building. Within seconds she was standing behind the guard and slipping into the palace. Once inside she looked around to get her bearings. The corridors of the palace were lit by rows of torches so she had a pretty good view of the hall that she was in. The hall led to a bunch of hallways that lead to different parts of the castle. Layla didn’t know where the young prince’s chambers were but she did know where the servant quarters were because of the external architecture of the building. In the north, there had been a smaller building with holes in the roof to allow heat and smoke to escape. This was where the kitchens were and chances were that the servants lived near there. She darted down the hallway as fast as she could. There would be guards patrolling the hallways and she did not want to be noticed. Twice, she had to duck into what she hoped was an empty room to escape a guard. Finally, she made it to the servant quarters. Even at night, this part of the palace was hot and during the day it was like the inside of a volcano. Layla slipped into the first room she saw.
“Hello,” she whispered to the sleeping woman before clamping her hand over the woman’s mouth.
The woman woke up with a start, her eyes wide and she started to squirm against Layla’s strong grip.
“Shh,” Layla said in her ear, “I won’t hurt you. I just need some information. Calm down.”
Layla was glad that she had learned Kemetic when she had come there. She was fluent by now and the woman relaxed as she took in her words.
“Where are the prince’s quarters? Where does Oba Ahmose’s son sleep?”
The woman shook her head, her eyes fearful.
"I really need this information and I will stop at nothing to get it. Please tell me."
The woman shook her head again. Layla sighed and pulled a knife out of her belt. Her eyes filling with fear, the woman nodded fiercely and Layla removed her hand.
“At the top of the northeastern tower,” she whispered, tears beginning to stream down her face.
“Thank you. Drink this,” she said slipping a small vial out of one of the pockets in her jacket.
She rarely used these because they were so hard to find. She preferred to kill anyone who saw her face but this woman was innocent. She had just been sleeping when Layla had come in and attacked her. Layla had enough of a conscience that she would not kill her. The liquid in the vial came from a special flower that grew only in the seas surrounding Hellas and it would erase her memory of the last hour. The woman would think that she had slept well through the night. The woman started to squirm again, probably thinking that the vial contained poison but Layla forced it down her throat. The woman’s eye dulled and she fell back against the bed. Layla looked around to room. It was sad. There was one bed that woman barely fit on and a box of clothes. Layla could reach across and touch both walls with her arms. The conditions that she and the other servants lived in were despicable. She shook her head angrily and started to make her way to the northeastern tower. By an annoying coincidence it was right back where she had started. She walked and looked at the hall where the entrance to the tower was. There were four guards in front of the open door; each was looking down a separate hallway that led to the hall. One of them was looking right at her for a second but the hallway was dark enough that he couldn’t see much before she darted backwards. The area where they stood was well lit and, the guards being as alert as they were, there was no way that she could just walk up to the door without being seen. She would have to go the long way around. Layla placed her hands against the wall and started to climb. She went up until the roof was brushing up against the top of her head and then started to crawl sideways into the hall. None of the guards looked up or cried out in alarm. She made it all the way across the room and stopped above the guard on the far right. She wouldn’t be able to just crawl down and walk into the door. It was too well guarded so she dropped to the ground behind the guard. Her boots barely made a noise as she landed and she had pressed a finger in to his neck and shoulders and he fell to the ground, unconscious. Before the guard next to him could turn, he fell to the floor as well. The other two, hearing their companions fall to the floor, looked at her but then froze as two darts embedded themselves into their throats. These darts were deadly. The men had seen her face and there was no way that she could let them live. She took the darts out of their throats and ducked into the doorway that led up the steps. The unconscious guards would stay that way for another two hours so she had to get up and out as quickly as possible. There were no guards in the stairway leading to the tower but there would definitely be some at the top. The torches in the staircase sent flickering shadows across the steps but Layla wasn’t scared of shadows or dark. At the top, there was an open doorway. Layla, feeling sure that someone would be watching it, ducked down near the ground and poked her head around. She saw a small hallway at the end of which there was a door guarded by two heavily armed and very alert men.  They were staring straight at the door and there was no way that she could get to the door without being seen in the bright hallway. The walls were lined with so many bright torches that it almost looked like day. She drew two sleeping darts out of the holder on her leg, and with a flick of her wrist, the two men at the hallway dropped like stones. She darted past them and grabbed the darts out of their necks. Waste not, want not. Black mahogany darts were very rare and hard to get, not to mention easily traceable. Leaving a dart would be like leaving an address for them to find her. She opened to door to the prince’s room quietly and entered. The walls were light blue but in the darkness they looked more like the night sky. All around the room, toys were discarded and thrown about. On a four poster bed across the room, was a little boy, about ten years old.
Suddenly, he sat up.
“Are you going to kill me too?” he asked Layla, looking straight at her.
Despite her abilities as a trained killer, she jumped back in surprise.
“I saw what you did to my guards. I was peeking through the door. They’re dead, aren’t they? Are you going to kill me?” The boy had no fear in his eyes. He just looked curious.
“No one will come and help you and no one will know that I killed you. I will get away and you will die.”
“Okay,” he said.
He spoke in flawless Hellenian and how he had known that she spoke it as well, she wasn’t sure.  Layla stared at him. She wasn’t used to talking to her victims. She preferred to sneak up on them so they never really had a chance to talk. This was different.
“Your guards aren’t going to help.”
“I know, you killed them.”
“I do not. They are just unconscious. Actually, I killed two downstairs.”
The boy’s eyes widened a little but he still grinned at her.
“Okay, but you have to kill me right?”
“Um, yeah, sorry.”
“Okay.”
Layla stared again.
“Why do you want to die?”
“I don’t want to die but I don’t really care if I do you know. I haven’t done anything bad ever so I won’t go to hell. Heaven can’t be so bad.”
Layla continued to stare at him.
“So you don’t mind dying.”
“Nope,” he said.
Layla kept staring at him and reached to the knife in her belt. The boy’s eyes widened but he didn’t move. All of a sudden Layla didn’t want to kill him. She had never not wanted to kill a victim before. She usually had some incentive but this time the money wasn’t going to cut it. The boy’s expression was a strange mix of relief and regret as she took her hand away from the knife.
“Okay, so tell me. Why is it that you’re so accepting of death? Why is it that a eleven year old boy wants to die so badly?”
“My life sucks.”
