Chapter One
Location: Moose Factory Island, Ontario, Canada, home to the Moose Cree First Nation
Another school day was ending quite soon, and in some way, for the better. Several students and teachers left through the doors and soon scattered across into the town. Two teenage girls in particular treaded through the deep snow, one in a light-green jacket, black rim glasses, pink scarf, and grey jeans, while the other was in a light red hoodie coat and blue trousers, with black hair tied into a short ponytail.
"Brrr, ever so cold today," the girl in green shivered. "Think I might call my dad to pick me up for a lift home. Wanna ride home as well, Mii?" She asked the girl in light red, who seemed to be looking down with silence. "Miiyahbin, you even listening?"
"Huh?" the girl in light red, named Miiyahbin, snapped out of her daze.
"I swear, you seem invisible or something," the girl in green said. "Barely said a word today."
"Sorry, Heather," Miiyahbin apologised. "I guess I'm just feeling a little bit weird today."
"You're always a bit weird anyway, Mii. No offence and nothing personal," the girl in green, named Heather, replied.
"None taken."
"Anyway, I'm gonna go to the youth centre to wait and see if anyone's hanging about there. Wanna come along for a bit?"
"I promised my grandma I'd come home earlier today," Miiyahbin waved. "See you tomorrow, Heather."
"Okay, you too," Heather waved back.
With that, both girls went off in opposite directions of the snowbound street. Miiyahbun yawned as she briefly reshuffled her sling bag and wiped her face of frosty sweat.
Location: Ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan
Within the ruined remnants of ages past, filled with cracked and decayed walls and pillars, three people crouched and observed the closer details of their surroundings. A red-haired woman in round glasses, white shirt, and drab-green trousers, collected and gathered various pieces of rock, stone, and broken fragments of cold clay across a white plastic sheet, as a dark-skinned couple recalled their data on a laptop.
"I knew this ancient site would be vast, Vijay," the red-haired woman, Helena, stated. "But I'm amazed by the breadth of the ruins."
"The cities of ancient India date back as far as the earliest civilisations of Crete, Egypt, and even Mesopotamia." the dark-skinned husband wearing a sand-brown shirt and jeans, identified as Vijay, replied. "Coming here, Helena, you can see a compact history of the Indus Valley. As this city was repeatedly destroyed by flooding and rebuilt time and time again." "Every year, Rani and I come here to peek back another layer."
"To be honest, these vacations are often his opportunities to make yet another expedition and another piece of work," his wife wearing a light grey shirt, identified as Rani, added.
"If you love archaeology, it can hardly be called work," Helena said.
"Now that's true, of course," Vijay was quick to admit and agree. "A healthy enough dose of mythology us useful here as well. We're uncovering new several renditions of the Rakshasas, demons of Hindu folklore. Rather fascinating I must say."
"Yet such stories aren't for everyone," Rani continued as she brushed a section of wall, uncovering several scriptures and hieroglyphs. "We've actually had a few scholars leave the expedition soon after the recent discoveries."
"If you ask me, mum, they're simply scared," a young female voice spoke from behind and nearby.
Turning their heads around, the adults spotted a smiling dark-skinned, black-haired teenage girl wearing a white t-shirt and brown jacket, boots, and shorts, mounting over a few old rocky steps.
"We all can't be as brave, or rather foolhardy, as you, Kiran," Rani chuckled.
"What can I say?" Kiran shrugged. "I've never been truly afraid of the dark."
Meanwhile, after a good long while of slow treading through ankle-deep snow, Miiyahbin eventually made her way home. However, upon walking up to the front, she noticed the door was slightly open. Did someone leave it so by accident? Or even deliberately so for her?
Carefully stepping towards the door, Miiyahbin could see nothing but pure empty darkness within the few inches she could see behind the door. Just seeing such was enough to make her hairs raise, even with or without the cold snow around her outside. As soon as she reached the entrance, Miiyahbin gulped and swallowed her fears, then slowly raised her gloved hand to push the door further open into the dark.
Opening the door wide, Miiyahbin was able to peer more light into the otherwise pitch-black living room and see the interior much clearly. At first, the room seemed to be normal and tidy, just as she last left it. However, upon looking further, Miiyahbin noticed a few chairs have seemed to be knocked down and over to their side.
"Hello?" Miiyahbin called, albeit hesitant at first to do so. "Granny? Nohkom? Are you home?" A few more seconds of unsettling silence went by, until...
"Mi-Miiyahbin?" an older male voice spoke back with a faint echoe, causing the girl to nearly flinch and jump. "Is that you?"
