Aki- Yes, I know this chapter is very much delayed. I only have one excuse, and that is being a senior in their last weeks of school trying to finish every project and paper. And I was in a major Lord of the Rings kick recently and still. So I guess that is two excuses. Oh, I love LotR so much! It's just awesome.
Chapter 11: Coming Home To Disaster
Alex wasn't sure what woke him at two o'clock in the morning, but he did discern footsteps and a soft creaking in the hallway beyond his bedroom door. He got, begrudgingly, out of bed to investigate. He only opened his door in time to see the china cabinet moving slowly as it closed a gap in the wall.
"Wha?" Alex glanced down the hallway and saw his sister's door open. He went a peered around it to see his sister's bed was empty. Alex tiptoed over to the china cabinet and carefully opened one of its glass pained doors and reached to a rose painted vase that was the lever for the concealed door to open. Alex had taken the time on their first return journey from their parent's secret liar, as he called it, to find out how to return. Halle, apparently, had done the same.
Alex scurried down the twisted passageway with a weird little hop, cursing the cold floor against the sockless feet. Soon he found himself at the doorway to the round, secret room that Halle and himself had first discovered their parents', well, secrets.
"What are you doing?" he asked without an introduction, walking over to where Halle was sitting at one of the computer desks.
"Hi, Alex," she replied without looking at him. Her tone was strangely morose.
He peered over her shoulder. "You're looking at that again?"
Hall ran her fingers over the edge of one of Kori's old scrapbook pages before she gently turned it. "We didn't see it all before."
"So? We saw enough. We found out the truth."
"Yeah, but only the barest sketches of it."
"Wha?"
Halle turned in her set to look up at her brother. "You think you know your parents. They've been their since the beginning and they've always been there. And you put them and everything they are into this little box and tie on the lid, who they are, their personality, their relationship with you, every little thing they do that annoys you, and how they are always going to be their to annoy you for the rest of your life. But you forget all about who they were, before you.
"Sometimes, sure, we ask questions, all little kids do. How did mommy and daddy fall in love? Or they forcefully share an anecdote from their youth to try to teach you a moral….but there is so much more we don't know, no one knows, about their parents. Especially when they hide everything they had been from you….God, I'm not making any sense," said Halle, burying her face in her hands.
"You're right, you're not…now as you told me so kindly earlier. We have school tomorrow, well, I guess today by now, so you better get to bed, loser."
Halle yawned and then glared at Alex as though her sudden weariness was his fault. She got up silently and exited the room, Alex's eyes following her as she disappeared into the darkened passage.
He stood over the book that Halle left open. He touched the photograph on the page, one of all the titans smiling and waving at the camera. It fell loose from page. He gently picked it up and held it for closer inspection. He slipped the photograph into his pocket and gently closed the scrapbook before following his long departed sister up the passageway, thinking she was a psycho.
…
School was a miserable affair for both Halle and Alex the next day. Alex was still recuperating from his numerous beatings at the hands of his elder sister as every move he made ached down to his bones. Halle, on the other hand, felt exactly nothing from yesterday's sparring matches, but was suffering from lack of sleep. She had to use an extreme force of will to keep from nodding off in nearly every class of the day.
Halle and Alex ate lunch silently together. People gave up on thinking it was weird that the two twins who could hardly stand to be in each others presences a few precious weeks ago suddenly seemed joined at the hip. Alex and Halle we're so wrapped up in superhero parents and superpowers and training to remember or care what their school social lives had once been like.
Not that Alex had had a social life, so really not much had changed for him expect the absence of all bullies, who were either terrified out of their wits because of the rumors going around that he possessed some sort of evil magic or that now that Halle was paying attention to her little brother they didn't want to damage their chances with her, which was probably more likely.
School ended, eventually. And never had the two been more thankful for it. Alex climbed into the passenger seat of Halle's car, still upset he had get to gain a license. It was a short, silent drive.
The driveway gates opened automatically as they drove through into the open courtyard and parking circle in front of their grandeur home. Backpacks laden with heavy books for weekend homework bore on their backs as the twins walked up front steps to their house, complaining about all the projects and papers they had to complete. But something strange silenced them.
"That's door's open," said Alex, pushing the door with his fingertips, causing it to creak from where he had been millimeters from closed to a few inch crack between the doorpost and the door.
"Probably Mom being forgetful," Halle shrugged.
"No, Dad would have…"
"Dad's not home yet—" Halle cut him off.
"Yeah, he is. He always comes home early on Fridays, how long have you lived here?"
Halle scoffed and then said defensively. "I'm usually don't come home straight away on Fridays, but ever since this whole superhero business my social life had been severely dampened."
"Whatever…" Alex pushed through the doorway with his elbow into the entrance hall, Halle two steps behind him.
"Oh my God!"
The sight that met their eyes was…terrible. It wasn't just the feathers torn from the throw pillows, the toppled furniture, or artwork and relics that were broken, laying on the floor rather than in their rightful shelf-space. No, it was everything those things, and the rest of the mess and destruction, implied. Alex shuffled a few more steps into the sitting room, a shocked, wide-eyes expression on his face, his shoes crackling on glass from a broken picture frame.
Halle was clutching his upper arm tightly, a step behind him.
"What happened here?" she asked in a ghost of a whisper, gently reached out and touching her fingertips to a scorch mark on the nearby wall.