Layla sighed. Was he just being melodramatic? Or was there actually something bad in his life? She couldn't tell.
“Hey, wait a sec,” the boy said, “How about you help me escape?”
Layla shook her head desperately. This little boy was starting to scare her a little. Who in their right mind would want to escape from their palace with an assassin that had been sent to kill them?
“I have to kill you.”
The little boy pouted.
“How about we fake my death. I have red ink that we can use as fake blood! We can put it on the sheets.”
“Ummmm….”
“Oh, please, please, please.”
Layla looked at his big hopeful eyes a realized that she could no longer kill the little boy. He was too innocent and undeserving. He was also one of the few people who knew she was an assassin and wasn't scared in the slightest. Almost without realizing it, Layla had come up with a plan to save him. There was an assassin known as Mask of Death. He killed his victims and then hid their bodies. Sometimes they showed up again, usually they didn’t. It would help not only the boy, but  the Angel of Darkness as well by relieving her of all suspicion.
“All right, you can come but only if you promise to do exactly as I tell you. Promise?”
The little boy nodded vigorously. Layla eyed him closely.
“Okay, I need that ink.”
The boy took out a bottle of red ink. She carefully spread it out across the sheets in the all too familiar pattern that appeared when she slit someone's throat.
“Okay put these away,” she said, handing him the empty bottles of ink.
She watched as he pitter pattered away. He was barefoot, and in pajamas. He couldn’t go running through the desert in just his PJ’s. Layla walked to his huge closet and searched for some clothes there. She chose a black silk shirt, a pair of black pants and some black moccasins. The moccasins had hard soles that would make noise if he ran but Layla could take them off with her knife. After laying the shirt and pants on the bed, Layla took a knife out of her belt and started to hack away at the string that held the soles to the shoes.
“Wow! That knife is black. I’ve never seen a black knife before.”
Layla just nodded and continued to carefully carve the soles off.
“Whatcha' doing’?” the boy asked.
“I’m taking the soles off of your moccasins so that you won’t make noise when you run. Put that shirt and pants on. The black will hide you."
        The little boy complied quickly. When he was dressed, Layla was surprised at how much he looked like her. Not only because of the black hair and eyes and dark skin, but also his smile the curve of his eyebrows and his regal nose were similar to hers. Looking at him, Layla saw her old self before her parents’ death; before she was forced back to Kemet, where her real parents had lived and died; before she’d escaped from the orphanage and searched the streets for a family and home. Layla shook herself away from the painful memories as the soles finally separated from the shoes.
“Now put these on as well.”
He slipped them on. The soft leather shoes didn’t make a noise on the stone floor.
“Okay, listen to me. If we are going to do this—"
“We are, we have to,” the boy said, his eyes filling unexpectedly with tears. “I can’t do anything here and Papa hurts me. Look at what he did to me.”
The boy pulled up the soft silk short and under it there were two black bruises about the size of a man’s fist. There was also a variety of smaller bruises that looked like a large man's fingers. Layla tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. She could never understand how a parent could do that kind of thing to their child.
“Okay,” she said, “I know, but you have to listen to me. If I’m going to get you out of here, I need you to do exactly as I say. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hide, you hide. You understand?”
The boy nodded.
“I need you to understand something else as well. I may have to kill someone. Can you handle that?”
“Yeah, totally,” he said, nodding, “My Papa makes me watch executions so that when I’m bigger I can handle it.”
Layla felt her throat closing up again. What sort of sick person makes an eleven-year-old child watch executions? Then she realized that she was probably about to do the same thing.
“Are you ready?”
He nodded.
“Stay quiet or else this won’t work and I will probably have to leave you behind.”
He nodded again. His dark eyes were wide with excitement and a little fear. Fear was good, Layla decided. It would keep him alive.
“Why am I doing this?” she asked herself but she couldn’t find an answer.
She took the boy’s hand and led him out the door. His two guards were sprawled across the floor. The boy stared at them as if trying to decide whether they were still alive or not. Layla tugged a little on his arm and they started down the stairs. The boy stumbled every few steps down the long staircase. Layla reminded herself that he did not have the same night vision that she did. She hadn’t developed it on purpose, like she had with her keen hearing and her intuitive knowledge of when someone was approaching her. Her ability to see relatively well in the dark had come on its own as Layla had spent countless hours practicing melting in the shadows. Almost carrying the boy so that he wouldn’t trip and cause a racket, Layla made her way down the dark stairwell. Finally, they made it to the door. Carefully, Layla peeked through the small crack of the slightly open door. She didn’t see anything except the 4 guards still lying on the floor, so she slipped out with the boy clinging to her hand like a lifeline. Together, they made their way back to the door that she had first come through. Both guards were still there -- one alert and the other snoring. Letting go of the boy’s hand she jabbed her fingers into their pressure points and they dropped like stones. The boy looked at her, his eye wide but not fearful. She grabbed his hand again and they ran through the tress. Layla stopped at the tree that she had thrown her knife at. She loved her knives and was loath to leave it behind. Also, black knives were just as uncommon as black mahogany and just as easily traced. She jumped down, landing gently beside the boy, when suddenly a guard appeared from behind a tall tree. He didn’t see them immediately and Layla allowed herself to relax back into the shadows purely by instinct but she felt the boy tense up next to her. The guards turned his head and saw them. Layla didn’t even think about it as she grabbed a dart out of the leather strap on her thigh and flicked her wrist. This dart would kill. Layla wasn’t sure if the guard and seen her face or not but she was not taking any chances. The boy gasped audibly as the guard’s skin paled and his eyes rolled back into his head. Luckily, there was no one around to hear him. They finished making their way to the wall.
“Climb on my back and hold on like a monkey,” she said kneeling down, allowing the boy to do so.
She swung her quiver around so that it hung in front of her and she took off the strip of darts on her leg and stuffed it in her pocket. The boy carefully avoided the knives around her waist and got on her back. He was surprisingly light but Layla still couldn’t climb the wall as she had before since she couldn't control his center of gravity. Luckily, there were plenty of trees on this side of the wall. She climbed one and used it to hoist herself onto the wall. Once there, she told the boy,
“Let go and sit here for a sec. Jump down when I tell you.”
The boy nodded. Layla let herself fall gently over the wall. She looked up at the boy.
“Jump,” she said as loudly as she dared. The wall was about twelve feet tall and the boy looked a little nervous about dropping that far down but he did anyway. Layla’s strong arms caught him easily. She set him down on the ground, put her quiver and leather straps where they belonged and said to the boy,
“Run with me.” She took his hand and started jogging at a pace that the boy could keep up with.

