Chapter 9:
"Hey Jet, you sure this is a good idea?" Charlie Harris whispered to his older friend as they walked towards the gathering at the top of the hill in front of them.
Jet glanced down at the fifteen year old at his side, then he looked back and watched as the helicopter that dropped them off lifted back into the air. The tall, lean boy had jet black hair and an x-shaped scar on his left cheek close to his chin. He stared up with dark green eyes at a squad of five Harrier jets that shot overhead, then he watched as the heli that dropped them off flew over to a squad of ten others circling the hill they had been dropped off on the edge of. "Too late to back out now," he said, looking down at the chubby younger boy with shorter blond hair. He nodded seriously at the kid though and said, "If it's not like we thought, you get us out of here."
"How will I know?" Charlie asked.
"I'll let you know," Jet replied. "But we have to give it a chance first. We don't have much time."
Charlie shivered and nodded back at him, then the two of them hurried over to the gathering in front of a large stage that had been set up in the middle of the hill. There was a group of thirteen other teens and young adults in the group, as well as armed soldiers on all sides. Jet glanced around at the soldiers with a hesitant and careful gaze, but they were almost all faced away from the hill. They had anti-aircraft weapons, strange rifles with glowing red lines cutting through them, and many of them were wearing strange armors with tubes sticking out of the backs.
The sun blared down on them and Charlie started panting just walking towards the group. Most of the people there were looking towards them as they approached, but some of the group turned back to the stage after their chopper had landed.
"Can we start now?"
"Hajimemashouka?"
"Cominiciamo!"
Jet saw people from different nationalities gathered throughout the group. He did not understand all of them, but he could see they were all nervous and jittery about being there.
A female soldier wearing a white coat over her desert camp uniform walked over to Jet and Charlie as they reached the edge of the group. She stuck out her hands and opened them up to reveal she had two earpieces in them as well as two metal bracelets. Charlie started reaching for the hand in front of him, but Jet grabbed the younger boy by the wrist to stop him. "What are those?" Jet asked.
The Arab woman in front of him smiled in a friendly way, and she said in English to the young white boys, "The earpiece is a translator." She turned her head and showed off an identical piece to the ones she was handing to them. "And you can decide for yourselves whether or not to wear the bracelets, while you are listening to the presentation." She kept her hands held out, and after a few seconds Jet released Charlie's hand and they each grabbed their devices.
I don't like this, Jet thought, darting his eyes around at all the heavily armed soldiers around them. I don't trust my own government, but the Middle East is just... he took a deep breath and put the earpiece in, though he told Charlie to wait for a second. "Hello, my name is Jet!" He called out.
"Hey Jet," the Japanese girl who shouted out a minute ago asking if they could start greeted him. She spun back after saying it, and she snapped in an impatient tone, "They were the last ones right? We can begin now?"
A man on stage wore a uniform with many medals on it showing off how decorated a soldier he was. He also had on a beige hat with a cool design to it that Charlie was staring at interestedly. "Hey Jet," Charlie whispered to the boy next to him who was still amazed at how clearly the Japanese girl's voice sounded like it was speaking English to him. "I don't recognize the symbols any of them are wearing. I thought it would be the Saudi flag or something, but it's, different."
"Keep it up," Jet said, examining some strange things himself as he looked around.
"Girls and boys," the man on stage began. "I am Colonel Assad, and you have all come here of your own free will. If anyone denies this, speak up now." He paused while the group in front of the stage glanced around at each other. No one spoke out against it, so the Colonel continued. "The world faces an unprecedented threat. The One-Eyed Reaper and The Cat. Every nation on the world has been invaded by these two, and their goal is clear. To steal the powers of every person born with special abilities like yourselves."
The Colonel paused, then he continued, "I am sure many of you would have been okay with this, as it would mean you were free from hiding from the governments and scientists that wished to capture and experiment on you. However," he turned and the curtains of the stage behind him opened up. There was a large screen behind the curtains rising a hundred feet up in the air and twice that wide. There were also two figures standing just in front of the screen at the bottom, short, small figures with childlike bodies. Those two people were wearing strange white masks that unnerved the others who saw them.
"Jet," Charlie whispered nervously.
"Hold on," Jet said, trying to calm his friend while also calming himself.
