Blue Moon

(My First Fanfic)

Chapter One:

My Life is a Bad Movie

Movies were always hard for me to cope with. I'd often found that the scenarios were unbelievable, mostly because of my family. Obviously most of the movies were complete nonsense, but I couldn't help but criticize.

I'd come from a family of adventures. My father and grandfather before him had fought in the army, from first hand accounts and nighttime stories I'd learned of the atrocities and realism of war. I'd been taught that dodging bullets, one-man killing machines, and all the other phenomena accompanying these stories were just that, stories, pure imagination at work.

My mother was a scientist. She worked in bioengineering, scientific progress towards cloning, and although human clones were not yet legal, it was her hope that eventually, stem cell research would provide a suitable and affordable cure for all disease, and injury. Besides heart transplants and brain implants, limbs could be replaced, sight could be restored to those who had lost it, and innumerable lives could be saved. My father was often against many of her beliefs, he liked the prospect of many lives being saved, but natural selection factored strongly into his mindset from his years on the battlefield. This just served to prove to me that opposites attract. However, her job in the field of bioengineering had required a lot of hard work to acquire. Her vast storehouse of knowledge often served to help me split fact from fiction in movies. I was never fooled by movies that portrayed chemistry, biology, genetics, superheroes, my mom always pointed out the possible and the impossible.

Super-speed?

Nonexistent.

Super-strength.

Proven, but not to the magnitude it's been portrayed to have.

My older sister Beth worked in computer programming, a job that gave her many insights into the technical world. I was never tech savvy, but computers seemed to come easy to her. Anything technical in the movies was often revealed to be fraud, imagination, something directly out of the mind of a sci-fi geek's dreams.

I, however, was rather ordinary. Short brown hair that grew quickly, dark green eyes, I wasn't anything close to short, but I wasn't the giant some of the other kids in my grade were. I had no focal point for my life, choosing to always go with the flow, take the opportunities that arose to me, but never stretching out into the world, never really trying for anything. So in that respect, I guess I was a fairly typical teenager. My friends would question me about my family often, mostly because they were so much more interesting than me.

"Brendan! Is your sister dating anyone?" my friend had said.

"Yeah Brad, she's taken." I'd retorted. She hadn't been actually, but she was about 9 years older than Brad anyway.

"Damn… how about-." He continued.

"My mom's kinda' in a relationship too Brad… with my dad." I interrupted. Changing the subject quickly before it got even weirder than it already had.

My friends were weird that way, but they were the best I had.

The only other things thing that separated me from my friends, were abnormalities they regarded with respect. I was always good at understanding people; I could see in their expressions, hear in their voices, their emotions. It was a trait I inherited from my mom, and because of that, we often acted as the problem solvers of the family. Other than that, my ability to jump helped me to stand out from my friends, I had taller, much more athletic friends. But in the long jump exercise for Gym, I could leap over a foot farther than any of them.

It seemed weird, but until my new life, I never considered it anything overly special.

Still, thanks to my family, almost every movie was poked full of loopholes. I knew that the movies were faked before they had brought all of the fantasy to my attention, but somehow, knowing how everything was fake made it worse. I couldn't go to the theatre with the few friends I had, they hated it when I would uncontrollably blurt out an obnoxious statement regarding the ridiculous movies, I could no longer bear to watch them with my family, as they would be doing the blurting.

So it was with great annoyance that I'd decided to go to the movies one night. I was so bored with the rest of school, I thought that perhaps a movie would be something healthy for me, at least to mock and ridicule. That was the only way to enjoy movies for my family and me now, we would simply watch them, especially the bad ones, to make fun of the ridiculous events and technology.

I'd walked out my door, grabbing a thin jacket off a coat rack, and reentered the bustle of Seattle life. The Emerald City was mostly calm nowadays, although a couple of years ago there had been that scare with the Gang murders.

Some city group had been killing massive amount of people, my mom's friend had been taken one night and turned up the next morning, charred to the bone. It was the same with every victim they took, and it seemed like they had the entire city under their control. The rate of murders increased, people speculated that they were growing, recruiting new members to join in the rampage. Soon it seemed like everyone would be either working with them, or dead. The worst part was that they were completely untraceable; the dozens of victims left in their wake left no evidence behind. They were untouchable.

Or so it seemed.

After a couple of weeks, the murders stopped. It confounded everyone in the city, and theories arose. Perhaps they had simply gotten bored. Maybe they were planning something worse. Could it be that the government had gotten to them all and just shushed up the whole thing? Conspiracies arose and fingers were pointed. People were arrested on suspicion, but only because of panic; no one arrested was actually convicted of any crimes.

That had been the most terrifying if not exciting, pardon the use of the word, event in Seattle's history. Once the death count had gotten past 45, people were abandoning the city in fear, others were flocking in to leech what money they could from the dying economy.