Poetry

So I realized that I don't post much poetry and it's not because I don't write it but because it is a lot more personal to me than my stories. Still I feel like I should post some and really I'm just saying this because I found a poem of mine and I feel the need to show it to you. It's definitely not my best and I have no idea what it means. My English teacher could probably tell me but since he's not here and I don't think he reads this blog, I may never know what I meant to say when I wrote this. Maybe you can tell me but probably not. Here, I give you a small view into the innermost workings of my mind.

The sun spreads over the mountain tops

Glittering on the brand new snow

I hear the birds singing and I know

angels are coming home tonight

Children's laughter fills me to the top

I wish to never feel empty again

Please never leave and listen to my last words

I'll never say anything else to you

Angels are coming home tonight 

So please wait until then to say goodbye

Angel of Darkness: Prologue

        The assassin was called The Angel of Darkness.
        Most people thought it was because of her terrifying ability to materialize out of the night and kill her victims without leaving a trace, but Khalid knew the nickname had originated before any of the killings actually occurred. When The Angel had been a small child living in Hellas, her dark hair and eyes had set her apart from the blond, blue-eyed people of that country. Her older brother had called her The Angel of Darkness after watching a play where a character by that name had looked like her. From the age of five her bother had called her “my little Angel of Darkness.” When she had decided to become an assassin, she had introduced herself to her employers by that name and it had caught on. Little did people know how much the name fit her in reality.
The Angel’s appearance was often described by the few who knew her identity as an Kemetian princess; And well, she acted like a princess sometimes, carrying herself with a strength and dignity that exuded her superiority over others. Kemetains were known for their straight black hair, curved eyebrows, and olive-toned skin and she was the perfect example of that particular stereotype. During her night job as an assassin, she only ever wore black clothes; knee-high leather boots with soft, flexible soles that didn't make a sound as she made her way across the marble floors of Khalid's home; linen pants covered by leather chaps and a tight black jacket that hung open to reveal an equally dark cotton shirt underneath. The clothes hugged her body, showing off her rock-hard stomach and thin waist. Her muscles were sinewy and smooth, coiled like snakes. As she stepped into the soft light of the torch that hung on the wall over their heads Khalid saw that she was as heavily armed as ever. Once, she had told him about every single one of her weapons. It didn't bother her to tell him because she knew that even if he did think to betray her, this knowledge would give him no advantage as she knew how to use all of the weapons exceptionally well. She was a walking arsenal. Hanging loosely around her waist, her leather belt held ten knives and a sword that were each as black as obsidian and as sharp as ice. Another leather strip, holding fifteen throwing darts, was tied around her left thigh. The Angel had told Khalid that half of the darts had a poison that would kill on contact and the other half of them were just sleeping darts. She was immune to both poisons. On her back, there was a black quiver filled with black arrows and a mahogany bow.  From what she had told him, Khalid also remembered the weapons that couldn’t be seen. Under her jacket, she had a knife attached to her right forearm with a clever release mechanism of her own design that deposited the knife in her had with a twist of her wrist. Another knife was hidden in her left boot and the black feathers that lined the bottom of her quiver were actually more throwing darts. There were probably some other weapons that she had decided not to tell him about but he knew better than to ask. He didn't know why she trusted him so much but he wasn't going to mess it up because she was quite useful to him.
“Welcome, Angel of Darkness, do you require anything before I give you your orders?”
“What must I do?” she asked.
Her voice was soft and sweet. Khalid was grateful that she spoke such flawless Hellenian. Khalid often got tired of having to deal with all of the Kemetic speakers.
“I need you to kill Oba Ahmose’s son.”
If the assassin was surprised, she didn’t show it. Khalid had made a deal with Oba, who was the king of Kemet, but the King, believing he was safe in his palace, had decided to neglect his payments. Khalid would show him how much of a mistake that was.
“And payment?” the assassin asked.
“It shall be granted to you upon your return. 1,500 yeli as promised.”
The assassin nodded. Khalid knew that she would not be worried about him breaking his word. If he did, she would kill him.
“Anything else?” the assassin asked.
Khalid looked at The Angel's face and shook his head, knowing that after that night, he would never see her again.