Colonel Assad lifted a remote and pressed a button, turning on the screen and making the young people off the stage gasp. "These are images of the last few suspected ability-wielders who ran into those two," Assad said. The group of mostly teens stared in shock at the images showing one by one. They were labeled with different locations all around the world. There were dead soldiers in the pictures, but also dead test subjects or prisoners, or sometimes just people who were being protected by their governments. "Those two have become ruthless. They have stopped letting former ability-wielders live after robbing them of their powers." The Colonel turned back to the group and continued, "However I am sure you already had some notion of this, as you would not have accepted an offer from a foreign group so easily. Especially from a group originating in the Middle East, we all know how the rest of the world's propaganda portrays this region." Assad's face was stern and his voice serious at all times. He looked around making eye contact with each person in the group of fifteen. "But we did not gather you in order to do experiments. Many of you have survived this long because it would be impossible for us or anyone to capture you against your will. While others of you have only just had your abilities awakened and you are terrified of those two terrorizing the world."
"Why did you gather us then?" Jet called out.
Assad looked over and stared down the Canadian teen. "Revolution," he replied. The two on stage behind him started walking forward and they stopped on either side of him. "We will give you all the power you need in order to resist the Reaper and the Cat."
"How can you do that?"
"I've been protecting myself well enough on my own!"
"Do you know the reason why those two wear their masks?" The Colonel questioned. He saw blank and confused looks around the crowd, and he continued, "It's because the power they use to steal others' abilities requires that they see their targets' faces. It is why the two at my sides have had these masks surgically attached over their faces."
The crowd of teens gasped and gawked at the two kids. "Of course, we will not require that you do the same, and we will offer you masks that are hard to remove without attaching them to your bodies." Colonel Assad looked around, then he focused in on the most muscular and darkest skinned of the group who stood farthest front just in front of the stage. "They are going to come for you. Each one of you. They will not stop until your kind have been eradicated from the world, until only the two of them are left. Then they will use our world as a battleground to try and kill each other on. The collateral damage, will be the extinction of humanity."
Silence fell over the hilltop. Charlie's eyes were huge and his body started shaking. Jet looked around and saw terrified looks all around him. He started frowning deeply, Fear is the worst enemy of reason. Get someone scared enough, and they'll do whatever you say if it's to protect them. Still, he thought while focusing on some of the armed guards around their group who looked just as afraid as the kids inside it. He's not just making this stuff up. The world's going to shit around us.
"What are we going to do about it?" The largest teen in the group at the front of it asked. He crossed his muscular dark arms over his chest, then he continued in a low voice, "With all the powers they've taken, they're invincible."
"We can't do anything," a girl with long blonde hair snapped at his back. He looked back at her, and she was shaking in fear but smirking despite it. "All we can do, is hide," she said, and then her body became transparent and everyone around her stared at where she just was in shock.
"Before you leave Ms. Romanov," Assad called out without focusing on anywhere in particular. "Would you not like to at least hear our plan? How long was it again that your invisibility lasts for before you need to recharge?"
The question was left hanging for a few seconds, then Jet snapped his head to the right in surprise as the girl almost his height appeared at his side. She had made it to the back of the group fast, but she grimaced and turned back after dropping her invisibility. "Alright," she said, her voice sarcastic and somehow translating the tone pretty well through the translators in all their ears. "I'll give you a few minutes before I bail," she said. "Woo me," she scoffed.
Assad's expression darkened and his eyebrows narrowed in. His dark brown eyes bored into Ella Romanov's bright blue ones, and she tried to hide her anxiety at that look. Assad turned back and looked at some of the others again, and he continued, "The bracelet you have all been given, yet none of you have put on, is a device we invented in order to hide you from those hunting you. I understand why you have yet to clasp them to your wrists, anyone would be wary considering large groups' reputations with people like you. However, if you choose to join us, you will have to put on those bracelets before we change our location, in order to protect the other ability-wielders."
Jet looked down at the metal bracelet. It did not have a clasp to lock it to his wrist, instead just a gap where the curved almost-complete circle did not close. All he had to do was pull the two sides apart so it was wide enough to fit his wrist in, then when he let go it would tighten back on him. The design itself gave most of them confidence that this was their choice, because they could remove it at any time. Jet was still hesitant though, They could electrocute us then once we're all out cold they lock the real collars on our necks. It's a possibility, but am I just being paranoid? They could really just be good people.
