Ch. 2 Off the Grid in Mid Realm

We stayed at Dante's place until morning, on the assumption that if anything were to follow us it would find us at one of our houses. So we went out to his backyard to break the old bicycles, since we couldn't use any of our abilities.

The sun was blinding today, mostly since I had not been in real human sunlight for several years. The closest thing I got to sunlight was in the Nature Realm, which you can't really count as blinding since everything there is meant to be comforting and peaceful. So the sun never got that harsh. It was cold too. Cold like I haven't felt for a long time. Normally when I have my powers I am immune to the cold and to heat. I can feel it, but it does not affect me or hinder me in any way.

"I fucking hate Mid Realm," I say teeth chattering.

"Hey, watch your language young man!" yells an elderly woman with paper white skin that loosely covered her hard angry expression.

I try to look her in the eyes the way I normally do when I want to know everything about them. But instead all that came to mind was a bunch of random shapes and colors that made no sense. The woman glared back, then to my astonishment disappeared in a gust of wind. "What in the fuck" I say out loud shaking my head. I rub my eyes and look again but still, she was gone. I turned to see Dante looking at me with emerald green eyes.

"I don't why she came here" Dante said walking closer to me." He put his hand on my shoulder. "She said she she was waiting on someone"

I glared up at the sky trying to find some useful sign "Man, why does this always happen to me," I complain.

"Who was it?" I ask

"My Grandma," he says a little wistful. "She been dead for years now,"

"Why would she show herself to me? Wait! You saw her too." I say forgetting the fact that his eyes were as good as mine.

"Alright well-" All the sudden there was a huge vibrating sound. The sound was so painful that I knew I could only hear it. I fell off my bike pain stabbing at my solar plexus and in the middle of my forehead. "Fuck!" I yell. Images flash through my head, though are too fast to make them out. Everything around me shakes from the immense vibrations. Agonized voices scream in my mind calling for help. All around me people move in stop motion like someone was flipping through pictures of them to slowly to make it seem real, but to fast to not move at all. Dante rushed toward me, not affected by the time warp, while I rocked back and forth on the ground with my hands held tightly over my ears, unsuccessfully trying to stop the vibrations from turning my brain to mush. When Dante reached me his eyes glowed with a fiery light like a mix of fire and light…

"Fight it!" He yells in a two toned voice. One female one male. "Don't let him win!" Dante grabbed my shoulders and shook me, his hands like molten iron on my human skin. "Don't let him take you!" he yells. "You are stronger than him!"

Suddenly, I was back on my bike riding like nothing happened. My headache was gone and everything seemed normal.

"What do you want!" I yelled out fear grasping me late. "Ah!" I yelled, realizing too late that I was falling. With a crash, I landed on my back snapping my head back on the concrete sidewalk. I layed there for a second, getting my bearings. Dante turned around and dropped his bike on the sidewalk with an urgent look on his face.

"Hey!" he yells. "Hey. What did you see."

I looked at his eyes, trying to see if they were glowing like they had been before. They weren't. They were their usual emerald green that he always had in Mid Realm Then, as I watched, they turned from green to a deep purple that was so subtle I wouldn't even notice had I not been so close.

"It was Light and Fire," I say exhaling with relief. Dante looks at me with his royal purple eyes that slowly change to his normal eye color, hazel brown.

"Fire and light you say," Dante said helping me up from the ground. "This sounds kinda juicy spill all of it out," Dante told me laughing.

"Everything just turned all choppy," I stutter trying to recall. Their movements, I mean…"

"Hey," he yelled getting my attention away from my surroundings. "What did Light and Fire tell you."

"They weren't apart," I said. "They were together. Like bound in the same body."

"Whose body?" He demands.

I looked at him right in the eyes and said. "Yours."

Dante face went blank. "I honestly don't have a come back to that one Dante said closing his eyes"

"Me neither," I mutter

"Come on," he laughed. "Pick up your bike, I've got a place we can stay somewhere to stay."

"Where?" I asked. I didn't know that he had other places in Mid Realm. "Is it a safe house?"

"You could say that." he said smiling at me, but the look in his eyes were serious…

Dante took me to a brown brick two story home with an American flag and a Green Bay Packers flag that hung on separate white columns that held up a rundown wooden porch with a light purple paint that seemed to have just been thrown on right from the can.

We went to the door and rang the doorbell, which I could hear echo inside the house. There was a crash, then a curse as someone seemed to have been startled by the sudden sound of unexpected visitors. A moment later a plump women came to the door with wide eyes as if she had just gotten done drinking four pots of coffee.

"Hi Dante, Gray is upstairs," she told him. OK yes I can say when said gray a piece of me laughed. Who names their child grey I thought. Her eyes gazed towards me. She had grey eyes and that was what threw me off

There wasn't anything bad about it or about her, it was just….when her stormy grey eyes looked into mine I get caught in storm. Not a literally storm. Her eyes were just piercing and stormy.

"Your new," she says to me she waves for both of us to come in.

"Thanks," I say trying not to stare at her rare eyes.

I went upstairs after talking with Gray's mom. The house was the usual suburban home. There were children's toys on the floor and court paperwork on a glass coffee table with wooden legs. One of the legs had a crack so the surface of the table was lopsided. Past the stairs was a messy kitchen with a dining birch wood dining table in the center of a cheap wooden floor. I could see children's drawings on the table with crayons and colored pencils strewn all over the table and some on the floor underneath the chairs. It was obvious that there were children here, but there were none in sight.