Super

New story. Yayz! I don't have any idea where this one is going. After all, it kind of just appeared out of no where about ten seconds ago. Normally, I'd write it on a paper and see if I'm still interested after two hours but since I have nothing better to do right now, this one is going straight to the blog. I apologize in advance if the story never ends.

The superpowers first began appearing at the end summer before my junior year in high school. This was probably the worst time the could have appeared because I was an emotional wreak. Why? Because my sister, who is probably the most important person in the world to me, went off to college. I don't know how many girls cry themselves to sleep when their sister leaves home for the first time but I did. For a whole week, I think I got a grand total of ten hours of sleep, most of it in one night, because I was too busy bawling my eyes out. There were too many memories with her in that room. We shared the room for as long as I can remember so every night before bed we would have long, drawn out discussions about everything and anything. I pride myself in saying that I probably know more about my sister than anyone reading this knows about them self. The same was true for her, after all, I told her almost everything, and anything I didn't tell her she figured out herself. It wasn't too hard for her to do since we are so. We look the same; black hair, green eyes, and red lips. When we wear the same clothes, the only way to tell us apart is by the fact that I am always three inches shorter than her (I hope to catch up at some point) and our facial expressions. She usually has a happy inviting smile on her face. People say that I need to show my teeth when I smile but I'm a little shy. She's a lot more confident than I am. I guess that's because I'm the younger sibling and because she is perfect. Her grades are always good, she's athletic as well, and popular. We are the same, I said it before, but since I came after, she's already done everything. I can't really beat her because I'm not better than her. So we are equally good at everything but she got all the praise and I am just the little sister. A lot of people assume that I resent her because of this but I don't. In a way, I don't really mind at all because I'm doing the best I can and so is she. The point is, we were really close and for the first time in out lives, we would not be together. I don't think she was as torn up about it as I was but I do hope she was a little sad. We dropped her off at college on the 25th of August. Five days later, (on the 30th for those who are too lazy to do the math) we heard about the superpowers. It came on the 6:00 news. They told us that recently people all around the globe had been found to develop unexplainable abilities. In Japan, there was a boy who had amazing hearing. Apparently, he had been sitting in his house and somehow heard police car sirens from three miles away. In South Africa, there was a girl who could go through solid objects. In Ohio, there were rumors of a boy having set a house on fire with flames shooting out of his hands.
"Folks, this is not a joke, this is the real deal. We still do not know the cause of these powers to develop but we will find out. For now, just be careful. They can be recognized by the black tatoos that appear on their arms when they are using their powers. If you or someone you know begins to develop powers, please call 911 immediately and they will come and help you out. "
I don't know who believed that bullshit. By help us out, they probably meant something more along the lines of lock you up so you can become our lab rat. I knew that if I knew anyone with powers, I would have kept it secret, even though the idea of powers scared me. Humans as it is always have power over one another. Some people are stronger, some people are smarter, some people have more money or influence and they always use that power over others. Bullies use their strength and their mean words to hurt weaker people, smarter people use their intelligence to get into better colleges, get better jobs, get money or they use it to tell people truths that they don't want to know. Everyone has power of some sort, even if it is something as simple as the ability to make people pity you. Either way humans already have that power over others so whose stupid idea was it to give them even more power? I have always been scared of people with power, my sister being the obvious exception. Since I have no confidence, I end up being the weaker one, after all, confidence is the best catalyst to power in the world. Someone without confidence, is a lot less likely to win anything no matter how much power they have. So, if you add to the scary superpowers the fact that one of the only people who had ever helped me out with my confidence issue had gone to college,it's not surprising that I wanted to shut myself in my room and never leave. That wasn't really an option though, so on September 1st, I went to school. Of course, everyone was talking about the powers. So far no one in the school had confessed to having powers but everyone knew that didn't mean no one had any. Luckily for me, my friends were not really the kind of people to gossip or make up rumors so I was able to ignore most of it. We pretended like nothing was happening. That first day of school was the first day in a long time that I saw my boyfriend. I apologized profusely for ignoring him during the my-sister-is-gone crisis but he, being the sweet guy he is only felt guilty for not being able to help somehow. So that was how everything started. Over the next few months, we saw videos on YouTube, and on the news of people who had powers. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was special effects and what wasn't but the world slowly got used to the idea of the Specials. That became their official name after a while. By the way, get used to is the perfect statement in this situation. I can't say that it was more than that. Very few non-Specials accepted them as part of society right away. I think everyone had the same fears I did, even if they couldn't put it into words. Specials were shunned the moment they "came out". I guess I'm not surprised, after all humans fear people who are different by nature. There was no way, in this world of discrimination that the Specials could fit in. I just didn't know how hard it was until I became a Special.

Kaya's Story

New story. This one just came to me while I was bored and I already completed it. It is more of a short story than a novel or anything and some people might argue that it isn't even a story. Say what you want. It is a bit long so bear with me. If you get bored feel free to ignore it. It is my personal opinion that if you get bored reading something it wasn't really worth reading in the first place. Stories are meant to be interesting. Look at me rambling. Anyway, here is the story.

