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Knife in the Dark: Scene 05There was a whistle closely followed by a thud. The black lad who'd been trying to leave froze by the back wall of the mill. Indie's knife was buried into the brickwork an inch deep, and it hung there quivering as everyone gawped at it. Everyone but Indigo that is. He was frantically checking his pockets as if he could be seeing things.
"Indigo?" The girl he was sat with breathed, looking confused.
"Wasn't me Stellar," He swore, "Street, are you alright mate?"
"Yeah." Street grunted angrily, going to take the knife out of the wall. "But there's gonna be one less X-Man for that…"
His hand barely touched the handle when Blaze's eyes flashed for a second and the knife suddenly burst into flames. Street pulled away again, gasping. The gang were on their feet and coming forwards. Blaze put a hand out and twisted it clockwise. The fire peeled off the knife and came to her hand. Thus armed she turned to the gang and stared them down. After a second or two, they had all realised they couldn't hold eye contact with her for long.
"How did you get that out of my pocket?" Indigo challenged.
"Easy." Blaze replied. "I put my hand in and took the knife out. Didn't you notice? Or were you too busy trying to be all grown up and aggressive?"
"You're not a Yank." Stellar pointed out. "You from round here?"
"Once upon a time…" Blaze didn't want to go into details.
"So maybe I really did pull your mum once…" Indie tried to get control of the conversation back from Blaze. He failed.
"I don't think so. She was dead before you probably left primary school."
"How'd she die?" One of the littler kids that Blaze had hardly noticed before asked. Blaze didn't lie. "I killed her. When I got my mutant powers."
"What kind of freaking X-Man are you, picking pockets and killing your family?" Stellar asked frowning.
"One of a kind." Blaze answered with a straight face. "So you know who I am, who the hell are all of you?"
There were six of them. Stifle told Blaze later as they were leaving that when she'd first found them there had been at least twice that number. What had happened to the rest, nobody would tell. Clover was the youngest at fifteen and had powers that encouraged plants to grow. Stellar was nineteen, she wore her blonde hair in a straightened ponytail and had a thin fringe down to her eyebrows. She could produce starbursts of light when she clapped her hands together. Street was mildly telekinetic, but he could only move things that were lightweight. He was seventeen and had a lip piercing. Callum was a little older at eighteen and had a shorn head and broken nose. His hands were shaped more like a cat's claws, complete with light furring and retractable sabre-like claws. Carly was Stellar's little sister and a sixteen-year-old shape shifter. Their parents had thrown them out when the girls' mutations had been discovered.
Indigo was a puzzle. He'd gone into a sulk when the others started to respond to Blaze's questions about their histories and their powers. He turned all her efforts at including him back at her, twisting her words and insulting both her and Stifle with buckets of bad language. It took one of the girls to tell Blaze that he was twenty-one and their undisputed leader. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was nicely muscled and had a strong jaw. His light brown hair was gelled into spikes and he hadn't shaved too recently. If he wasn't so immature, Blaze thought as they headed in the car towards the apartment she would be staying in, he'd be a perfectly good leader for them. They all look up to him. As it is, I'm going to have to displace him to get through to the others.
"One thing's been puzzling me." Blaze asked whilst she waited for Stifle to unlock the door to the flat. The building was a new build complex, supposed to be the model of luxurious city centre living. The flat was on the top floor, overlooking the canals, Metrolink tramlines and the industrial Salford Quays beyond. "All the gang, including you, have tattoos. Why? Is it some kind of initiation?"
Stellar, Blaze had noticed, had starburst tattoos all down her spine and across her shoulders. Carly had Celtic knot work across the bridge of her nose and on her hands. Clover had daisy chains tattooed up her legs under the three quarter length pants she wore. Street had ethnic African designs around his upper arms. Callum had tiger stripes across his back, arms and even on his face, matching the markings of a real tiger. Indigo had varied markings all up the insides of his arms, but he'd not come close enough for Blaze to make sense of them.
"You'll find out." Stifle answered cryptically as the door opened. "Its open plan." She was talking about the apartment now. "Bathroom's through there, everything else is in here. Mind if I put the TV on? I've been out of it for a few days and I'd like to catch up with BBC News 24."
"That's not really a request is it?" Blaze answered to Stifle's back as she flicked the TV on. Sighing Blaze unpacked her suitcase as she always did. She unzipped it, turned it upside down and emptied her stuff all over the floor. Somehow even that didn't make this shell of an apartment seem more homely. She'd gotten soft, she decided. She used to be able to feel at home anywhere. Now she was pining after the mansion like some sort of homesick Girl Guide on camp.
"This morning's breaking news…" The anchorwoman spoke dramatically, "After the Prime Minister made his first statement following the arrest of the American President under charges of treason; another member of the American mutant faction known as the X-Men has tonight been taken into custody…"