"On my left side is the son of General Muhammad, the leader of our coalition," Assad continued. He turned and motioned with a hand for the boy next to him to step forward. The boy had short black hair and skin tone that matched Assad's from what they could see on his neck and hands. "His ability, we call Intelligence."
"I'll take it from here Colonel," the boy said in a high-pitched voice yet a serious tone. The Colonel nodded and stepped back in a respectful way.
Suddenly what Assad said a minute ago made Jet's eyes open huge. "...the son of General Muhammad, the leader of our coalition." Was he saying that the General was the leader, or, was he talking about that kid?!
"My name is Muhammad Al-Amman, named after my father" the boy greeted the group in front of him. "Please excuse me for not greeting you face to face, however we believe the Cat and Reaper, maybe both, maybe one or the other, possess the ability to shapeshift. If one of them had snuck into this meeting, I did not intend to lose my intelligence."
"As some of you may already be thinking, yes, I am the leader of this coalition," the boy said.
"You're kidding," the largest and older boy just in front of the stage said.
"No, Dark Xavier," Muhammad said. The muscular teen's crossed arms opened up and his eyes opened wide. "That is what you preferred to be called correct? When three years ago your ability awakened, and you took over a large swath of land in Swaziland with a few other ability-wielders?"
The rest of the group around Xavier looked in at him nervously as they learned this. "I had my men approach you using your given name, as you had gone into hiding when the One-Eyed Reaper destroyed your organization while you were fortunately overseas, but you no longer have to hide who you are."
"Jet, I don't like this," Charlie whispered up at the teen on his right. Jet frowned as he heard the kid's concern, and he could see sweat dripping down Ella's face on his own right after she heard that. They were all sweating from the heat of the sun, but her expression told him she was sweating from more than that.
Muhammad looked to the Japanese girl next who was one of the oldest there at twenty years old. "Yet some like Yamasaki Sakura-san, used their powers to help people. Did you not become the Spider Ninja, fighting the yakuza and organized crime in Tokyo?"
"What are you getting at?" Sakura asked in a harsh tone, and then her eyes darted back towards Dark Xavier who started glaring at her with just as dark a look in his eyes.
"All of you come from different backgrounds," the young Arab boy began. "However, the fate of the world is at stake. I'm not asking you all to be heroes. I doubt most of you want to; all you want is to survive. That's fine too. I want to protect you, and I also want to keep those two from getting more powers. I fear- no, I know that once they have taken every last power, their final battle over the world will begin." Muhammad looked around and then straight into Jet's eyes as he continued, "I used my power to unite the Middle East, with the sole exception of Israel. My father's position, common enemies, feelings of dissatisfaction and resentment garnered over decades, I used them all. We are in Saudi Arabia now, but the helicopters will take us to a different nation to hide in. If your presences disappear from those two's radars, they will likely search this whole country to find you all. When they can't, I hope they believe that you were all killed. However if they think you're gone, they will start their battle and wipe out the world. So we can't just hide you and then say that everything is fine and be happy that we saved fifteen innocent people."
Jet hummed to himself as he thought about that, while Charlie tugged on his left arm with a nervous and scared expression on his face. "Hold on," Jet said to the kid next to him. "This might be our only option," Jet said. Charlie opened his mouth, then he bit down on his bottom lip in fear of what Jet just said.
"Why are you in charge?" One of the older teens in the group called out. "And how am I supposed to believe that a kid is in charge of this huge army?"
"How can this army even protect us?" Someone else shouted. "Modern weapons have no effect on them! They're monsters who took on both Russia and the United States' capitals, and they won!"
"Because our weapons are superior to those former superpowers," Muhammad claimed. Most people there looked at him skeptically or called out that he was being too cocky.
"On my right is the first person I recruited in order to help me accomplish my goal," Muhammad said. "Her name is Tania, and her power is Creation. Anything she imagines, she can create." Everyone stared at the girl whose long brown hair fell over her shoulders in front of her small body. She wore a uniform like Muhammad that was just a smaller version as the ones the rest of the Arabs on the hilltop were wearing. "Like every power we have discovered though, it has its limitations. She must know the components of what she wishes to create, the blueprints. Luckily with my ability, I am able to design such blueprints for weapons beyond the capabilities of so-called 'modern' weaponry."
