What do you do when your life gets tipped upside down and there's nothing you can do? You put your big girl pants on and get the fuck over yourself.
This is my story. My name is Kirsty Violet Whitlock, I am Australian of Italian heritage and I am a Sergeant in the US Marine Corps. My twin sister, Naomi Lily, is in the same squadron as me but a rank lower because she did her degree first. I guess I would've too, if I had a scholarship.
My gift, as well as Naomi's, is teleportation. I can teleport people and objects you can hold, whereas Naomi can teleport heavier objects, like cars. Naomi and I are all but identical twins, we both have curly dark blonde hair and grey eyes, we're both tall (5'10") and slim but very strong physically and mentally. However, Naomi has pale skin and I have olive toned skin.
I've always been the tomboy of my family. I hardly ever wear dresses. I hate the colour pink and makeup. I'd much rather go skateboarding with my friend-who-just-so-happens-to-be-a-guy, than going shopping or getting a manicure. But weirdly enough, I do ballet.
My older brother, Guy, of five years met his soulfinder at 20, married her a month later, and had a baby nine months later. He lives in California with his family of three kids and his wife. I guess I am jealous of him. At 25, you start looking at what you're actually going to do with yourself. Even if you have a degree in explosives diffusion and dance.
Mum lives in Brisbane and manages a veterinary clinic. Sometimes she looks after Rosa (my German Shepard) when Naomi and I are deployed for missions. At the moment though, we were deployed for training newbies on site, so Rosa can stay. Dad always used to say that teaching someone a new skill feels great, but perfecting a skill someone already has, that makes you feel amazing. When he died when I was 17 in a car accident, I promised myself I would make my daddy proud. So I train people in core Marine physical skills. Sometimes we do shooting training, but not often.
Mum and Dad were soulfinders, so mum literally died inside when he died. He was caught in a freak four-way accident, he flew through the windscreen into a tree. Naomi and I got matching rings as a part of our inheritance. They're Celtic style but the interwoven parts are flower stems. I never take it off
After he died, I threw myself into my ballet, dancing on points for up to 4 hours a day. Doing my technique while doing my chores and doing my homework on the bus to school instead of when I was supposed to. The more I did ballet, the more I could forget about Dad. I would never completely forget but I didn't want to remember all day, every day.
Naomi had always been my polar opposite, she wore skirts, went shopping, got facials and whatever at salons, wore makeup and had so much pink stuff it hurt my eyes. But we still ended up in the same work for the same country. Our deployments are pretty random, but afterwards, everyone who comes home has a party where their families are invited and we drink and play games and tell stories of our time in Afghanistan.
Lately, they've been talking about sending the FBI in to train with our squad. The problem is that we don't know when it'll happen. The boys in the squad were taking bets on when it'll be. To them, because I've worked with them for five years, I'm Sergeant Kirsty, but around newbies, I'm 'Sergeant Whitlock, ma'am!' It's pretty funny.
We went on an unexpected surveillance mission five months ago. We can't escape because we were taken by some sort of savant group with someone who can prevent powers from being used. When they took us, they took my Swiss Army knife, that cost me $50! So I resent them even though they haven't interrogated us yet. We all stink and we're covered in a thin layer of dusty grime. It's gross. Another reason I can't teleport us out is because I have no idea where we are. So teleporting is a bit dangerous if I don't know where I am. We were given a few buckets of water to wash ourselves but those are long gone.
Normally the seven of us keep sane by talking, but we don't have much energy for that now, because we aren't fed much. I mainly sleep.
It's been another two months in this prison. I was interrogated twice in one week then they left me alone. Today the power preventing our gifts is gone, so after shaking the others awake, I tell them to grab onto me and I teleport us quickly outside. Then getting my bearings, I teleport us to outside of base
When we walk up to the gate, the soldiers on patrol's eyes bug out as they quickly message in to Sergeant Major Andrew Kane that we've come back. Then he comes through the gate, grinning like a lunatic, with his arms extended to hug Naomi and me cos we are his daughters in so many ways. When we arrived on base for the first time, he took us under his wings and became a good replacement dad. Ushering us all in, he guides us to the showers telling us to take as long as we want to scrub down, then meet him in the cafeteria, where he'll have food for us.
Grabbing a clean uniform each, we hurry to get into the showers and scrub our body, faces and hair. It takes us twenty minutes (four times as long as we're supposed to take) but we finally clean off. After I'm dressed and I've gotten my hair into a bun, I walk with the rest of us 'capturees' to the cafeteria where the smell of food makes me drool. Andrew greets us with trays of food for us but doesn't let us sit and eat. We have to be interrogated to make sure we didn't blab secrets to the 'enemy', they're really mostly misguided people. We sit in the interrogation room and eat ravenously, not understanding why we didn't like this food before. When we've finished, our interrogator comes in. It's Tom, who can make people tell the truth. He was due for a promotion a few months ago, that should've meant that he would be redeployed in Washington, D.C.
Sitting down on the other side of the room to all seven of us, he says, "We thought it would be better if I interrogated all of you together so that you can get back into business ASAP. So no screwing around with me, got it?" He said the last part while sternly glaring at our troublemakers, Max and Dan. The rest of us start howling with laughter at the expressions on their faces. Ah, what a good meal does to people's senses of humour.
When we finish our laughing fit, Tom quickly asks us the basic questions and then lets us go. Straight away, Naomi and I go to find Rosa. When we find her, we find her with an odd group of newbies and Lee, training up the newbies. Lee's a tall, built man of Asian heritage, so he can be pretty scary when he wants. Running towards them, we scream, "Rosa!" At the tops of our lungs, successfully getting everyone's attention. We smother her in hugs and kisses while everyone stares at us.
When we finish, I stand up and introduce myself, "Hi, I'm Sergeant Kirsty Whitlock, this is my sister, Corporal Naomi Whitlock, you will address us by ma'am and nothing else except for our rank. Unfortunately now that we managed to get out of prison, we get to train you. Any questions?"
One guy who looked like he'd just been doing sit-ups stuck his hand in the air and said, "Why should we be trained by two lanky girls? I mean, even though everyone here are savants, you can't be that powerful." The was some murmuring and agreement from the others.
Taking a deep breath, I glare at everybody and simply walk over to Lee, grab his arm and flip him to the ground. Then Naomi simply teleports the log on the other side of the training grounds over to us. Sitting on it with Lee, we glare lightly at the newbies and I say, "Well? Keep training, don't let me stop you."