I woke up disoriented and naked.

I looked around and sighed in relief as I realize that I was back in my room and I was not a bloody puddle on the ground. I felt something stir in my crotch and realized that I was not alone in my bed. I flipped the covers off of me and saw Jo sleeping on my or more accurately, in my lap, completely naked. I stared at her for a while and smiled rubbing her head softly trying not to wake her up. She turned her head and blew a sigh of comfort which was a bit of a problem. Her blowing had accidentally been aimed at my exposed dick.

I shivered as my morning wood began to arise, which caused Jo to scrunch up her nose in the cutest way and open her eyes sleepily. “Hey speedy.” She said with a smile and my breath caught in my throat as I thanked whoever was responsible for bringing this beautiful creature in my life. I continued brushing her hair and smiled back. “Morning beautiful, you sleep well?”

Jo smiled at the compliment as she sat up and began to stretch, causing her back to arch sexily. “Slept like a baby, you?” she asked looking for her shirt and grabbing one of mine instead. “Just a weird dream, nothing new” I replied shaking my head as I sat up and bounced out of bed. Jo didn’t get the chance to reply because at that moment we heard something that chilled out bones to the core.

“Jo! J.P! It’s time to wake up!”

We both looked at each other in silent fear. There was no way for Jo to get out in time and there was nowhere to hide. Hide….hiding in plain sight! I remember reading about how the Invisible Woman turned invisible by bending the light around her.

I wasn’t sure if I could do the same, but it was worth a shot. I concentrated on the area around Jo and focused on bending the light. I watch in amazement as Jo slowly disappeared from sight. We sighed in relief, but it was short lived as our mom burst through my door.

As she saw me, she instantly froze. I stood there too wondering what she could have possibly seen that would’ve made her freeze like that. Did she see Jo disappearing into thin air? Mom turned around and drew a shuddering breath.

“For god sakes Joseph, I leave you alone for one day and you think you can walk around the house naked!”

I look down in shock realizing that I have yet to put my clothes on and, thanks to Jo’s breathing treatment, am sporting a rock-hard erection. I blush as I grab my blanket and wrap it around my waist. “W-well why are you always barging into my room?!” I said in a desperate try to regain some of my dignity. My mother sighed but didn’t turn around. “Just…come downstairs when your dressed and tell your sister to come as well.” She turned her head around partially as she walked out and I could’ve sworn she mumbled under her breath. “Damn…size must run in the family…”

I watched with an open mouth as she walked down the stairs and out of sight. I heard a small giggle to my right

I rolled my eyes as I made Jo visible again. She appeared slowly with a big ass grin on her face. “What’s your issue?” I asked slightly fearful of the answer. “Jo just grinned and skipped to my bed and threw herself down on it. “Mom looked like she liked what she saw.” She said still looking like the cat that ate the canary. I felt the blood drain out of my face and what was left of my boner disappeared entirely.

“No, there’s no way that mom, thinks like that, you maybe, but mom? No way.” I said trying to convince myself more than Jo. Jo just continued to smile wider. “Sounds like someone is in denial!” she teased in a sing-song voice. I figured that was enough and tried to push her out my room. But that didn’t work and instead caused her to start singing louder and prancing around my room. I mentally picked her up by the collar by imagining a hook that I attached to her shirt and lifted up causing her to yelp and scramble around in the air before crossing her arms and pouting. “Hey, no fair!” I stifled a giggle at the site of my sister hanging in midair.

“Out” I say in my most commanding voice. Jo pouts as she is walked towards the door. Feeling a little frisky, I had another invisible hand slap her ass slightly.

She jumped in surprise and growled “Why you little…!”

She ran at me but never got there as I mentally closed the door and locked it before she could walk back in.

“I’ll get you back for this!” She yelled at the door

I was laughing all the way to breakfast.

The roads to school had been cleared so after breakfast, we headed to school on our usual path.

We arrived about 5 minutes till homeroom so Jo rushed off to her class while walked towards my first period.

