chyp: Thanx for the clarification, man. And I checked out that story you mentioned by Christine Marquez. It's pretty interesting, even though I'll have to read the first one to have any clue. Glad you liked the latest chapter.
Raya: Glad you liked what I wrote, too. Although as of right now, I'm afraid it won't be gettin' no better than that unless I can come up with something!
"Enough, people!" Matthew ordered as he looked upwards. "John! John! Get down here now!"
"We haven't seen him since the Knox thing," Wesley said. "I think he's avoiding us."
"John!" Matthew repeated. "I know you can hear me! This is serious!"
Finally, John appeared in a shower of white lights. He looked around silently, noticing that the room was demolished, the three brothers looked worn out, and the warlock frozen in place on the other side of the room. He received angry stares from all three brothers.
"Look," he began, "I know I haven't been around lately. I've been busy."
"Save it," Matthew said. "We have a warlock over there that we can't get rid of because, you tell him, homeboy."
"I switched our powers," Wesley said, hanging his head in shame.
"You what?" John exclaimed. "How did this happen?"
"Can we take care of this warlock first?" James asked quickly. "He could unfreeze any minute."
John held out his hand and a small dagger appeared in his hand in a shower of white lights. He gave it to Matthew, who examined it. The blade was a silver color and the handle was a dark onyx shade. On the handle were intricate designs carved onto it. The blade itself looked to be sharp enough to split a hair.
"It's an athame," John explained. "It's a ceremonial dagger that a lot of demons and warlocks use in their rituals and ceremonies. I managed to swipe it from one a while ago."
Matthew walked over and plunged it into the warlock's chest, breaking the freeze on him. The warlock screamed in agony as the magical blade penetrated his skin. The athame glowed a bright yellow color as the warlock simply burst into swirls of blackness. The remains of the warlock were sucked into the athame as Wesley and James looked on in disbelief.
"Interesting toy," James said.
"How did you make that knife appear in your hand?" Wesley asked.
"Later," John said. "How did things end up like this?"
"We've been having a lot of bad luck lately," Matthew said. "Some demon called Invision came in about a week ago and…"
"Invision?" John asked suddenly. "Did he have really grayish skin and gray eyes and…"
"Wings," James and Wesley said together, finishing John's thought.
"He's no demon," John said.
John spent the next two hours informing James, Matthew, and Wesley about Invision and Fallen Angels in general. He told them all about how they used to be good, but their tendencies toward evil were too great. He told them of their abilities to manipulate intangible things, which explained their run of bad luck, and about their ability to deflect powers. James and his brothers learned all about how Fallen Angels had been exiled and shunned by other demons and warlocks for ever having the capacity to be good. They learned all about Fallen Angels' spontaneous personalities and their inability to be trusted, not even by other demons or warlocks.
"So now we know," Matthew said. "So how can we vanquish this one?"
"No one's ever been able to," John said.
"How are we?" Wesley asked.
"Y'all are the Complete," John said. "I know that if there's a way, you three will find it."
"That helps," James said. "First things first, how do we get our powers back and get rid of this bad luck?"
"I think that vanquishing Invision will restore everything back to normal," John said.
"We can't wait that long," Wesley said. "We can't even leave this room, which needs a maid or something."
"Our luck is so bad," Matthew said, "that it hinders anything we try to do."
"That's Invision," John said.
"Well what good are you?" Wesley asked, frustrated. "You stay out of sight for months, you ignore our calls, and when you do show up, you give us the long way of saying that we're basically screwed! And, you're keeping secrets from me, which I don't like at all."
"I don't like it anymore than you do," John said, "but it's not for me to say. I really need to go now. Keep the athame; consider it a present."
John left the room in a sea of white lights. James, Matthew, and Wesley just sat there, not knowing what to do.
"How about another spell?" Wesley suggested, breaking the silence.
"No," James said forcefully. "You've done enough."
"What are you talking about?" Wesley asked. "Are you blaming this on me? You're the one who didn't wanna believe me about Invision in the first place!"
"That's because you found a way to throw Lina into it," James said, "which you always do. Just let it go!"
"I can't help it if you can't handle the truth," Wesley replied. "At least I'm man enough to let your lies slide."
"What's that supposed to mean?" James asked.
"Guys," Matthew interjected, but was ignored.
"It means," Wesley said, "that because of all the lies that you told Stephanie, she broke up with me."
"Guys!" Matthew said a little louder, but still to no avail.
"You know," James said, "you should really let that go. I already told you that she did that on her own. I didn't push her to do anything."
Matthew thought long and hard as the arguing went back and forth between his older and younger brothers. It didn't make any sense, he thought, for them to be at each others' throats so much lately. It had already gotten old at least six months ago, and he just wished that they would work things out and move on.
Matthew really enjoyed his role in the trio as the rational of the three, but he despised his position as the middle sibling. It put him in the middle of useless, often pointless debates that shot back and forth between James and Wesley. He could understand it they were all children, because constant arguing is a childish thing to do. But they were all in college! This was just out of control! He often wondered how three people with such unique and conflicting personalities had been picked to save the world. There were over six billion people in the world, he thought. Of all those people, why us three?
As the arguing reached a peak, with both James and Wesley locked in a shouting match, Matthew grabbed a pen and began writing on a piece of paper. The unwavering noise was a distraction; the only thing that he could think about was how he needed to make his brothers come back to reality. He finished writing and looked at what he had written, a spell. It was crude in design, just as Wesley's was before. He knew that it might not work, but he was sick and tired of his brothers fighting all the time. He hastily read it out loud:
"My brothers suck!
I've had enough!
Please end their junk
Before I beat them both up!"
Now what exactly does this spell do? Whatever it is, it must be serious if it drove Matt to even think about doing something like that!