"Why don't you practice?" I mocked. Mike started to open his mouth, but my ears caught something. Was it an animal, the wind? Then it clicked. I put my index finger over my mouth to shush him. I quietly walked to him and whispered into his ear.
"Where is Serenity?" I whispered. Mike shrugged and turned his head around. She was nowhere to be seen or heard from, which means that the barrier must have been down. I have been told before that there is always a calm before the storm, a violent, terrible storm. In this case, it was correct in many ways. Nothing stirred, nothing moved, the wind died down to nothing, and all we could hear were our deep breaths. Chaos started as soon as Mike and I realized what was happening.
"Holy crap. CRAP this hurts. You have gotta be freaking kidding me!" I held my leg in pain.
"What happened?" Mike took my hands off of my thigh.
"This hurts." I surprisingly laughed. How can I laugh when I was in so much pain? Another shot was heard, but this time Mike was the unfortunate victim. A bullet wound was found on his arm, now both of us were extremely vulnerable. Mike held his arm with a sickening expression on his face.
"Who is there?" I sobbed. The pain was overwhelming, and I was pretty sure that the bullet was lodged right next to my bone, scraping against it. Small, but potentially lethal ice sickles were being shot at us. We turned around about five times, not knowing where the culprits were. Then the inevitable happened. Blue and sharp, an ice sickle was stuck in my stomach. I instantly clenched my belly and fell to the ground. Bleed spurted out of both of my wounds and covered my clothing. The immense amount of pain I was experiencing was intolerable and I squirmed on the hard, frozen grass. Mike leaped towards my side and held me. Soft white spurts of air were seen coming out of our mouths. It isn't that cold outside, only about maybe fifty-four degrees, not colder than that. Mike looked at me and started stroking my hair while he took the ice out of my abdomen and chucked it into the unknown.
"Come on, come on, stay with me." He kissed my head. I used most of the weak energy in me to just glance at him. So much blood had left me in so little time.
"Stay alive for your father. You are the only family he has left." Mike encouraged me. Words were stuck in my throat and the tears stuck in my eyes. My breathing had become labored and I was drifting between conscious and unconsciousness.
"Mike. Don't. Let. Them." I stopped. I couldn't do it; I couldn't talk anymore, let alone breathe.
"You are strong Renee. Don't die on me please." He pleaded. Sorrow picked at my heart, I knew that I would not survive this, this time. Mike's face was soaked in tears, and mouthed, "don't leave". His eyes were overloaded with sadness and anger. I took my last breath and closed my eyes. Everything in my body felt distant…
"Who are you? Get away from her!" I could faintly hear Mike order. What I did not understand was my heart started pumping and air filled my empty lungs. At that point, I sucked in air and coughed so hard, my stomach hurt. I had the urge to ask if I was dead or not, but if I was dead, than I would not hear Mike defending me, Unless I was in the movie Ghost, but that would be another story. Finally, I opened my eyes and saw a man, who was not alive for long. He fell on top of me and I screamed.
"Mike!" I croaked. Mike stared at me in disbelief. Memories of what happened in who knows how long started hitting me hard. I flung the mystery of a man off of me, and shot right up. Nothing really struck me except for the fact that I was alive, and everything was frosted.
"Renee!" Mike hugged me.
"Mike… What just happened? Did that guy who saved me pretend to be with the people who were trying to kill us, so he could save us, and then he got shot?" I questioned him. Mike took me aside and asked me how I knew that.
"Because there is a bullet hole in him, and if you listen carefully, you can hear a guy and a girl bickering about this guy." I fell silent.
"Watch out!" Mike held me. Two giant sheets of ice went through us, and then my gaze shifted to what was in front of me. My mouth dropped and the thought of "I knew it!" kept repeating itself in my head. A short, ugly, black haired, brown-eyed girl was smirking in a stance right before my eyes. Her face was probably as smooth as anybody's face can be. Evil overshadowed her round head and petite body. All I could do was laugh, and I wanted to tell everyone that I had complained to in the past two years or so that I was right.
"Son of a gun! I knew you evil when I first became friends with you." I smirked. Mike spun around to face with a very large man that was not a mutant, and was holding two pistols in his hand.
"Nice to see your perfect face. I'll be happy when you are dead. I could never stand your logic and common sense." Tracy retorted.
"This is between her and me, you go take care of the other guy." I whispered into Mike's ear. Two shards of ice appeared in Tracy's hands and I stood there, waiting for her to strike. She did nothing, but I think she could sense me about to sneeze. That didn't happen, but that feeling of having to sneeze burned my nose and disoriented me, and that is when the fight had begun. Thick shards of ice were coming at me, and I bent backwards and had to push myself back up with air. And as I pushed myself up, I grabbed a rock, and propelled forwards, using air to make it more forceful. A clinking sound was made as it hit the frozen shield, protecting Tracy. We came closer and fought each other. Using my arms as a shield, I worried about getting hit by her: for now her fists are ice. A punch here and a kick there and I was thrown to the hard ground. Tracy stomped over to me, and I thrust myself up to confront her. I blocked her kicks and then kicked her in the stomach. She went flying in the air and made a thump noise when she hit the tree of ice.
"Mike, how are you doing with this guy?" I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and we were both shocked by out battered appearances.