I once knew a girl named Kaya. During summer, her usual routine was wake up at five. Go for an hour long run along the harbor until she reached the dojo where she studied Tae Kwon Do. There, after quickly eating a granola bar, she would proceed to do strengthening exercises for the next two hours followed by three hours of technique training. Then, she would stop for lunch. She usually spent her afternoons either at competitions or sparring with the other members of the dojo, usually men who stood at least a foot taller than her and had arms like pythons. She brought them down in one kick. On the weekends she went to the boxing gym instead, where she studied both boxing and kickboxing. In the evenings, she would hang out with her gang. Not the gang she was in but her gang. Some of the boys there called her Queen, some called her Boss, some just called her Kaya but always with respect. One person called her Honey.  Her gang was a nice gang. Just a group of misfits who had banded together to escape from the not-so-nice gangs. Mostly, they didn’t do drugs and none of them did anything worse than smoke. They didn’t vandalize and actually kept the parking lot that they hung out in pretty clean. Every once in a while they would get involved in an unavoidable scuffle with another gang but they never went searching for them and when they did get involved, they tried to keep the injuries to a minimum. Though Kaya’s capabilities greatly outweighed the abilities of everyone else, they still were all pretty decent in a fight, having been picked on a bullied for the longest time. When they had met Kaya, it had not been with the intention of creating a gang but to learn some simple martial arts to defend themselves. Even now, she would often give them tips and teach them moves from time to time. Every one of them was skilled enough that they usually didn’t even need weapons like broken bottles and bats to defend themselves, even if the other gang did. When they beat a gang they usually didn’t come back to bother them, though some were persistent. Kaya usually hung out with her gang until 10. Since she woke up so early, she had to go to bed relatively early as well. She would then go to her boyfriend’s house. They lived together. Though she was only 16, her boyfriend was 18 and living on his own in a small apartment. During the day, he would work very hard to pay it off. Kaya would undress and shower and come out wearing nothing but some underpants and a large t-shirt that she wore to sleep in. Her boyfriend, his name was James, had learned to control his erections a while back and though he was most definitely turned on by her, he didn’t want to have sex with her. Why? Well, first of all, she didn’t want to have sex with him quite yet. Though she sometimes seemed like a slutty boss woman, she was still pretty innocent. The other reasons were that he didn’t want a child, though he knew condoms could solve that but there were always accidents and also, he wasn’t quite sure that he was ready either. A lot of people assumed that a good-looking guy like him had already had sex at age 18 but that was not how he had been raised by his Christian parents. Though he had dropped most of their customs when he moved out and his belief long before that, the ideals that he had been following all his life still remained. So every night they lay in bed in each others arms. It had taken them both a while to get over their nervousness enough to actually fall asleep at first but now they were almost like a married couple. The guys in the gang were all under the strong impression that that was how all relationships should work. Most people who didn’t know the couple well, wondered if they were crazy. That was only because they always got the wrong impressing about the young couple. After all, Kaya was actually pretty enough. Her face was cute. She had a button nose and large brown eyes with crazy long lashes and a child’s smile that reached all the way to her eyes. Her hair was a soft brown color and it fell in smooth waves to just past her shoulders. Still, she wouldn’t have been more than cute if not for her body. Constant working out and a pretty healthy diet had given her a beautiful body. She had a flat stomach, decorated with the soft lines of a girl’s six pack. Since she often ran outside and even fought outside, she every inch of her body was tanned with the exception of where her shorts and her sports bra hid her skin. All over her body there was not even a hint of extra fat. Not only that but her grandmother had passed a relatively big chest to her. She was a C cup. Not too big but for most girls with a thin body like hers, B was the best they could manage. No guy failed to notice her body. At the same time they never failed to notice the guy on her arm. Kaya was 5”4’. About the perfect height for a fighter in her opinion but James was 6’2”.  This put a full 10 inches between their heights. Not only that but James was a boxer as well. He had broad shoulders and rippling muscles in his arms. He was one of the nicest people you would ever meet, if you allowed yourself to get close to him because no matter how you looked at him, he was a scary guy at first sight. So imagine you’re walking down the street and you see them together. A pretty girl with that over confident expression that only martial artist and gang leader can get and a big, kind of scary, guy next to her. As a couple, they were intimidating and they looked like they had rough sex every night. What very few people outside the gang knew what that they honestly and truly loved each other. They weren’t together for power or because they just needed a lot of sex and the other person was always willing or any other reason that most people assumed. They actually truly cared. Anyway. In Baltimore, the city where all of this happened, Kaya was known as a gang leader by street kids, an amazing martial artist by the sports community and by any other adult who knew her, a delinquent child who had been kicked out by her rich parents. Kaya had been born into relatively rich family but because of her refusal to follow in the family business, her parents had cut her off, which was why she was living with her boyfriend. But I didn’t get to know that side of her until much later on because at school she was a totally different person. You see, while her parents cut her off and refused to see her, they still had hopes that she might follow in the family business because otherwise they might have to give it off to someone else. You see, Kaya had one younger sister but Carolina was not quite as bright as her older sister. Yes, she had a charisma that would make people flock towards her, which was important as a business leader but when it came to actual intellectual stuff and learning, her sister was not quite up to snuff. No, Carolina’s talents lay in getting people to love her. She was kind, happy, and always helping others. She wasn’t quite as pretty as her sister but she also had the same cuteness about her. At school, she was always everyone’s favorite mascot and everyone wanted to be friends with her. Both their parents knew that if the sisters worked together they could very quickly lead an empire in business but, while Kaya could have led a small empire on her own, Carolina would need just a little help in the actual business department. So all in all, Kaya’s parents still had hopes that she would lead that empire that they had left behind for her so they sent her off to boarding school. That was where I knew her. At boarding school everything from her personality to her interests were different. She hid everything about the real her, shedding of her gang leading-martial artist skin the moment she stepped on campus. I understand that she wanted to hide her gang life. After all, the school we went to, while not quite as strict and pompous as other private boarding schools, was still a private boarding school where students were expected to have a certain amount of decorum. Plus, Kaya understood what her parents wanted from her and while she refused to give up martial arts and take over the empire, she did understand the benefits of a good education so she always did her best to not get kicked out. And she was very good at it. Kaya was a genius. She took relatively difficult classes and somehow, without studying, was able to pass them all with A’s or high B’s. In her book, anything below an 80 was a failing grade while plenty of other students would have been happy with a 70. Her PSAT scores were just below 200. Everyone who knew her, had to admire her mind because it was sharp as a knife. Most people would have approached her a become friends with her, even if it was just to siphon off her intelligence but unlike in Baltimore, where she led a gang and had a boyfriend as well as multiple friends at the dojo and boxing gym, at school she was quite unapproachable. That was what happened when you hid an entire chunk of your life, you stopped trusting people, or more like you stopped trusting yourself to shut up about it. You also keep people at arm’s length so that they aren’t able to even catch a glimpse of that life by accident. So at school, she had a couple friends but even so it was not strange to see her sitting alone in her room on a Saturday evening. These friends, while they like Kaya had also resigned themselves to the fact that they wouldn’t really be seeing much of her all the time. For Kaya, who was not an unsociable person, this could be torture sometimes which was why she got into reading manga, usually the ones centered around martial arts and trying to see if they were actually physically possible. Some were, most were not in any way possible but she enjoyed reading them none the less. At school she also avoided guys like the plague but if you didn’t know about her other lifestyle, you probably would not have known. You see, in Baltimore, most of her friends were guys. All of the members of her gang were male and most of the people at the dojo and the boxing gym were male as well and she seemed to get along better with guys anyway. At boarding school she had a couple guy friends but considering how much she was surrounded by guys in Baltimore, having so few guys around really annoyed her sometimes. Still