Chapter 3: New Horizons

Seth groans as his alarm clock starts beeping and reaches over to where it is to hit the stop button but finds a large squishy thing blocking the way and opens his eyes to see Seishero staring at his face with his hand on her breast. He jumps up, bashes his head on the ceiling, and falls back down on his bed holding his head while Seishero rushes over to him. He leaps back pulling the covers over his barely dressed body and shouts, "What are you doing in my room?"

Seishero smiles and holds up a plate with eggs, bacon, and toast, "You slept through breakfast so I saved a plate for you. I wanted to give it to you as soon as you woke up."

Seth sighs and then his stomach growls at the site of the bacon, "Well just stay out of my room when I'm sleeping and PLEASE go out for a second so I can get dressed." Seishero nods, blushes, and runs out of the room as Seth flicks open a drawer, pulls out a green turtleneck and a pair of blue jeans, quickly tosses them on and walks out the door.

Seishero smiles as he comes out and speaks quickly, "It's Saturday. What are you going to do today, Dubby Dub?"

Seth looks around groggily and groans, "I usually sleep for a better portion of the day Saturday, but I guess I do have stuff to do today. We're going to find Cory and take a look at those files. So gimme the food."

Seishero giggles and hands the plate to Seth, who carries it in one hand and eats the food with the other. When he gets down his mom looks from Seishero to Seth and laughs, "You're up early. What's so special about today?"

Seth grumbles through a mouthful of eggs and swallows, "Our little guest here decided I needed to eat a healthy breakfast," and sets the plate on a table so he can open the fridge to grab a can of Coke. He sits down and finishes eating quickly and then sits back. "You sure saved a lot Seishero. Thanks."

Seishero sits down at the table and stares at Seth. "So, when do we go to see Cory?"

Seth glances around the small kitchen to the little black phone on the wall near a trash can. "I'm not sure. I guess I'll give him a call and see if he's available."

Seth walks over to the phone and dials a number. A few rings later, someone picks up. A slightly creepy, gruff, masculine voice responds, "Y'ello, who's there?"

Seth rolls his eyes. "Hello Uncle Tom, is Cory there?"

Tom's voice replies, "Just a minute," and a few seconds later Cory's voice comes onto the phone. "Hey Seth. So I suppose you want to meet me."

Seth smiles, "Right to the point I see. But yeah, pretty much. Where and when?"

Cory laughs, "You know me, and I was thinking we could meet at the old tree house in the woods behind my house."

Seth nods his head to the air. "That would seem appropriate. I'll ride the bus to the edge of town and walk over now." Seth hangs up the phone and looks over to his mother. "Seishero and I are going to head over to Cory's. Is that alright?"

Seth's mother nods, "That's fine, but be back before curfew."

Seth grumbles, remembering his new curfew, and quickly rushes up to his room. He grabs his backpack and fills it with the documents on Gregin X, while putting his wallet in his pocket and heading down again. Seishero sees him and opens the door for Seth as he walks out. They both head over to a bus stop a few houses down and sit on the bench.

Seishero looks around the bright city, everyone is just waking up, rushing on their way to work, and she smiles and laughs, "Wouldn't it be great if we could be a bench for a day?"

Seth raises an eye brow and half giggles, "Yeah, I just love staring at people's behinds."

Seishero grumbles, "Not that, Dubby Dub. Chibi-Miloe and I were thinking and a bench is just so peaceful. It never has to do anything except help people relax and it can spend all day watching everything."

Seth laughs and shrugs his shoulders. "If I were an inanimate object, I'd be a computer. Then I'd be able to enter into any world imaginable through games and have access to all the knowledge on the Web."

Seishero looks up at the sky and mumbles, "Knowledge. Is knowledge really such a good thing?"

Seth looks at Seishero thoughtfully. "Hmm I never really thought about it. I guess there are some things better left unknown and unexplored. We certainly wouldn't be in the situation we're in now if this Gregin X had been left alone. Well, here comes the bus."

A small white bus with the faded letters "City Transit" written on it rolls to a stop and Seishero and Seth get on. Seth drops a few coins into a tray and then sits down beside Seishero.

Seishero holds Chibi-Miloe up to the window as she looks out and points to things as they drive by completely distracted and Seth stares for a while until eventually the long ride begins to stir his thoughts. (Why did these events have to happen to me? Up until yesterday I'd been an average, well maybe not average but still relatively normal teenager, but then again, just looking at Seishero makes me wonder why I've wasted my life up to this point doing nothing but play games.) Seth glances out the window and then jumps up and yanks the cord to indicate to the bus driver to stop, "Seishero, get up. We have to get off here."