"I don't believe you!" Ella Romanov called out. "What can a group of Middle Eastern countries do against the US or Russia's nuclear arsenal? They couldn't beat either one of them, so they definitely couldn't beat either of those Gods hunting us!"
"I thought you would ask for a demonstration," Muhammad said. "Tania, if you would," he grinned from behind his mask then backed away as did Colonel Assad. The two of them moved to the edge of the stage, while Tania turned her head to the center of the stage. She glanced over everyone in the crowd, and Jet stared into the dark holes on her mask for a moment when she seemed to pause.
She's... Jet thought, but he got distracted as the girl rose her hands up in front of her. She moved her arms from her sides up the front of her body, and like she was pulling it out of the ground, a large metal head emerged from the stage. Some of them thought there was a secret panel in the stage, but upon closer inspection there was still nothing there. She pulled this solid figure straight through the wood of the stage platform. Its metal torso was ten feet wide, and it had long strong arms sticking off of it.
Charlie stared forward in amazement and even took a step up while his eyes grew huge. Jet let out a gasp and muttered, "You're kidding."
It rose higher and higher, until it was standing over twenty feet all. Ella took a step forward with eyes full of awe, whispering, "It's straight out of science fiction."
"Well, aren't we the same?" another girl just in front of her and Jet said after hearing that, then she took a step forward herself.
Dark Xavier grinned after staring in shock for a few seconds, then he turned towards Muhammad on the right side of the stage. "Do we all get one of these?" He asked. "I've always wanted, a giant robot."
"It's a mech," Sakura corrected, though in a soft voice from behind him.
"Actually," Muhammad said while stepping back towards the huge metal creation. "Dark Xavier was correct. This particular machine is a robot. Although we do have mechs as well, if you would like to control one from inside." Muhammad turned to the robot and then said in a loud voice, "Robot! You are an Autonomous Series, designation A-87."
"Designation clarified," the robot said in a mechanical voice.
"As you can see," Muhammad said while the robot turned around and started walking back on the stage. "This Robot is implanted with an AI, that is Artificial Intelligence, system that I created." The A-87 lifted off the stage behind him and flew up in the air, lifting its arms that transformed into a machine gun and rocket cannon. "They have the ability to identify when a nuclear warhead has been launched from any location in the world, and they can intercept or redirect before those missiles get anywhere near us."
"That's, amazing," Jet whispered in astonishment. If that's true, the nuclear age is gone. I still thought maybe nukes were the only way to stop those two, but if they've already proven the US and Russia can't do a thing, then this group might really be the only ones who can stop them!
"Jet," Charlie whispered in a quiet voice. He turned back to his friend, and both Jet and the Eastern European girl on his right looked over at the kid whose face was full of fear. "I, I really... don't like this."
"Huh?" Jet wondered. The look of childish excitement on Charlie's face after seeing the robot made Jet think the kid had thought otherwise.
"I don't know what it is, but Jet, I'm really scared all of a sudden. They're as scary as the Reaper," he whispered in a small voice.
Jet frowned at the kid and then refocused up on the stage as Muhammad kept talking. "I promise you. Our military might can hold off any of your home governments who you have fled from. As for the Reaper and the Cat, I admit that we do not know if our forces can stand against one of them. Yet, if we can't, the world itself is doomed."
A soldier twenty meters from the left side of the stage was sitting behind a computer at a table set up near a parked helicopter. The man had a set of large headphones on, and he jumped up from her seat while pulling them off of his head. "Commander!" He called towards the stage, and Muhammad spun towards the soldier. "Radar picked up an object moving towards us across the Atlantic faster than any missile. It's one of them."
"No one panic!" Muhammad shouted right before the group in front of him could try and scatter. "I wish I had more time to convince you. I wish there was more time to discuss this here, but I need your answers now. Put on your bracelets and escape with me, or try and escape on your own."
Colonel Assad at the same time lifted up his right wrist that had a watch on it and he commanded into it, "Send diversion teams A and B a hundred miles west then have them split up to the north and south."
The Harrier fighter jets in the sky started flying off in the direction of where the suns were starting to set. A-87 and a cluster of other robots that seemingly appeared out of nowhere shot off in that direction too, while the soldiers all around the hill started grouping up as helicopters flew back towards them. Colonel Assad spun and said, "We're leaving."
