I own nothing, not the characters, the space where this story exists, or even the eyes that you are using to read it. This is for entertainment purposes only, no money involved.
The B.A.B.E.L.'s underground computer, which uses the combined clairvoyance of several espers in order to predict future attacks and disasters in order to get the jump on any trouble. It was state of the art, one of a kind, the most powerful in the world, and a...
"Piece of crap!" One of the B.A.B.E.L. employees shouted angrily as he hit the side of the monitor in front of him in frustration.
"Hey now, you break it you by it." One of his coworkers joked as he saw the small act of frustration.
"Alright first of all, this is just a monitor, its impossible to break the system by hitting it! And second, the thing's already broken!" The first employee shouted angry. "It's telling me that there is a thirty two percent chance of there being a blizzard around a department store!"
"Wow, hope its right. This summer heat wave has been murder." The second guy laughed.
"Yeah yeah, laugh it up. But you know if the prediction hits forty percent we are going to have to call in the specialists, and I don't feel like being the one to explain to boss that we are going to be having a blizzard in the middle of the summer." The first worker said with a sigh. "I'm going to call a technician down here to take a look at things."
His buddy didn't argue the point. After all, what were realistically the odds of a blizzard appearing out of nowhere in the middle of summer?
Danny and Tsubaki were walking towards the local department store, two steps behind their mother who was going over a shopping list to try to make sure that she would remember everything.
They weren't sure why she bothered with that, since she always bought the exact same items. You would think that she could remember then all without a list.
The two siblings eyes found the familiar sight of the front doors, guarded on either side by two scanners. Though these weren't like the scanners back in Danny's original world. Their entire purpose was to check everyone who entered for espers. Anyone above level two on the scale from zero to seven would be turned away immediately as company policy.
These things were all over the place. They made it next to impossible to hide the fact that you were a esper. That is, unless you had technokenosis and could just rewrite the machine's programming before they caught you.
"Bet you I can deactivate them first." Tsubaki whispered to her older brother, a smile on her face.
"Alright, we'll see." Danny whispered back as they got within twenty feet of the machines. "Three... two... one..."
Danny sent a piece of his consciousness into the scanner to fiddle around inside of it. But no sooner had he gotten it than he found it was already placed on a loop. His sister had beaten him to it. "You beat me again." He said with a sigh. It wasn't like he ever won.
Danny's technokenosis was one of his weaker skills, only going up to a level three. Where as his little sister was a level six. Meaning that she could probably hack any computer with a network connection from their own living room in just a few minutes. While Danny had to get in close proximity to the machine, and even then he had to figure out the right way to get in before he could work with it properly.
His skill had been high enough for him to keep guard over his little sister's secret until she was old enough to understand that she needed to do it herself. Luckily the scanners weren't around until Danny had turned two, or else he wouldn't have been able to understand what they were and would have been caught.
The moment they were through the door and past the scanners, they turned off their control over them and continued into the supermarket. "Okaa-san, can I wait for you by the TVs again?" Tsubaki asked, just like she did every week.
Nene assume that her daughter was just over at the electronics in order to watch the cartoons that where always on the TVs to entertain the smaller children. She had no idea that it was being around all the electronics that Tsubaki really wanted.
"Alright, just say out of trouble, ok. Toshiro-kun, can you stay with me for a while to help me pick out some things?" Nene asked her older child. The entire thing was like clockwork. Something that was rather ironic now that Danny thought about it. Though there wasn't any point complaining.
"Alright, Kaa-san." Danny said, trying to keep up the appearance of a good son. So after giving his sister a pat on the head he continued off with their mother.
Boring would have been the best word for the experience. Watching the woman pick up to brands and stare at them for a minute before picking the same one she always did before continuing on to the next stop. Same as it was every week.
At least until the alarm went off at the front entrance. Danny froze as he hard gun shots being fired straight up into the air. His mother, along with several other shoppers screamed as a dozen men in ski masks entered the building.
"Hello shoppers! If you would not mind gathering in the check out area and sitting down like a good bunch of hostages, you might all just get through this alive!" One of the men laughed as he lifted up his hand, small ribbons of fire coiling around his fingers as the others made to round up everyone in the store.
Tomma Nene was panicking just like the rest as she was herded into the center of the store like the rest, to scared to notice the annoyed look on her son's face.
Danny weighed his options. More that likely they wouldn't kill their hostages without reason. So it was best if he just stayed down. He wasn't going to waste all those years of hiding his esper powers just to put some thugs in their place.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't give him much of a choice.
"Their isn't anything wrong with the machine." The tech support man said. "Everything is functioning fine."
"Functioning fine. It is still saying that their is going to be a blizzard in twenty minutes. It's even gone up to forty two percent chance." One of the staff said as the entire building seemed to have come alive.
"Then we must assume that this is a real threat." Kiritsubo, the director of B.A.B.E.L., said as the gorilla sized man came into the room. "We will contact a group of specialist right away."
"Taichou, we've just been informed of a hostage situation!" Oboro Kashiwagi shouted, as the assistant director ran in to bring the unfortunate news to the director.
"What!?" The director shouted.
"The criminals have sent their demands. They want us to release Tsutomu Miyazaki from the maximum security prison within the next three hours or else they will start killing the hostages." Oboro said as she handed the director the message.
"That child murder! No! Never!" Kiritsubo's voice boomed angrily. His temper getting the better of him. "Contact The Children at once! We cannot release Miyazaki!"
"Taichou, they have hostages." Oboro said, warning the captain.
Kiritsubo twitched as he tried to figure out what to do. "We can't give in to terrorist like this. It would set a persistence for others to do the same. We can only hope that The Children can save the hostages."