she was determined to not let that other side of her life show. To do this she sometimes when to extremes. So that people would not ask why she was so fit, she always wore baggy clothes under which she could have been thin as hell or relatively chubby. She let people assume what they wanted but nudged them in the chubby direction by avoiding sports. She did not run and whenever she was expected to lift something that was a little heavy, she would feign weakness, though she was most likely a lot stronger than most of the guys in her grade. During yoga, which she was required to do if she wasn’t doing a sport, she would do as little as she had to so that she would appear a little lazy and not very strong. She was also required to do one team sport a year so she did Ultimate Frisbee in the Spring, keeping a watchful eye out for everyone else to see when they got tired so that she could feign it as well. Some people who were sharp enough to realize became aware of the fact that her body was actually quite athletic with long legs and slightly broad shoulders but she always denied any sports activity at all and lazed around all day to strengthen those assumptions. By the end of the year no one who knew her would have ever mistaken her for a sporty person. I was one of her few guy friends. We talked from time to time but I never really thought about her as more than a friend because I was superficial and thought that I only liked girls with pretty bodies, (little did I know). That was until I discovered her secret. One day, Kaya disappeared on one of her random I’m-not-going-to-be-sociable-anymore moments. We always assumed that at these times she was in her room but I discovered that day that she wasn’t and that she spent her sports free afternoons doing other things. Now this happened in March of our Junior year. Kaya had already been fooling us for two and a half years about what she really was. Anyway, I just happened to find her by chance. You see in the afternoons, when everyone else was doing clubs and sports, we had assumed that Kaya was just lazing around but we had been wrong. Everyday while we were sweating our asses off, she was doing the same. She would go down to this section of the woods between the lower fields and the river and work her ass off. For a martial artist, getting out of shape is the worst thing ever and the food at school was not really healthy enough for her to stay in shape simply by lazing around so every day she would go out into the woods and work out.  She found a nice tree there and tied rope and cloth around it to use as a kicking and punching post. She used low branches on a tree to do curl up and pull ups and she would run around the forests for at least half an hour to get her cardio going. Everyone wondered why her hair was always a mess and the answer was because she was always working out in the afternoons but she couldn’t shower before dinner without seeming weird and so her hair was always a mess. Anyway, I happened to find her completely by accident. You see I’m on the crew team and so the path down to the boat house runs alongside the woods where she practiced. Me and some friends were waiting for our crew race to start one day and were throwing a baseball around. One of them threw it a little hard and it flew into the woods behind me. I was sent after it. I used to wonder everyday what would have happened if it had been one of the other guys who discovered her but I found out after a while that I was not the only person on campus who she had sworn to secrecy. Anyway, I ran after the ball and saw her there kicking a tree wrapped in rope over and over again. She was dressed only in shorts and a sports bra and I was able to see the strong muscles in her stomach, shoulder and arms. As she kicked the post, her legs muscles flexed and created strong lines all up and down her calves and thighs. A bead of sweat dripped down her head. “Kaya?” I said, not really sure whether to believe what I was seeing. Kaya turned on me so suddenly that I was afraid that I would become her new kicking post. “Shit, Daniel, what the hell are you doing here?” “Getting my ball,” I replied. I was a little scared of her at the present moment so the idea of giving her my usual snappy reply didn’t even come to my mind. I saw her eyes drift to the ball in my hand and then back to my probably incredulous face. “Whatever,” she said and proceeded to continue kicking the post. I didn’t move an inch. “Get out,” she said, “and if you tell a single person what you saw I will kill you.” I heard the threat in her voice. Though there was no killing intent, I understood that if I told anyone, I would get myself into serious shit. “Why not?” I asked once again fearing for my health. Kaya stopped kicking her tree and turned to face me. “No one needs to know okay? Just leave it at that.” I didn’t know what to say so I left and I knew even before I was fully aware of it that I would keep her secret and not just because she threatened me. In her last sentence, I had heard something. If it had been anyone but Kaya I would have called it pleading or desperate but she was Kaya and neither of those words fit into her personality. For her, people finding out about this secret would not be a good thing, so being the gentleman that I am, I kept my lips sealed. Since that day I tried to get her alone as much as possible so that I could question her on why she was choosing to hide that side of her and I began to realize something. Though she never told me anything other than to please shut up, I noticed a change in her when we were alone. It seemed that the moment I had learned about the martial arts, I got to see the whole other side of her. She was harsher than usual but also more sociable. When I was with the gang leader Kaya there was never an awkward silence. There were silences sometimes but that was usually because she told me to shut up. Though she was not as sweet or soft or kind as the Kaya I knew, she was still nice enough in more of a street way. She was more confident and stronger when she was gang Kaya and I grew to like gang leader Kaya more than the one she pretended to be around others. “Why do you completely change your personality around when you are around others? Like, I understand the martial arts a little bit and maybe why you hide them but I don’t see why you have to completely act like a different person.” She looked at me from below in a way that makes you feel like you should shut up really soon or you’ll get a fist in the face and I expected her to tell me to shut up again but instead she actually gave me a real answer. “It’s hard for me to show this side and not everything. Plus, the way I act around them is still a part of my personality. You know those really big, bad guys who are punks all the time and they are harsh all the time but then you show them a kitten and they act totally different? Well, I’m like that I guess and you people are my kittens.” I wasn’t sure how to answer to that so I didn’t. None of her other friends noticed the small changes in Kaya. She could have been an actress and I actually recommended that to her. “Yeah, you could be like an actress in an action movie and you could do your own stunts and everything. It would be totally awesome.” After I said this she looked at me with such a strong are-you-kidding-me face that I actually stopped believing it for a second. Still, that thought she would have been an amazing actress after all the practice that she got at school. That was something that I didn’t understand at the time. She wasn’t really acting. What she had told me had been completely true but I think I can explain it better than a big man and a kitten. Think about how you act with your friends, your parents, your siblings, your teachers, or with strangers. The answer to all of these is different. Just like you automatically act differently around your teacher and your friends, Kaya automatically acted different around her friends here and the people who knew about her martial arts background. But still throughout most of the rest of my junior year, I didn’t understand why she hid it. Finally, just a week from the end of school, she told me. “I’m actually a gang leader.” For the rest of the week she told me most of what you see here and the rest I deduced on my own. You see for her, martial arts and gang life were incredibly connected. She was in a gang because of martial arts, she had taught the people in her gang martial arts, her boyfriend was a martial artist and every day after practicing martial arts she would head out to the gang. The reason she didn’t tell anyone about martial arts had nothing to do with the martial arts but with the gang. After all she might have been asked to leave the school and it might have ruined her chances of getting into college if they had found out about her gang. So she kept quiet and she kept her gang/martial arts personality away from everyone and became the perfect student. I know that there were a couple other people at school who knew about her martial arts but of those I think I may have been the only one she ended up telling about her gang life. So I’m  writing this down. No one has to read it really. In a way, I don’t think anyone should read this because this is her secret. All the same, I needed someone to know now that she’s dead. For the past 63 years I have been keeping this secret and I know I’m not the only one who knew it but I think I’m the only one who will tell it. In the end, Kaya did what she wanted. She became a top tier MMA fighter and opened up her own dojo after getting a degree in business at Yale. She never did end up taking over her father’s company but Carolina married a very proficient young business man who agreed to keep the family name going so that problem was solved. Kaya did end up marrying James and they lived together in Baltimore for their whole lives. I realize now that I am writing up this story that I was in love with Kaya at the time but I didn’t notice maybe because some part of me knew full well that I was not ever going to get her. Anyway, this is her story. Do with it what you want but make sure that everyone learns about her because I don’t want Kaya to be forgotten.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

