Progress-Report

We bade each other good night and went to bed, so ready to sleep-on-it it was wasn’t even funny. The next morning dawned with me waking up on my ceiling. I let out a scream and fell to the floor, much to my extreme embarrassment. Michale, my brother, rushed in and found me sitting up and rubbing my bum awkwardly.

“What happened?” He said, sounding worried; I grinned at him, trying to belay those worries.

“Nothing to worry yourself over,” I told him, still trying to wipe sleep from my eyes and mind, “I just woke up on the ceiling, that’s all. If it had been something really bad, I prolly wouldn’t have woken up at all.”

He grinned in relief and walked over and helped me up. He slung an arm around my shoulders and we both walked downstairs, grinning the creepy twin grin that everyone hated when we were small. Mom and Dad both looked at us and looked away just as quickly. They didn’t like it when we started getting along, it meant more practical jokes than usual, but this time it wasn’t like that.

We sat down to breakfast and ate, enjoying a plain bowl of cereal in exchange for the lightness of the scrambled eggs Mom had made. I wiped my mouth with a napkin, signaling to Michale that I was done, and we both left, still together in that strange twin way. We got dressed and met outside. I was forced to take note the fact that even though we were getting along swimmingly we still managed to pick almost polar opposites as far as clothing choices went. He was dressed in a pressed white shirt, pristine white suit pants and matching white shoes and suit jacket. The only things he was wearing that weren’t white was the tie, which was black satin, and his belt, which was silvery black. I was wearing a black t-shirt, worn blue jeans, a chain belt I had made, beat up tennis shoes, a light black jacket, and orange, red, green, and yellow spots of color about my person from random bits of jewelry and other such items.

Without saying where we were headed, we started off for the school, meaning to see if the librarian was there, so that we could ask her a few questions. We reached the school in half the time it usually takes, even driving there, and it surprised the both of us. I looked over at Michale and found he was giving me the same suspicious look.

“So I take it you didn’t do that,” I said, “at least, not on purpose?”

He grinned and nodded, “Got that in one.”

I smiled and we entered the building. I was slowly noticing something odd about what we were doing. Everything we did almost seemed outside of the time stream that everyone else was in, since we walked right by a guard, who didn’t seem to see us.

“I agree, it must be a different dimension or time stream,” Michale said, looking around as we continued our journey to the library. We traded grins once again and found ourselves before the library without further ado.

“Ok, this is getting ridiculous,” I muttered, pushing the door open with a thought.

“I agree,” Michale whispered, as we entered. Both of us could feel that our strength was growing, as if by some unknown power. I spotted the librarian and she saw me at the same
time.

“What do you want?” She hissed, glaring at me, “I told you two days ago that I wanted nothing to do with you. Your power is completely beyond my control and I would really appreciate it if you never came back to this library ever again.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked her, “You mean you didn’t cause what’s happening to me?”

She strode over to me and grabbed my shirt front.

“Of course not!” She growled, “Do you think I would allow you to have this power if I did do this to you? No! I would peter it out so that you would gain less and less until I got most of it! That’s how I’ve lasted so long, don’t you see? You and your brother are both of the same mold as I am, and you’re stealing away all of the energy that I’ve saved up over the years. Now go away before I call security.”

“How would security react if you were found here?” I asked her, pressing forward and forcing her back, “Do you really believe that they’ll just accept the idea that you just happened to be working here and just happened to find a few students who seemed to be intent on stealing books? Especially since most of these books aren’t worth a whole lot as far as wholesale value. I don’t think so. You need to learn your place.”

She yelled at me and I stared at her, quite calm. I had realized, for no apparent reason, that I became ridiculously calm in the face of any crisis, and this was one of those moments. She charged at me, clearly off her rocker with how much power she had filled up on over the years. (I didn’t even understand half of what she was talking about, but I understood this; she wanted energy and we were somehow stopping her from getting a bunch of it, merely by entering the library an average of once a day.)

I stepped to the side of her easily and caught Michale’s eye. He nodded and we both opened our mouths and said something. My word was, “Burn” and his was, “Reap”; these were the words that we first thought up when trying to do something with our power on purpose. My power flared away around me and at her, causing no damage to anything, but showing ripples of intense heat just the same. His caused something that sliced into the floor and tore it up to come at her.

I paused mine in a circle around her, mirroring his own power and she was thusly caught in a circle of invisible blades and invisible flames. She growled at us both and I stepped forward, onto my flames.

“If you wish to call it quits, we’ll allow you to go in peace,” I said to her, having a feeling that she was about to do something really nasty, “but if you try to harm either of us, we will retaliate appropriately.”

She screamed at me and I released her of her prison. Michale had relinquished his grasp of the blades over to me and I had reacted like so. Ms. Freeman jumped at me and the room filled suddenly with light, making her fall away from me and scream in agony.