Frantically looking around to find the source of that strange voice that called out her name, Miiyahbin immediately spotted a weary man sitting near the stairs, surrounded by broke leaves, shattered pieces of glasses, and a dried pool of black substance.
"Wha- Who are you? How do you know me? How did you even get in here?" Miiyahbin's mind and mouth raced with many questions.
"Don't be scared, sweetie, it's me," the man slowly rose up to his feet. "Don't you recognise me?"
"No I don't, get away from me," Miiyahbin denied, stepping back from the stranger. "My gran and I will call the cops!"
"No, please!" the man pleaded as he flimsily reached out. "I need your help. Only you can help me." Was this man trying to deceive the girl? Or was he indeed being truthful and genuine?
"Help you?" Miiyahbin asked back. "Help you with what? What are you talking about?"
"I keep trying... I kept trying, all I could..." The man whimpered as he looked down as himself and his wrinkled and slightly stained hands. "But I can't stop it anymore." His lips and hands twitched and his breaths fractured. "It's coming, Miiyahbin, and only you can fight it."
"Fight what? What do you even mean?" Miiyahbin demanded to know, but then...
"The Whitago!" the man growled in a sudden deep and howling tone, his mouth stretched down and gaped open, as his teeth quickly grew long and sharp. "It has come, and it is here!"
Miiyahbin immediately yelled from the shock and nearly tripped back. The man contorted and morphed into a strange and monstrous creature, growing taller and somewhat bulkier as his clothes were ripped through and away. His nails grew long and black, his legs turned to digitigrade, and large antlers spouted from his head; resembling a mutant-human-deer hybrid.
"Say it, Miiyahbin, say the word," the man-beast still managed to speak. "You know what to do. Say the word now!" The creature tried to be passive in its tone with Miiyahbin, but even with its already fragile patience, the human girl seemed to not oblige, still frozen and shaking in fear and silence. "Say it now!" The wendigo-like monster suddenly shouted as its eyes glowed red with rage.
"K-Kee..." Miiyahbin quietly stammered before yelling out in defiance. "Keewahtin!"
Upon saying that strange word, Miiyahbin's body ruptured in a flash of blue light as her sclera turned blue and her irises turned to pure white. The blinding light was enough to force the beast to cover its eyes in reaction, but as the light quickly dimmed down slightly, the wendigo-esque creature saw the girl, not only levitating, but also now donned in a tight suit and flowing wing-like cape of white, black, and light blue.
With a swift wave of one hand, the super-powered Miiyahbin emitted a beam of light at the beastly foe, frying its skin and causing it to shriek from the pain. However, the monster frantically morphed again, this time into a smaller humanoid figure. The teenage superheroine let down her hand and power to see what was monster was doing now.
"Too late, child. You can't run from yourself," the thing spoke again, this time with a different yet dark and familiar voice. Just then, the beast had done its shapeshifting, becoming something, someone that Miiyahbin looked on with widened shock in her eyes. An exact clone of herself, complete with the suit and cape, albeit with tainted veins across her skin and face, red irises, and black sclera. A wickedly twisting grin grew in its face, her face. "You can't save and protect all you love from yourself!"
"No!" Miiyahbin yelled back from seeing this dark impostor. However, as soon as her scream ceased, everything suddenly turned to normal. The ghastly creature had already vanished, not even in a flash. Looking about, Miiyahbin noticed that the knocked over chairs from before were back up again, and the floors were seemingly clean. Just as she was silently assessing the situation that had just happened, she heard the creaking of a door and expected another stranger, but saw a face she couldn't be happy enough to see again. "Granny?"
"What's wrong, Miiyahbin?" the grandmother asked as she closed the door behind her. "I heard a scream. What happened?"
"There was a monster, it tried to attack me," Miiyahbin said in a panic. "It was terrible."
"A monster? Really?" the grandmother questioned as she looked around. "There's nothing here now."
"I swear, Granny, it was here," Miiyahbin said, her tone nearly breaking down. "It was real."
"There, there," her grandmother comforted, taking in the young girl for a protective hug. "Don't worry, there's nothing to fear. You're safe here with me."
She wanted to believe that. Miiyahbin wanted to believe her grandmother's own words. She always had. But with such an otherworldly encounter and confrontation, Miiyahbin couldn't be too sure. If by becoming a superhero, she was to become a monster as well, how would that happen, or even work? For as much questions Miiyahbin still had in her mind, she didn't know if she even wanted the answers at all.
To be continued...