My route down to the theatre had not concerned me, sticking to the safer side of the city. My route back was a different matter, although the mass murdering had come to a frighteningly abrupt halt, it did not mean the city was safe at night.

Hell, like any city, it wasn't totally safe during the day.

The movie was bad, by which I mean it was good. Not the perk-up I had been hoping for.

The only thing that had sounded interesting was a romantic comedy based on a doctor who felt no interest in life until he met that special someone. The plot was overused but it was funny. I disliked not being able to disprove it because there was nothing that ridiculous about it. There were no ghosts or guns or mad scientists, no fancy gadgets that did not, or rather, could not exist. Just a little story about "guy meets girl."

I left the theatre thoroughly displeased.

I'd planned to call for a cab, walking across the city at night was dangerous, and also a very tiring walk, but I was not in the mood for human contact.

Pulling my jacket tighter, I stormed forward walking with an audible thud to every step I took. The heavy stepping was to deter attackers, mostly because angry people are dangerous people, and also because I was exactly that, angry.

I walked around the corner and bumped into a guy walking hurriedly in the other direction.

"Oh!" I said, looking up into the man's eyes, and then looking down quickly to avoid the angry glare I received. Mumbling an apology I started forward again.

A thick arm jutted out to bar my way and the smell of alcohol it me. It wasn't much, he didn't seem to be completely drunk out of his mind, but the beer swimming around in his body couldn't have helped his temper.

"You need to watch where you're going buddy." He said, eyes narrowing. His face was red and stretched over a thin frame. "I haven't had a very good day, and you aren't supposed to be here."

I was starting to get scared. His words weren't making any sense to me, perhaps he was crazy, or maybe he had more booze in his system than I'd thought, but whatever the reason, he had become angry with me, and I was definitely not a match for the man.

I hadn't noticed from the quick glance I'd had at him during the collision, but now I could see him more clearly. He wasn't a tall guy, I outdid him in the height aspect, but he was thickset, muscles bulging behind a grey t-shirt. Short stocky legs stuck out from underneath his body and I automatically considered if I could outrun him.

"Answer me kid!" He said pushing me back with an angry shove. I automatically hit his hand away and took a fighting stance. I knew I had no chance against this guy, but my dad had trained me to do two things if I ever got in a fight. Stand my ground, because most attackers would back off if there was a threat to them, and make a lot of noise, noise drew people, people drew attention, and a lot of near-victims had been saved just from shouting for help.

But me fighting back was not in this guy's agenda; he'd wanted the easy fight.

As soon as I opened my mouth to yell, his fist slammed into my stomach, knocking all the air out of me. I dropped to the ground, clutching at my stomach and desperately trying to remember how to breathe. The guy looked confused for a second, and then smiled. He started dragging me down the street, and though my eyes were screwed shut in pain, I felt the cold of the night bite harder when he pulled me into a shaded alley.

I tried to shout for help and he kicked me in the chin, effectively ending that plea. Not that it had mattered; I still couldn't draw breath so it would probably have come out like a coughing attack from a dying cat.

A couple minutes later, although through all of the beating it'd felt like hours, my assailant stumbled out of the alley, snapping shut his knife. He looked around nervously, checking for witnesses, and walked to the left, continuing on his way.

I watched this from the ground, holding an arm that felt broken to my side to stop the flow of blood from the deep gash in my torso. My arm was the only thing that hurt on my body. I was too tired to feel the bruises covering my body in dark splotches, and the wound in my side only gave off a numb feeling.

I was resilient though. My father and my grandfather before him had survived the war. They'd suffered wounds as bad as mine, some even worse. I crawled slowly to the edge of the alley, reaching my hand out into the light. I was NOT going to die tonight.

I guess my luck had run out.

Flashes of pale light and suddenly there were two figures reaching out to help me, one male, one female, both impossibly beautiful. I slapped at their hands as they took my arms and helped me to my feet. They were too beautiful for words, too white, too perfect. I couldn't believe they had been mortal, that they had been part of this world. My first impression was that they were angels, come to bring me to heaven.

I had never been a religious kid, but in my predicament, I widened my mind to grasp a hold of the possibilities the afterlife held. I was angry that they were pretending to help me up, that they were taking me so early from life. Couldn't they just give me a fighting chance? What had I done to deserve death so early?

But their touch induced fright. It was solid, too solid for an angel, something that belonged in this world. And the temperature coming off of them…

No living creature was that cold.

Their hands felt icy, but not wet. I gasped when their fingers touched me, and hit at their hands harder. I wanted to live, and every instinct I had screamed at me that they were dangerous. Frightening as they were, my body had given out. I collapsed into their arms and blacked out.