Nene was sobbing as she sat in the middle of the store, her hands placed on top of her head like they had all been ordered to do while six men with guns stood over them as the other six searched the place for any people who were trying to hide.
"I don't understand. Why are they doing this? Can they just leave us nor..." Nene started, but her sentence was cut short when her son's hand was clasped over her mouth.
"Kaa-san. It's better if you don't say anything that might upset the nice men with guns." Toshiro said simple before releasing his mother and placing his hands behind his head again. "If they took us hostage, then we are more valuable to them alive than dead. So if we just avoid making them mad, we can probably get through this in one piece." Toshiro looked calm, though really his mind was racing. His little sister had yet to join them, and he didn't want her to be far away during something like this.
Nene stared at her oddly calm son for a few seconds before her attention was grabbed by a throaty laugh. "A smart boy you got there ma'am. Best if you listen to him." One of the thugs said as he walked up to them, pulling off his ski mask to show a bunch of gray hair and an eye patch over his left eye. The man was unshaven and smelled strongly of tobacco smoke, though his steel colored eyes looked sharp and aware. "Alright ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are all comfortable, because until your government gives into our demands, you will all be staying right were you are. And as the kid said, you will find us to be very reasonable people. But even reasonable people get rather annoyed when they have to put up with crying children, so..." The man shot a few bullets into the air, scaring the hostages some more. "I suggest being nice and quiet." He ended with a laugh.
Danny pushed down the urge to break the man's jaw. The guys weren't that smart, bringing all the hostages together like this. One high level teleporter would be able to get the entire group out of the building in a heart beat, and B.A.B.E.L. had such a teleporter. There was no need for him to get involved.
That plan went out the window when he heard Tsubaki's voice. "Let go of me! I said let go!" She was screaming, trying to pull out of the grasp of the masked man who was trying to drag her to the group. Danny's heart sank as he saw her struggling.
"Hey boss! I found this one hiding behind some boxes!" The thug shouted to the grizzled man.
"Bring her here with the others. And how many times to I have to tell you I'm not the boss. I'm just a fill in. But don't worry boys, we'll be getting the boss back real soon." The grizzled man said as he waved to the man to bring the girl in.
"Get off! You'll be sorry if you don't! My Onii-san is going to kick your butts!" Tsubaki shouted, though in her distress, something Danny had dreaded more than anything happened. Her subconscious mind reached out and grabbed hold of everything around her.
All the TVs began to flicker to static and the speakers screeched loudly. Then on all the TVs, Tsubaki's image appeared, not the stubborn girl on the outside who was acting angry, but the terrified child on the inside.
"No. I don't want to." One of the speakers started in her voice while another said. "I'm scared. Please Onii-san. I don't know what to do." More and more copies of her voice were added to it as everyone seemed shocked.
"Well I'll be. Looks like we got ourselves a baby esper on our hands bo... I'm Shell." The thug holding Tsubaki said with a laugh. "To bad for you it looks like your particular powers ain't going to be much help for you."
"Shut up stupid!" The grizzled man shouted as he walked up to Tsubaki. "What do we have here. Are you just a psychic who can mess with radio waves?" The man said looking down at the girl before laughing. "No, these TV's aren't set up for radio waves. I don't believe this. We got ourselves an actual Technopath on our hands! And to do all this without meaning to! Must be at least a level four! Talk about a payday!" Some of the other men cheered.
Danny felt his eyes burn momentarily green. "A little girl like you, who can hack bank accounts and police databanks with a thought, you're worth a hefty fortune on the black market." The grizzle man said as he bent down over the girl and grabbed her chin to force her to look at him. "Or maybe you would rather work for us? We'd treat you better than most. We've got a few espers in our ranks, don't we boys!" A few of the men shouted.
"I... I'd never..." Tsubaki said, though her cool was disappearing as she looked into the man's face. The speakers around her became louder and louder, and the TV images showed Danny's little sister crying.
The grizzled man's mouth twitched as the noise grew and grew. "You now, I think we are going to have to teach this brat that she needs to be a bit quieter." The man said, lifting up his free hand to smack Tsubaki's face.
Tsubaki closed her eyes. "Danny-nii-chan!"
A small, yet unnaturally strong hand wrapped around the grizzle man's wrist, holding him completely still. The man looked up just in time to get an elbow in the face from Danny before the boy turned to him and hit him in the stomach with a fist that glowed green with telekinetic energy, blasting the man back.
Danny then grabbed his little sister's hand before doing a small teleport jump to get her away from the man that had grabbed her. As the thug looked shocked at his now empty hands, Danny raised his own and blasted the man in the chest with a wave of the same green energy as before.
"What... the hell?" The grizzled man said as he started to push himself up.
Danny stood in front of him, still seeming just as unnaturally calm as before, though now with a protective arm around his little sister.
"You've awoken a sleeping giant." He said turning to the man. Danny's hair started to change from black to white and his eyes were bright green. "You're going to wish you hadn't done that."
I did my best to make the bad guys evil enough, since they have to complete for your hate with the kids' parents. I figure child murdering and abuse, holding innocent people hostage and thinking about selling a little girl on the black market was evil enough.
I'm still doing a shit job when it is coming to the surrounding environment. World building is fine, but the setting and atmosphere usual are getting underplayed.
I am just going to say this now. When I say that I did a bad job, I don't mean with grammar or spell. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that I can't read well enough to get that stuff down perfectly.
What I mean is the stuff that is actually important; setting, character interaction and believably, tone, proper humor, descriptions, originality and the like. Things that are the meat of the story. Not the stupid grammar.
Danny is going to have a low level teleporting. So he can teleport himself and anyone he is touching a very short distance. Like ten feet at a time.
I recently found out that I was declared legally blind a few months back. So now I get to have a handy cap parking thingy. Yeah..? I'm not exactly sure how this works.