Muhammad turned and nodded at the Colonel who said it without hesitation or room for discussion in his voice. The kid in the white mask with no discerning design on it, just like Tania's, spun to the group in front of him and yelled, "You have until the choppers land to decide! Come or stay. Live or die. It's your choice!"
"Tania," Muhammad said after shouting all that. He spun to the girl who nodded at him and then rose her hands again in front of her. The soldiers were all running off, but as the head of another robot came out of the ground, Muhammad climbed up on it. He popped open a dark-tinted glass panel that this robot had but the other didn't, and he climbed into a cockpit for two. The robot reached its full height five times taller than an average man, then Muhammad reached down and held his palm open on the ground.
Tania stepped forward and onto the hand, then she turned her head and her brown hair waved behind her as she refaced the crowd of teens. "You should come," she said in a quiet, timid voice. Jet stared into the dark holes of her mask, and the girl turned towards him after saying it to the whole group at once.
That didn't sound like someone trying to trick us. She sounds like, she's just a kid. And she doesn't have super smarts like the other one, she's just a person with powers, just like us, Jet stared at her closer, then he lowered his gaze as Dark Xavier lifted his right arm. The big teen had the metal bracelet clasped over his right wrist risen high in the air. "I'm in!"
A pair of twins at the edge of the group on Jet's right turned to each other and nodded in unison. One held up his right wrist and the other his left so their arms were inches apart from each other, both showing off their bracelets. The helicopters were lowering to the ground at the sides of the stage. Muhammad rose Tania on his open palm until she was up at the open cockpit, and she climbed in and sat in the seat behind his before they closed the vehicle's glass top.
Jet looked down at his bracelet and he hummed to himself. He pulled it apart a bit to make an opening big enough for his wrist, then he turned and saw Charlie staring at him with an afraid look. He turned the other way and saw Ella Romanov sweating hard as she eyed the bracelet, the others in the group, and all the high-powered military vehicles around them. The helicopters were landing, and Jet had no time to hesitate. It's now or never, he thought. "Put it on," he said, and he clasped his bracelet on himself.
Charlie looked up at him and gulped, but he trusted Jet and would not separate from him. Ella looked left and watched as the dark haired boy her age put on the bracelet while keeping a serious and cautious aura around him. "You better be right about this," she muttered. He turned to her in surprise, but the girl followed his example and clasped the bracelet on herself. She leaned towards him after doing it and hissed into his ear, "Don't know who we can trust where we're going, but let's be friends, yeah?" She walked by him and towards the closest of the helis landing near them.
"What'd she want?" Charlie asked as Jet turned and followed the girl with wide eyes.
Jet looked down at the younger teen, then back at Ella and shook his head at her back. "Nothing. It's nothing."
He started walking towards the same chopper as her though, and Charlie followed after him. The sand-colored choppers were larger than any helicopters Jet had seen before, and they had large rockets on the sides of them as well as miniguns attached to the front. As they entered the vehicle, Jet grimaced as Colonel Assad climbed into the front from the other side which Jet had not been able to see before he got in.
Ella and Charlie also looked at the Colonel with hesitant gazes, while the identical twins who were already in the vehicle stopped talking to the pilot. They glanced at each other, then one of them turned back to Assad in the passenger seat and asked, "Did anyone stay behind?"
Jet looked back out the window, but he did not see anyone else in front of the stage they were leaving behind. Someone might have disappeared, like Ella almost did. Charlie could have, but he trusts me. I hope I'm right doing this.
"All fifteen of you made the right choice," Assad said. The helicopter's rotors started spinning too fast and the vehicle rose up, but then a soldier who had climbed on the vehicle last reached beneath his seat and pulled out thick headphones for everyone to put over their heads. They muffled the sounds of the helicopter and connected all of them over the radio.
Jet looked to his left out the window as the helicopter rose up to group up with the others then turned to the north and started flying. He thought about asking which country they were heading to next, but then he focused out of that left window and into the far distance at the setting suns. "Hey Colonel," Jet began. The Colonel nodded his head but did not turn around, and Jet continued, "Will the diversion hold them off long enough for us to escape?"