For the next few weeks, Will worked his hardest to learn the ropes about the ship. He was a fast learner and though he often tried to deny it to himself, he quite enjoyed working with the men. They treated him like scum and many a times he had gotten beat for saying or doing something wrong but he was hardworking and the more he learned the less he got beat. There were still times of course when the men decided that they needed something to play with and they would use him. Under their abuse, and the hard work that he was constantly doing, Will became hard as muscles spread under his skin. His hair grew lighter with the excess of sea water and sunlight and his skin grew darker. For the most part, he worked with his shirt off and his feet bare, since his shoes were not easy to climb the ropes with and his billowing shirt just got in the way, especially on a hot day. It was after about four weeks when Will saw his first pirate battle. The ship, which was called Midnight Stallion, pulled up along side a rich trading vessel. Without any warning, they readied their cannons and fired at the ship, destroying all resistance in seconds. Will helped keep the ship steady, all the while protesting against his own actions.

"They're pirates, I shouldn't be helping them," he thought to himself, but at the same time it felt so right to him and he kept on going, cheering along with the pirates as the men boarded the other vessel, taking the money, food, gunpowder, and anything else they could carry. In minutes the other vessel had been completely emptied and burned. Something twisted in Will's gut as he heard the screams of the crew of the other ship and it twisted even more when he realized that he was able to ignore it very easily. 

