Shape Destroyer

By Obsidian Leo

1

A bright light shone through the darkness, causing Aiden to squint, even though his eyes were closed. As his senses slowly came back on, the only thing he was aware of, besides a soft breeze blowing in his hair, was a dull pain in his back. His eyes fluttered as he began to feel the rest of his body. Finally, his senses returned, and he found he could open them fully.

Taking a look around, Aiden found he was lying on his back, half squished on to a bench, his head resting against a black backpack. This came as a relief, since lying against the armrest wouldn't have been more comfortable. Upon seeing the giant crystal lake sitting behind a small stone road, he knew that he was at a reservoir. The soft ripples in the water reflected the sun's rays and created shimmers of light along its surface. He looked away after a moment, and his gaze landed on the sleek laptop sitting on his stomach. The screen was black, so he tentatively swiped his finger across the touchpad.

It came to life, prompting him to log in. After submitting the required password, it opened up revealing MusicNote 15, the application he must've had opened. Several tracks for a song were loaded up in the playback section, so he put on the earbuds that were by his side and hit Play. As soon as the first notes began, the memory of making this song came back to him, and he knew how it went. It started out with a slow ballad, but then began to get more epic as it progressed. When the electro instruments kicked in, Aiden discovered a small error. An extra key had been placed in some of the tracks, causing it to sound out of tune. He smiled wryly at the mistake and stopped the song. There would be time to fix it later.

He sat up, his head a little woozy from the position he'd been in, and stuffed the laptop and earbuds into his backpack. He wasn't entirely sure of how long he'd been asleep, but it didn't really matter. Aiden would sometimes go to the reservoir on the weekends to practice for Cross Country, track, or whatever sport he was doing that involved running. It was his favorite thing to do besides making music. Most days, he'd stay there all afternoon doing workouts or long runs. And the reservoir wasn't usually crowded, so Aiden, more or less, had it all to himself.

This time, however, he'd made the mistake of bringing his laptop, where there had been a song in production for at least a week. He'd been taking a break from his 7 mile run, and had pulled it out to pass the time. And that's when he'd woken up, probably passed out for hours, and definitely not in the mood to continue practicing for track.

To think I came here to run, and then fall asleep 45 minutes later, he joked to himself.

He stood up, stretching his arms and back, then put on his backpack, ready to walk back to the parking lot. That's when he saw someone familiar, out of the corner of his eye, coming toward him. He turned and immediately recognized who it was. It was a guy, about in his mid-teens. His hair was thick and dark, making his soft sky blue eyes stand out. At a distance he looked small in size, but right up next to Aiden, he was a few inches taller than him.

"You're finally awake," he said in a baritone voice once he was close enough.

Aiden shook his head. "I didn't even think about it once I was laying down. How long were you waiting, Bill?"

"Not too long. I got here 10 minutes ago. I expected to see you running hard on account of what happened at your last race. Guess I was wrong."

"Hey, I wasn't expecting to get a cramp on the last lap," Aiden replied incredulously. But he was smiling.

"Maybe so, but you still managed to win. Not just anyone can do that."

"Does that mean I get to drive us home?" Aiden asked, only half-joking this time.

Bill laughed, resting one of his muscular arms on Aidens shoulders. "Little bro, you still got three years before you can even start practicing. Don't rush it."

"But you began around my age," Aiden protested. This was a subject that he usually tried to get the upper hand on.

"And it didn't go well," he replied, kneeling down to tie his shoe. "And mom and dad weren't happy, to put it mildly.

Aiden sighed. "Fine, I suppose I can wait." Then he waggled a finger. "Just for a little while."

Bill stood up and grinned at him as they walked back to the parking lot. As they neared it, Aiden turned to ask his brother another question, but found, to his surprise, that he wasn't there. He suddenly also became aware that the entire world around him, the stone road, the grass, the people, even the lake; was fading into an unending darkness, like they were being consumed by the shadows. His heart racing, he attempted to sprint to avoid this ghastly fate, before he realized that the ground was no longer beneath him, and, a second later, his stomach flew up into his chest. He was falling, the blackness surrounding him, and preventing him from seeing where he might land. His mind succumbed to panic, and he was about to cry out in terror…

That's when Aiden woke up, drenched in cold sweat, screaming.

I was startled awake by an anguished cry coming from the bed next to me. I rolled over onto my other side, taking deep, yet quiet, breaths to calm my beating heart. This wasn't the first time that Aiden had had a nightmare, but this seemed to be the worst out of all the ones he's had so far. And he'd experienced quite a few in the past months. I heard the door to the small, empty storage room open, then close softly, and I closed my eyes. My drifted away as I thought of the events that had happened since coming to Philadelphia.

For almost a week, I'd been stuck in my hospital room, only allowed to move when I'd feel stiff or to use the bathroom. Jam and Lin usually came by to visit, either to bring food or to chat, but it was a little boring just lying around all day. Which was a little ironic, since whenever I used to come home from school that was the first thing on my list that I wanted to do. Eventually, I was healed up enough to leave, but not to begin training yet. I was fine with that, though; just seeing anything outside of the hospital was a relief to me. At first, I started out exploring the mall, getting a look at what was around. Almost everything was closed up; as if all the stores were locked chests preserving their valuables.

During my days of wandering, I'd come across a McDonald's, a Macey's, an Old Navy, and another clothing store that I had no name for. A lot of the things that they would've sold had been taken, mostly the food, but items like blankets and shirts still remained. It almost felt like the people had left them behind on purpose, like they knew the radiation from the war wouldn't affect these objects, but I was in no mood to investigate. After a few days, walking around got old, so I watched the training exercises instead.

These turned out to be more interesting. All the Shifters wore white headbands, the same ones from the Shifter's Tournament, which I found out were called Destabilizers, specially designed by Aaron Clark himself. Whatever he put into the material of them had certain properties that turned any solid object into a Particle one right before it would come into contact with the wearer. With safety measures like that in place, the guys could have boulders fall onto their heads all day long without ever getting a concussion or worse.

Some of the best fights were between Jam and Lin, and Alex and Ryan. While Jam and Lin usually practiced shifting objects, they would occasionally battle with Particle weapons. Which turned out to be really hilarious, more than it should' both had the habit of arguing with each other when they felt something was unfair. Sometimes it happened in the most ridiculous situations, such as when Jam was lying, tied up with a rope, on the floor, and he complained about how Lin had ambushed him when he wasn't ready. This caused me to burst out laughing, which had led Lin to yell, "You're lucky you can't participate yet, Jason, or I'd take you on right now!"

The only thing I had to say about Alex and Ryan was that they were good. Nearly better than Aiden, and that was saying something. The battles almost always followed the same pattern: when it started, they'd both come in, eyes blazing, throwing intense strikes and jabs at each other. Then, Alex would start to gain the upper hand before usually being defeated by Ryan, who would end up disarming him of his weapons. It was almost like Ryan had some superiority complex that he refused to let be destroyed in some fighting exercise.

During the weekdays, training started at nine in the morning and ended around noon, with a good number of breaks in between. I felt it was a good bargain, especially considering we had only been doing it for a few months. It was a while before I was allowed to join in, and, even then, I had to start out slow, working my way up to the way I was before getting electrocuted. I shook at the memory, and tried to push it out of my head. I reached across and grabbed my phone from a spare table to check the time. It was only four in the morning. I put it back, closed my eyes, attempting to get a little more sleep before morning.