Smoke filled my lungs as I walked down the street. Pieces of asphalt crumbled and fell into cracks and fissures that spread across the ground like spider webs. Rubble and debris, fallen from the buildings on either side of me lay on the sidewalk and scattered on the burned out husks of cars and smoldering corpses. I felt pangs of sadness at these meaningless wastes of human life, but there was nothing I could do about it. As I walked, Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" played in my head. It seemed somehow appropriate for the situation. I stopped at a gaping hole in the ground that had once been the home of a friend of mine. I felt another twinge of emotion, and thought back on all of the events that led up to this moment.
"Tara! Get your ass in gear! Down here in 1 minute or I'm taking the car and you can run to school!" I called up the stairs before ducking out of the way as my twin sister threw her hairbrush over the upstairs banister at me. It stuck, quivering in the step that I had been standing on. "Too slo-" my taunt was cut short as she leapt from the top step and landed on my back, wrestling me to the floor. "And I'd still get there before you." She teased. "Now let's go. Mom and Dad gone already?" she asked "They never even came home last night." I replied, shaking my head. We were used to this by now; our parents were always being called of on assignments. They were the best of the best, members of the Elites, which is a branch of government dedicated to mutant activity suppression that operates similar to, but separate from the Purifiers, the more extreme anti-mutant organization. The Elites are specially trained and equipped to take down the greatest mutant threats. My parents trained my sister and I since we could walk to be able to join them and take out mutants threats as well, but there is a major difference between the Elites and the Purifiers: We aren't mutant haters, so my parents made sure to teach us to only hunt the dangerous mutants. If they haven't shown any hostility or don't pose any potential threat to national or global security, we wouldn't take the case.
After a quiet ride to school, Tara and I parted ways and headed to class. The clock dragged by, and I was resigned to another dull day until around lunch time, when I came across a gathering of students in the hallway, chanting the classic battle cry: "Fight, fight, fight!" When I managed to get into the crowd, however, I saw that this fight wouldn't last very long, seeing as contender one was Scott Gregor, defensive end on the football team, nicknamed, "Truck" the other, a small, skinny boy, typical nerd by the name of Steve Davies. He was a mutant with the unfortunate (in this case) condition of having malleable, almost rubbery bones, preventing him from sustaining serious injury or even being knocked unconscious, a fact that Gregor seemed determined to disprove by repeatedly shoving him against a locker. I stepped forward, out of the crowd. "Leave him, Scott. What did he do to you?" Gregor gave Davies another vicious shove, causing him to grunt in pain. His rubbery bones didn't stop him from feeling that. "Are you standing up for this little freak? I thought your parents would have taught you better than that." Gregor sneered, walking casually toward me. It was no secret what my parents did for a living, so shouldn't it stand to reason that I'd be able to defend myself if he tried something?
Apparently reasoning wasn't his strong suit, as he drew back a fist and swung, to various gasps from the peanut gallery. I jumped back, avoiding his clumsy swing, and then darted forward, giving him a warning jab to the ribs. He wasn't good at taking hints, either. He came back around with a sloppy haymaker, so I knocked his arm upward with one hand, and brought my other arm in for a harsh blow to his side, right below the ribs. "Walk away, Scott. You can't beat me." I tried to sound like I was merely stating a fact, but I couldn't help sounding a little smug. He wheezed, and then lunged at me for a grab. Big mistake on his part. I ducked in for what I like to think of as my signature move: a series of piston punches to his gut, causing him to double over just in time to meet my knee, which was coming up to introduce itself. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. Big, stupid potatoes that pick on smaller weaker ones.
"Are you all right, Steve?" I held out my hand and helped him to his feet. "Y-yes, I'm fine, thanks… uh…" He looked embarrassed. "I didn't catch your name." he said apologetically. "I'm…" the bell signaling the end of lunch cut me off. "…going to be late." I finished, and ran off to my next class. I felt a familiar tingle of adrenaline filling my limbs. Too late for that now, I thought. The action's over, that was probably the most exciting thing that'll happen to me for a while. How wrong I was. The tingling lasted for the rest of the day, and when I got home, I recieved the nastiest static shock in history when I touched the doorknob. None of this registered as particularly unusual to me at the time, but the signifigance of it couldn't be any clearer to me now.