"Watch out!" We both grabbed each other's hands while I put up I wind barrier against the muscular man, and Mike made the piece of ice (that could potentially decapitate us) go through us without harm. I nodded to him and he nodded back. We casually went back to our chore of a fight. The evil little girl tried moving, but she couldn't because of me. Her two minuscule hands wrapped around her pathetic little throat, gasping for air. The feeling of finally revealing the true nature of the cruel, cruel person overpowered me. A smile crept onto my face, but I was determined to keep a straight face: I knew it would be wrong to smile at anyone's suffering. And then it happened; she was defeated once and for all. My chest heaved up and down with my heavy breathing and I returned to Mike. He was nowhere to be found, but the humongous man was staggering, side-to-side, trying to come back to reality. I hovered over the man and stared at him for who knows how long. All of a sudden, a blur of color flashed before my eyes, and the man was gone! Mike popped up from the now normal autumn ground.
"I see you took care of the problem." I flipped the hair from my face and put my hands on my lower back to observe our work of art, then cringed when I felt my wounded leg.
"Phew, that was fun. Let's do this next week." Mike rested his elbow on my shoulder.
"What are we going to do now? We have no leads to where this group is and we have no place to sleep…" I looked up to Mike.
"Ya know that it is only like nine in the morning, right? And we have somewhat of a lead. Look." Mike rubbed his injured arm. Tracy's cell phone was in her side pocket, and must have fallen out when I kicked her. I immediately picked it up and automatically erased my phone numbers from her phone. Why did I just do that? Shrugging my shoulders to myself I look at her recent text messages, nothing. Ah, there was a name to a phone number and an address to that very same phone number in her contacts.
"Here it is." I handed it over to him.
"5439 Violet Hill Lane Kentucky. Hm. Why didn't she put our town? Doesn't matter. Violet Hill… Violet Hill…." He trailed off.
"I know that is a song by Coldplay, but I have never heard of that street or address." I confessed.
"Oh. I know where that is. That is a lot to walk to though. Hurry up and get your backpack from over there." He pointed to my backpack.
By the time we got to our "camp" it was about ten at night. Honestly, I am afraid of the dark, but right now my feet hurt, my body is aching and my leg hurt like it never has before because of the gunshot wound. Making sure there were no bugs on the tree or around it, I sat down, leaning against the tree. Mike remembered my leg after he set a campfire and he pushed up my jeans. He grabbed his small flashlight and revealed the crusted wound. What horrified me was that Mike had hand sanitizer and poured it onto my leg. I dug my nails into the stale soil and writhed around. My jeans were a bit to long for me, so he ripped an inch of it off and tied it tight around my leg, which didn't hurt as much. After the ordeal, I sat there, breathing heavily. Soon after that, I limped on over to Mike and looked at his shoulder and his arm.
"You don't need to do that." He insisted.
"Look at your arm! You have a hole in your shoulder the size of a quarter and your cuts from yesterday have reopened. Hand over the hand sanitizer." I held out my hand. He placed it in my hand hesitantly and I pulled it away from him, but he didn't let go. So I pulled harder and harder until he finally was able to let go of it. Knowing how painful it would be, as harmless as it sounds, I held onto his hand and squeezed the bottle all over his shredded arm. I couldn't help but fall to one knee; he was scraping his nails against my skin. His brown eyes twitched more and more after seconds passed of the sanitizer touching his broken skin, the pain increasing every second.
"You can stop now!" I coughed. I rolled over to my side, clenching my delicate hand. Five indents were made to my skin and stung when anything touched it. I gathered my self together and ripped of the plaid sleeve of my over shirt to use as a bandage for Mike's arm.
"There you go." I smiled, defeated by Mike. I made sure that there were no bugs near the tree trunk a couple yards from the fire once again. I leaned against it and gradually reached the insect-free bottom. I scavenged through my backpack, looking if I had any food or water.
"Aha! Three water bottles!" I exclaimed the importance.
"Do you have any food?" Mike walked over.
"Everyday I put a granola bar or something in the front of my backpack just in case I am hungry, so yes." I nodded. To tired to throw him one, I use my ability and "fly" it over to him, which was unnecessary because he then sat in place beside me.
"Thanks. I was worried sick about you when you died." Mike looked at me.
"I was too." I sighed.
"I really care about you. You are special to me. And I was wondering something." Mike awkwardly put it. Was he going to ask what I think he was asking?
"Do you think that we would be like brother and sister after this? I mean like we won't go back to our daily lives without each other?" He let out. Relief flooded my veins.
"Of course we will stay this close after this!" I answered.
"That is good." He breathed.
"What did you think of me when you first saw me in school?" I broke the silence, rubbing my leg.
"I found you very attractive and smart. And your laughing was bubbly. It made the ability to laugh more enjoyable, ya know? What did you think of me?" Mike concluded. I paused for a moment.
"Let me see. I thought you were quite a cute guy. Your voice made me feel safe every time I heard it, and your sense of mental strength is amazing." I laid my head on his shoulder.
"I lied to you about my parents and brother. My brother is actually in the military. A couple of months ago, my parents were taken as prisoners from the people we are after." Mike sniffed.
"Wow. That must be really hard." I was blank. I felt nothing, no sadness, no surprise, nothing. Noises blasted in my head that I heard from the animals out and about in the land.
"Are you okay? You don't look so well." Mike felt my head. Warmth slowed down my heart and my reflexes. No strength was found in my bones and I let my head rest on Mike's shoulders.
"Yeah. I am just tired." I lied. I could hear nor think of anything, just my heartbeat. My eyes closed, and I was half asleep,