On my way to class I happened to notice something strange. Everyone in the hallway was staring at me and whispering. Not that this was anything new, but now they almost seemed to be afraid or something.

Things got even weirder when I walked into homeroom and everyone just stops talking and stared at me, even our usually bitchy teacher Mrs. Garfield.

‘OH kay….everyone is acting super weird….I wonder if it has anything to do with last Friday?’

Suddenly, my blood ran cold. I looked around to check my surroundings, but everyone kept avoiding my eye, which didn’t ease my sudden terror.

I switched to my incorporeal form and dived into the mind of the student closest to me. It was a quick search for his thoughts and I was reading his current thoughts. I was surprised at the speed of the thoughts processing through his head and was only able to catch a few snippets of his train of thought.

‘…Said it was like monster……godlike……not even possible….it’s got to be real right?’

Stunned I retreated out of his mind and shifted over to another student and found almost the same thoughts running through her head.

I went back to my physical form in numb shock. What exactly had happened when I had left the dance? Did someone follow me? I hadn’t even checked to see if there was someone passing on the road. I mentally cursed myself out and immediately raised my hand to ask to go to the bathroom.

Two minutes later I was out of there and in the hallways. I occasionally scanned anybody that passed me by and the all confirmed my suspicions. My casual walk turned into a jog which turned into a sprint which turned into a full-fledged run towards Jo’s class.

I turned the corner….And ran right into a pair of strong dudes in black suits and shades. I gulped as one of them reached inside of his coat and pulled out….a badge.

“Mr. Cain?” The one on the right that I bumped into said. I just nodded

“This is Mr. Wright and I am Mr. Mora. We work for the CIA. We would like you to come with us.” They turned away with another word. I gulped and looked at my options. I could go with the scary government men and probably get abducted or some other weird things or I could probably take them down and get to safety….but that would leave Jo to the mercy to anyone else who can come behind them.

I went with them.

I tried to remain as impassive as a brick wall as we walked through the hallways. I saw tons of peering eyes and heard the chorus of whispering from classroom to classroom, and not all of them were students.

We arrived at the main office where the office aides and two more uniformed officers were waiting. I was ushered into the principal’s office where a huge surprise awaited me.

It was Derrick, badly burned and bandaged heavily, but you could still tell it was him. A large man with burly arms stood by him, protective and obviously out of shape. He was red-faced and sweating slightly as if from exertion, but a glance at the balding principal showed that there may have been an argument going on.

I did a quick mental survey and found that his father had went out looking for Derrick after he didn’t come home on time, and found him burned and bleeding on the side of the road, nearly two miles away.

He was admitted into the hospital almost immediately all the while raving about what had happened to him, saying how some kid from his school almost killed him with lightning. He was believed to be in shock or mentally damaged. But as Derrick calmed, he began to re-tell his scarring events, and though they seemed…far-fetched to say in the least, the cops agreed to scope it out

Once they arrived, however, they were surprised to hear of at least five more cases of similar complaints, (minus the burns of course) of seemingly fanatical attacks all of which pointed directly to one person: Me.

I took a deep breath as I returned to my own mental space and quickly assessed my situation. The police officers are only there because there was a possible menace to the children of this school and while they don’t think it’s me, they still are bound by duty to look around and search for suspects.

I could use this to my advantage and play it off as an unsuspecting student, but derrick could still press the point.

‘He’s just going to keep hounding the cops until they finally snap and book you, I say you take him out now and finish what you started’

I frowned at the intrusive thought and slightly shook my head. No, I’m not gonna kill him over some silly old rivalry we once had, plus even if he did pester the police, I can just make them think that I’m innocent.

Leaving that slightly disturbing conversation with…myself, I returned to the crisis at hand, only to find that the conversation had started without me.

“…Telling you that this…monster should be locked up before he causes any other students to get hurt…or worse.” said Mr. Cohen vehemently, spittle flying from the corner of his mouth and landing on Principal Gramm’s desk.

The dark skinned principal eyed the bubble of spit before taking out a napkin and wiping it off with a pencil. He then ran his hands through his graying head of hair and sighed mournfully.