"Who am I?" he asked himself. 

Elizabeth was calling in favors that she had hoped she would never have to use. She had called together a crew from Tortuga and  had set sail immediately, scourging ports for any news of Calico Jack but most did not have any news and the ones that did, it was only vague hints. It wasn't until she reached a small port on the coast of Singapore that she heard anything. A merchant's vessel from nearby had been attacked and burned by pirates sailing under Calico Jack's flag. There had only been two survivors lucky enough to escape in a small rowboat. Elizabeth herself went and talked to them but they only told her what she already knew. 

"They were a few leagues south of here a few days ago," was all they said and Elizabeth growled in frustration. They would  be long gone already, but she decided to search the area anyway, stopping on any ports along the way for more news. Unknown to her was the news that would never be said to her face, the news that the King of Pirates, Elizabeth Turner was back at sea and that anyone who crossed her path, better beware. 

Every so often, the Midnight Stallion would dock at a port and most of the men would get off and head to shore to get supplies and drunk. They would come back the next morning, reeling and squinting in the sun but always with everything they needed. At these times, Will was always confined to the boat though he often pleaded to be let off. He usually got a good pounding when he did this but every time they made it to a port he would do it again and again. The men would often gossip when they came back on board but Will was usually excluded from this as well and would a smack upside the head if he tried to join and yet he tried to join every time. Sometimes he would pick up small tidbits but never anything of importance and never anything that really interested him. There would be times when one of the men would talk with him about the outside world but Will quickly caught onto the fact that he never said anything of importance either and Will knew that the crew was trying to hide something from him. Over the past few weeks, it had seemed to Will as if he had grown closer to the crew but at the same time, they felt more and more distant and after making port once, they were downright nasty to him. Beating him till he was lying panting on the floor after having accidentally walked in on one of their conversations. Later that same week, they made port at another dock and the crew had shut Will back up in the brig. The harsh change from his days out in the sun to confinement made Will itch to move around and he found himself doing exercises in his cage, just to get his blood flowing. Being unable to sail made him miserable and grouchy. It was then that the Midnight Stallion clashed with the Turquoise Falcon.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2

Later that night, Elizabeth walked out of the small house that she shared with her son. It was nothing special, just a few rooms but it was comfortable and cozy. She walked over to the cliff, where her son enjoyed playing and called his name.
"Will! Will! It's time to come inside and get ready for dinner. You need to wash up. Will! Will! Where are you?" Elizabeth called. "Where is that boy?" She walked closer to the cliff and then looked down. Below her, in the sand, she saw fire burning words. They said,
"My name is Calico Jack and I have your son."
Elizabeth screamed and called out,
"WILL!!" but no one answered. She ran back to the house as fast as she could. There she changed into her clothes so that she could disguise herself as a man. Then she grabbed enough money to rent a ship and crew. She probably wouldn't need it though, her name was enough to get any pirate at her feet.

Will was sitting in the ship's brig. He leaned against the wall wondering how he had gotten into that mess. From above, he heard the shouts of the crew and the Captain, and in a strange way, he longed to be up there, helping them make the ship go. Tightening the lines, letting the sail down, even swabbing the deck would have been great if only he was a part of that.
"It's in my blood," he said. "Sailing is in my blood. I can feel it."
For the next few days he had no visitors, except a tiny man with a large stomach, who brought him food and drink, though barely enough. After the fourth day down in the brig, a man came down. He was tall, with brown hair and a close cropped beard. He wore calico from head to toe and had a sword at his belt.
"Hello, boy. My name is Calico Jack. I'm sorry for taking you from your home like that but your mother owes me something and well, she's a bit harder to catch ain't she. Or at least that's what my first mate tells me. I guess he's right. Anyway, I have decided that until your mother gets here, you will help out on deck. You ever sailed a ship before boy?" the Captain asked.
"No," Will said, as petulantly as he could. The Captain reached forward and slapped him across the face. Will cringed at the sudden pain. His mother had never hit him and apart from a few scuffles with the town boys, he really hand't gotten beat either. This pain was a sharp wake-up call for him.
"You will address  me as either sir or Captain, understood?"
"Yes, sir," Will said, through gritted teeth.
"Very good, now shall we go. My men will be glad to teach you. Don't worry their methods are very good, you will learn quickly," Calico Jack said, a twisted smile creeping across his face. He grabbed Will roughly around the arm and pulled him up the stairs to the main deck. There, everyone stared at him for a seconds and then they smiled to match their Captain's.
"You men need to teach this young one how to sail and in less than a day. Think it can  be done?"
The men laughed loudly.
"Yes, sir!" they called in perfect unison. The Captain pushed Will forward. He stumbled and crashed into one of the men. The man pushed him back and Will fell on the floor. Everyone laughed at him as he stood up with as much dignity as he could muster.
"Back to work, you scurvy dogs," the Captain called out and everyone turned back to their work. The man that had kidnapped Will on the beach walked forward.
"I'll be teaching you how to sail boy and you better pay attention as if your life depends on it because it just might," he said. Will noticed that the man was missing a chip off of his front tooth.
"Got it," he said.
The man raised his had in an obvious threat.
"Sir," Will added, reluctantly and the First Mate smiled.
"Now you're getting it."