The staircase was of birch stained birch wood that had a railing of the same wood. There were two flights of stairs that met at a small landing with a shaded window that had the shadow of tree branches silhouette . Then continued up to the top floor where there was a soft brown carpet that didn't seem to match the rest of the house.

There was a small hall that deadended at a door cheap brown door. There were two other rooms on either side of the hallway. One was cracked open a little and soft white sunlight filtered through a bathroom window. The other doors were closed, but I could hear the sound of video games playing behind the one opposite the bathroom. Dante knocked twice and the video game sounds were silenced.

"Come in," a boys voice says from behind the door.

Dante grabbed the door knob and pushed the door open and inside sat a boy with a coffee brown complexion and wicked grin on his face.

The room was decorated in a mix of Star Wars and Call of Duty posters. There was a cheap wooden dresser with unfolded clothes sticking out of the already broken drawers. There was a Star Wars replica of a gun that I didn't know the name of.

Taped to the wall by a messy bed was a small drawing of some monsters that caught my attention. The picture was good. The details were perfect. The thing that caught my attention was the details that shouldn't have been in a mortals drawing. The picture depicted a white beast with three golden arrows lodged in it's head and chest, exactly the way I had done the beast in the Spirit Realm with Dante. There was a dark figure standing next to who ever was main character of the drawing. He had a flaming chain attached to a scythe blade.

"No way," I say baffled by the ability at which this kid can see. "How did you know that." I say pointing at the drawing.

"I don't know," the boy said shrugging. "I just knew."

"But-" I start, but Dante raises his hand telling me to stop.

"Allow me and my buddy Gray to demonstrate Dante said patting grays shoulder.

"Huh," I said confused.

Dante looked at me and laughed. "Open a pocket dimension Miky ol pal," he told me.

"You mean a- never mind," I said changing my mind. I wanted to see how things would turn out. I focused on the closest realm to us. A layer between the Spirit Realm and Mid Realm. All the sudden, the room got colder and the golden sunlight faded a little. I focused more bringing us a little farther into the Spirit Realm. The sounds of spirits and zombies moaned in the distance. I brought us in far enough to allow our powers to get to their usual strength when we're not in Mid Realm. By that time the room was almost dark and the air had dropped about twenty degrees.

"Thanks Michael," said Dante.

"Ah, so he's the one you were telling me about. Isn't he Dante." I said realizing who I was looking at. Gray had been mentioned before the night we got to Mid Realm.

"Let's go outside," I said an evil smile playing on my lips.

Outside there was little traffic though that didn't really matter since nothing from that world could touch us anymore. I looked out using my enhanced vision to spot something to demonstrate on.

"You don't need to do that," said Dante somehow knowing what I was looking for.

"Why? Aren't you going to have him demonstrate?" I ask, wondering how they were going to demonstrate without an enemy for a target.

"Just watch," Dante said. He starts to get in a ready stance that he used to get in when we would spar.

"What are you doing-?"

"Just watch," he says again.

All the sudden there was a torrent of water that pushed me aside, but when I looked there was only Gray standing there with a blank expression on his face.

"What was that?" I demanded, looking around for the culprit. Then I slowly turned back to Dante who looked at me smugly. "Why are you looking at me like that. Something just attacked me with wa… ter…" I turned my head just in time to see a flash of water shoot toward me.

"Woh!" I yelled dodging back as the water flew past me toward Dante, who immediately met the water with a glowing blue arc of flame that turned the water to steam.

"Back up, Michael!" he yelled at me sending another blue flame at Gray who was now in a cloud of water vapor and dust, his shadow burned through the dark cloud of dust and water, his eyes glowed white like ghostly headlights in the dust.

"What the…" I couldn't understand what was going on. The shy looking boy I had seen earlier was now so strong that the elements around him shifted and changed, flowing around him like tornado.

I summoned my bow, but it was immediately taken out of my hands by a quick flash of water that through it away.

"Hey," I yelled.

"Don't attack him," Dante yelled from somewhere to my left. The air of whole block was now thick with dust and water vapor. If my hearing hadn't been any good I would never be able to navigate around the action.

There was an occasional flash of fire or splash of water, that accompanied a laugh or a yell in pain that accompanied a laugh.

"Clear the air a little. I can't see a thing."

In that exact moment the dust, smoke and vapor cleared away, but I couldn't see anyone anywhere.

"Dante?" I called.

"Right here, dude," said Dante's voice right behind me. I turned to see Dante and Gray standing on the sidewalk. I was on the road. We ended up in a city much bigger than Milwaukee. Skyscrapers towered high above us. The faded sound of heavy traffic echoed around us, along with the shadows of mortals in Mid Realm.

"Where are we," I asked looking around me at the completely new surroundings. Dante looked around at the busy streets filled with many people. In the distance he saw a tall building, a building he knew instantly.

"Well." he said pointing at the building. "That's the empire state building sooo," Dante said.

"Its New York," gray said.

"How the fuck did we get from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Manhattan New York." I said as the people and sounds around me solidified, bringing us back to Mid Realm.

"I don't know," Dante said looking around nervously. "But I think it has something to do with this area I think."

"So it's an aura, you say. What does it feel like." I asked

"I don't know…" Dante says looking around nervously at strangers, as if one of them was a monster. "This one feels like it's pulling at us almost as if it were waiting on us…"

"Well," I say. "I'm assuming that whatever is bringing us here, it will have us follow some sort of trail. At least now that we're here." I gesture around Times Square and started following my instincts.