As the bus creaks to a halt, Seishero jumps up and lets Chibi-Miloe hang from his new chain. She speaks while giggling at the bus driver's green mullet, "So, we're going to see Cory now?"

Seth smiles as he leads her off the bus. "Indeed we are. He lives about a three minutes walk out of town."

Seth and Seishero are standing at the very edge of the city. The gravel of the road is faded, and shortly after leaving the town fades away, completely running into a dirt road. The air is dusty and polluted and only the sickliest of plants grow in the area.

Seth shakes his head as he sees the plants and mumbles under his breath, "You'd think we'd have learned from the past what happens when we do this to the environment."

Seishero squints and rubs her nose, irritated. "I don't like this place very much, Dubby Dub."

Seth shakes his head. "Neither do I, but it clears out by the time we reach Cory's place. It's lucky he lives as far as he does. Any closer and his house would be right in the middle of this filth."

As they continue to walk, a small, yellow brick house comes into view. It sits at the back of a large apple orchard with one side of the house on the brink of the de-vegetated zone and the other two surrounded by trees. Cory sees them coming as he walks down the long dirt driveway, "Welcome to my house, home of the most disgusting apples this side of the city."

Seishero looks at the orchard noting that it isn't entirely free of the filth that is close to the town. The trees have a strange deadness to them even though they are covered in apple blossoms. Seth laughs as he and Seishero continue forward. They quickly get to a break in the driveway where a small path leads into the trees and enter onto it, and before long arrive at a large wooden tree fort with three ladders and a slide with several swings. Cory smiles as he shimmies up a pole into the fort. Seth helps Seishero climb a ladder as he follows up behind her.

When they reach the top Seth sets his pack on the floor and spreads the papers across the floor. "This is everything we could find."

Cory looks at the pile and sets his hand on the back of his forehead. "Well, I'll be. There's a lot there. I guess we better get started."

Seishero, Seth, and Cory divide the pile into three and slowly begin sifting through. Time passes slowly as they read useless report after useless report. Seth growls after throwing another report behind him, "The majority of these are experiment records, and all of them were quite recently as well. I don't think we'll find anything here."

Seishero points to a faded piece of paper. "What about that one? It looks pretty old."

Seth sees the file and picks it up. "Let's see, male infusion experiment 3. After the failure of the previous two experiments, they still insisted I try a third. After injection, the subject exhibited a brief boost in condition before dying. Why can't they just give up? Gregin X was developed to be a steroid for women, no man has ever survived an infusion. This was just last month."

Cory's eyes take on a very worried look as he stares at himself. "I don't feel so good, Seth. I want to go to a hospital now. I want this stuff out."

Seth looks at him, "But Cory, holy crap hospital I forgot. Hiro Moto is in the hospital because he got shot helping us escape last night."

Cory looks at Seth. "You mean you got caught sneaking into Seishero's house?"

Seth frowns. "Yeah, if it wasn't for Hiro's help we never would have escaped. I was going to visit him today."

Cory looks at him and shakes his head. "Well, let's go visit him then. Anything's better than sitting here reading through boring old lab results."

Seth's mother is sitting at a desk typing on a keyboard while speaking on a phone, "Yes, Mr. Drake is available for a press conference tomorrow afternoon. Alright, I've booked it in. Have a nice day." Ms. Davis hangs up the phone and cranes her neck as a blond haired man with a gray suit with tie and a million dollar smile steps out of his office. Ms. Davis smiles. "Good afternoon, Mr. Drake."

Mr. Drake smiles and holds his hands in the air. "Please, call me Damian." Damian reaches for a picture on her desk and smiles as he glances towards it saying, "Who's this lovely face?" And his eyes freeze on the image.

Ms. Davis smiles and giggles, "That's my son, Seth. Isn't he a handsome boy?"

Damian smiles weakly with a nervous edge to his voice and says, "Indeed he is. So what's Seth up to nowadays?" as he puts the picture back on her desk.

Ms. Davis straightens the picture, "The usual for a teenager. Although he did the strangest thing and signed us up to house a foreign exchange student for I don't know how long. He's out with her right now."

Damian walks into his office saying, "You're new to the job, but I can tell you're going to go far in this business, Ms. Davis," and closes the door as he walks to his desk to pick up the phone.

Seth, Cory, and Seishero walk up to the hospital's secretary, and she looks at them sternly. "Can I help you three?"

Seth smiles and looks at the secretary, speaking calmly. "Yes. We're looking for Hiro Moto's room. He's a friend of ours and we heard he was dropped off here last night."