Alex didn't answer her, but continued to advance into the room, now that her restrain of her grip was gone.
"Mom!" he yelled. "Mom!...Dad!" He rushed into the formal dining room adjacent to the sitting room by a doorway on the left wall. Then to the kitchen. Then to the family room, then back to the entrance hall and sitting room where Halle still stood, shouting for his parents. Chaos had filled those rooms to.
"Come on," he said, grabbing Halle's hand and dragging her up the staircase, where frames hung lopsided on their nails if they were lucky. The destruction overflowed through most of the house, the upstairs hallway included.
"Mom! Dad!...Please!" screamed Alex, pulling one door, whether to bedroom or closet, open after the other in a desperate, hysterical search.
"Alex, stop it," said Halle, tears brimming in her eyes, making a grab as Alex's arm as he passed in a second search when the first one availed nothing. He was stilled, but struggling for release unsuccessfully in her super strength hold on him.
"We need to find them."
"Stop it, Alex. They're not here…" her breath hitched and her tears ran over. "They're gone…"
"No!...no…"
"We just have to calm and figure out what to do…" reasoned Halle, although her voice was shaking her and tear were still pouring over her cheeks and she seemed to be getting less calm by the minute.
The sight of his sister breaking down broke Alex from his urge to continue with his crazed search. "Halle?"
And she broke, sobs erupting from her entire body. He pulled her against himself and held her in a comforting embrace as she cried, the situation too dire for him to feel awkward about it.
…
"School sucked so much," Kaden announced as he pushed open his apartment door. He got no response, not vehement agreement from him father or a sarcastic comment from his mother. In fact, what was before his eyes was very unwelcome.
He had seen scenes like this before. With his parents flitting all over the world after crime he had witnessed his fair share of what the aftermath of attacks and destructions looked like despite how much his mother tried to shelter him from it.
Black energy sparkled between his fingertips in anger and fear. He waited patiently at the open doorway, straining his ears, listening for any hint of remaining threats. He walked cautiously into the havoc that had once been his home.
"Hello?"
No answer.
He continued cautiously, pushing open the bathroom door, the closest, and peering around the doorframe into it. Empty. He did the same with the remainder of the small four room apartment. All were empty. Any criminals worthy of such acts were long gone.
And so were his parents. Kaden bit his lip as a wave of agonizing misery washed over him with the realization. He knew from the moment no reply came, but it hadn't hit him until now. Without thought or conscious decision, black energy disrupted the already battle-torn living room, with a whirlwind of blackened objects flying through the air.
Kaden gasped and fell to his knees, desperately trying to control his emotions before they tore the apartment or himself apart. Slowly the twister of flying, energy-encased objects slowed and dropped to the floor around him.
What to do? What to do? Kaden wiped wetness at the corner of his eyes away. He suddenly understood why his mother would never allow him to join her and his father's superhero escapades…losing family was just too hard to deal with.
…
"It's not opening."
"You just figured that out, Einstein!"
"You know, Alex, you're not being very helpful."
"It's broken. It's not going to open!"
Halle sighed exasperatedly. After deciding not to call the police, because that meant Halle and Alex would not be allowed to help find their parents and would probably be left in the dark, (and they couldn't very well tell the police their parents were superheroes and they had been taken down by supervillains, 'cause who else could?) they determined the next plan of action would to be to go to the safety and helpfulness of the secret lair, but the china cabinet door had been damaged in the fighting that had ensued in the upper hallway.
Halle had successfully pulled away the damaged cabinet to reveal the steal door behind, but beyond that neither twin had an idea how to proceed, and thus tempers were raging high.
"Whatever, strand back," said Alex, taking aim, a blue orb crackling around his fist.
"No!" Halle shouted, but not before Alex had fired. The starbolt bounced off the door came right back at Alex, who was tackled to the floor just in time by his sister.
"Idiot! Don't you think our parents who have made that door superpower proof as much as they could? Don't you think I could have pulled it off the hinges with the cabinet if it weren't?"
"Well, thanks for the heads up."
"Shut up."
"I will not—"
"Shut up. I think I hear something. Someone."
Indeed, when Alex stopped fuming he too heard what sounded like footsteps shuffling around the floor below. Then the footsteps started coming up the stairs.
Halle and Alex quickly and silently stood, reading themselves for an attack, something they had been training for.
Halle bounced on the balls of her feet and Alex flexed his fingers anxiously, both barely containing the urge to run screaming at the intruder and beat them into telling what happened to their parents, but a surprise attack would work better than revealing themselves to an unknown threat.
The stranger paused a moment at the top of the steps before rounding the corner to where the twins where. Alex's starbolt flew before Halle could even move.
The intruder yelped and with the wave of his hands a translucent black shield appeared in the air. When the starbolt hit it, both disintegrated with a little flash of light.
Halle made her move, running at the intruder with a yell.
"Wait, wait, wait," the intruder, a boy, said in quick succession, covering his face with his arms. "It's me," he squeaked. Kaden. Remember me?" He took a chance to look over his arms to see Halle's fist stopped a few inches before his face, a weird expression of dawning remembrance on her face.
"The weird kid we drove home who Halle has a crush on?" asked Alex from halfway down the hallway.
"Hey," said Halle and Kaden simultaneously. Kaden for the weird kid part. Halle for the crush part.