"Only one of them was coming," Assad responded. "Even so, you are not wrong to be concerned. However, there is no need for it. The diversion teams were created in order to stall. Neither of them will be able to reach where we had gathered, where your presences will have vanished from their senses, in time to see where we have gone."
"You sure?" Jet asked.
"Yes," Assad replied without hesitation. "We have taken measures to make sure of it."
sc
Several hundred miles away, on the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, Otosaka Yuu ripped open a panel on the top of a giant robot. He was shocked by the robot's power, but even more surprised when he destroyed several of them to find that they were operated remotely. Not one of them had been piloted by a human, but the one he had taken down last was a different story. He ripped open the black glass panel on the top of the mech, and he looked inside to the person whose red dot he had followed when the group of jets and robots flew at him out of nowhere.
An Arab teenager with his mouth gagged sat tied in the pilot's chair, and Yuu stared at him emotionlessly through the hole in his mask. His eye glowed greenish yellow, and he Plundered the power of the boy sitting there. What a weak power, Yuu thought after taking it and learning what it was. Then, was this just a decoy? The ones who sent him just did so to distract me? How stupid. Yuu pulled back out his map while releasing his telekinetic hold over the robot he was stopping from sinking. The boy in the pilot's chair started screaming which came out muffled because of his gag, while the cockpit filled with water and then dropped below the surface. Hold on, where did they go? What? I don't... Yuu's face twisted in confusion under his mask, and the sea around him started to shake. Where the fuck did they all go?!
He was flying just over the sea, and he glared back down and reached a hand at the water. He yanked a sinking mech back to the surface and then pounded an invisible force into the chest of the teen who had just started drowning. The boy's gag came off and water in his lungs rushed up his throat. Spit flew out at the Reaper who just ignored it and screamed in perfect Arabic, "WHERE DID THEY GO?!"
"I do not know!" The teen replied in a terrified scream. "Please don't let me drown! That was terrifying! Don't kill me!"
"If you don't know," Yuu began, as he read the young man's mind and did not think he was lying. His smile lowered and he muttered again, "If you don't know, then," the ropes around the boy loosened, and Yuu dropped the ship while carrying the boy behind him. Quickly, before I lose it again. Killing is wrong, he reminded himself, while flying him and the screaming boy behind him towards an island off the coast of Italy. He tossed the kid when he was close to shore, throwing him in the water a distance he should be able to swim, then Yuu shot up into the sky and through the dark clouds that were raining off Italy's southern coast. He passed the top of the clouds and gasped in a deep breath, then he started snarling as he let his rage take back over. Did they kill all those people? Why? Why gather them just to kill them?
He grabbed the sides of his head. I, I'm taking their powers to, to save them. To save everyone! Only I... Why? "Grrrr," he started growling and thick dark hair grew over his arms under the black sleeves of his Reaper cloak. Those hairy arms burst into blue flames after a second and then all at once his skin returned to normal. Killing them doesn't make sense. It would just hasten the countdown. Do they know that? Do they want us to end it here?! No, no no, what if they hid themselves? All at once like that, it has to be a powerful group. Scientists? They seem like a group that bad, sending someone towards me even though I could have been the Cat. They sacrificed that boy, to give themselves enough time to run. In that case, they're my enemies... Just like everyone else. They're all my enemies. The whole world. Ability-wielders, and governments, and scientists, and doctors! Japan! The USA! Russia! And HIM! My RIVAL! Yuu's body started shaking violently in the air but he did not stop it. The dark rain clouds below him started shredding apart as his body glowed blue, as powerful winds blasted off his body and created wind funnels flying away in every direction. "RaaaaAAAHHHGGAAAAHHH..." His scream of rage turned to agony as the blue light coming off his body mixed with reddish orange and turned a brownish purple. Then the explosion went off, and it created a sphere of white light that expanded off a screaming Yuu for a hundred meters in all directions. "AAAHHHHH!"
A/N A new group appears. Humanity's last ditch effort, coming from the Middle East? Ability-wielders are running out of time. The Reaper and Cat have almost finished their purge, and the world is terrified of what's going to happen when they're the only two left. Some new characters introduced this time, Yuu's mental and physical state is deteriorating even worse with all the new powers he's adding to his already unstable body. What's going to happen to the world?! Find out soon on One Eyed Reaper!