The secretary goes to look at the computer, then snaps her fingers, "Yes, the Egyptian boy. He's on the second floor in room E212."

Seth thanks the secretary and the three head to the elevator and hit 2. They come out of the elevator on the second floor and walk a few doors down to E212 and step in. Hiro looks at them as they enter and rolls his eyes. "Come to gawk at me or something? I was hoping I'd be out of here before you decided to show up."

Seth looks over at the sleek blue hospital robe he's wearing and notices his possessions on the table beside him. "How's the leg Hiro? And it's nice to see you too."

Hiro looks down at his leg. "It will be fine the bullet passed right through and didn't hit anything important. In fact, they were going to release me in the morning. Aside from a serious case of exhaustion, I was fine when you brought me here."

Seishero smiles at Hiro then walks over to his roommate. A blue haired woman is lying in the bed, eyes shut, hooked up to life support systems. Cory points at her. "What happened to her?"

Hiro rolls his eyes. "How can you be so childish, getting distracted so easily? If you really must know, she is the only survivor of the terrorist attack on the plane yesterday, and it's odd because she came out of it without a scratch, but she's been in a coma since they found her."

Seishero speaks softly, "She seems very nice. Chibi-Miloe likes her too."

Seth looks at her, "She is kinda cute eh, Co-"

Suddenly, the ground jolts as a loud explosion rocks the building. The sounds of a car screeching to a halt outside can be heard as a person dressed in a black suit with a tank on his back and a hose in his hands jumps through the window. He looks from the woman to Hiro, and then over to Seth and the others. He pulls a trigger on the hose as Hiro grabs his necklace from the table beside him and sticks his other hand forward, causing the hose to point towards the man's head so that the gust of fire that comes forth melts him into nothing. Hiro screams, "You people bring trouble wherever you go!"

Outside, the explosion brings many heads towards room E212. A nurse walking down the hall with a cart strips the bottom off of her skirt and pulls two Uzis out of her cart while two janitors remove shotguns from hidden compartments in their clothes and rush to the room. Agents Thomson, Samson, and Daravon come running out of the elevator and into the room, colliding with the nurses and janitors, rolling to opposite sides of the room and holding their guns poised at each other as three more men in suits with tanks and hoses come through the window.

Hiro looks at them all, draws his tiara to his head while his robe wraps around him and his necklace swings around his head onto his neck. "You know what? I just don't want to know." The guns spread to everyone in the room and Seishero screams as some of the guns go off. The bullets' paths warp and fly into random poles, one taking out one of the woman's life support systems. The heart monitor flat lines for a second and suddenly the woman's eyes shoot open and she sits straight up. Seth pulls her down from her bed as a flame thrower goes off lighting the space she'd been a second ago on fire. Cory pushes Seishero out of the way of another blast of fire and gets roasted himself. He stands there burning for a second and then walks through the fire screaming in pain and shoves the man's hose into the man as his skin quickly oozes healed. The nurse looks around, confused about who to shoot, as Thomson jumps towards Seishero. Hiro floats into the air, his stones glowing, and fires a big orange orb into the center of the floor, sending everyone else flying back as he floats out the window.

Seeing Cory's display of invincibility, the other two men in suits jump out the window as Thomson's colleagues flee. Thomson smiles as he sees how many people are brandishing weapons against him. "This will be interesting."

The woman finally looks at Thomson, "Elements that bind this world, heed my call. Send this fool a fireball." A blue circle with a silver pentagram in it appears in the air in front of the woman and a ball of fire shoots out and smashes into Thomson's arm, sending him flying out the door and into the hall outside. He looks at it as sparks begin to come out and clasps his hand over it, looks back at the woman, and runs towards the elevator.

Seth lets out a sigh of relief as the nurse and janitors point their guns at him and his friends. The nurse grunts in a very non-soothing voice, "Who are you and who do you work for?" The blue-haired woman stands straight and looks down at them. "It's alright, Fiona. They don't appear to be our enemies. I'm afraid they'll have to come with us for a ride."

Seth looks around the large building they've just arrived at. But instead of entering through the front door, they head around back to a phone booth. One of the "janitors" who's now dressed in a white suit, dials a phone number and a section of the wall falls in, revealing a hidden door. Once inside, the door snaps shut and they look at the chrome corridors, and Seishero shivers. They are led to a large office where a black haired man with military stripes turns to face them. "Hello there, and welcome to Solar HQ. I've heard that you are able to do some pretty impressive things. We like people who can do impressive things. In fact, we'd like you to join us. Now don't go making this decision hastily. We'd like you take every factor into account before you decide. So your friends from the hospital are going to take you on a little tour."