“I’ve already told you Mr. Cohen, the officers cannot lock away a promising student just because your son mentioned J.P while hospitalized.” he shook his head looking like he was tired of having this argument

“Why not? That boy,” he spat the word with obvious contempt “Has already had more than a few violent interactions with my son; including the one where my son was beaten brutally in front of a crowd in some messed up street fight.”

Principal Gramm raised an eyebrow as the now red-faced man huffed heavily “Funny, but the last time I checked the files under that specific fight, it had seemed that not only did J.P continually encourage Mr. Cohen here to cease the fight and to talk this out, but that particular fight was escalated by Mr. Cohen threatening Mr. Cain’s sister repeatedly.” His voice turned stern “And if you wish to press the subject, then I would be happy to let everyone here see the video that multiple student have recorded, or did that tidbit slip your mind?”

Derrick’s dad stuttered and began changing colors, but Mr. Gramm had turned away from his as easily as the discarded tissue had thrown away and faced me.

“Now Mr. Cain, you may have noticed that there seemed to be some….interesting rumors floating around that concern you. If you could please, tell where you were on the night of the dance.” he asked gently, gesturing towards me.

I sighed like I was nervous, but in truth, I didn’t need to pretend. I was nervous as hell and the way everyone was staring at me wasn’t helping. It wasn’t the people there that scared me shiteless though, it was actually the possibility that I might not be able to manipulate everyone’s mind at the same time, and I doubted that I’d have the time to do it one at a time.

“Well?” Said a rough sounding officer in the corner and I began to sweat. ‘Calm down J.P, it should be no harder than lifting up a couple of people….which you never done, but nevertheless….’

I focused hard on all five people in the room and focused all trying to reach the part the mind that accepts things in all of them at the same time. Surprising to say, the exercise left me slightly drained and I connected them all easily.

He smiled slightly and opened his mouth to say something when he realized that he had absolutely nothing to say. Shit! Thankfully at that moment, the door slammed open and out came Ava, dressed in tight black jeans that hugged her curves nicely and a black and grey tank top that fit her loosely stormed into the office and went right up to the principal’s office.

“You want to know where he went. Fine, I’ll tell you!” she shouted angrily into the Principal’s face

“He was with me last night; in fact he was with me all night last night helping me get rid of my virginity!”

What. The. Fuck.

Everyone’s jaw dropped at her statement, including me. I was also frantically trying to find out if turning invisible in a room full a people would be worth it to escape the amount of embarrassment I was in.

It had also seemed that her outburst had embarrassed herself as well, but she kept on her rampaged. “Because I didn’t want anyone to know, I had asked him not to say a word about this but you guys had to be so damned obsessive over the fact that this cock-head finally got the shit beaten out of him!” she pointed an accusing finger toward derrick who flinched in surprise

“And you know why that happened?” Not waiting for an answer Ava forged on. “Because he has been a pain in the ass to this school for years now, and because his dad is some big shot lawyer, you all are too scared to do anything for fear that he’ll sue the crap out of you and I’ve had it up to her with it!” When she raised her hand in the air to emphasis her point, everyone in the room flinched, even the cops who were practically cowering in their corner.

“And if I find that even the slightest word of this was uttered by ANY of you, I will personally and painfully CASTRATE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!!” she screamed

She took my hand gently and pulled me out my seat, leading out to the door. Before we left she turned back and glared at the men still cowering from her outburst. “I am going to leave now, and I going to take the only man who has a pair big enough to do anything in this place, if you have a problem with that, then you can take it up with me.”

She sent another glare their way, opened the door and just like that, it was done.

We wandered the hallways for a while before heading to my old garden area, since Derrick hadn’t been around to bully me anymore; I really hadn’t been back here. We walked over to the old bench that sat right behind the tree and sat down.

“We can stay here until the next bell rings.” She said shakily I glanced over at her and realized that she was breathing hard and blushing madly.

We sat in silence for a while, trying to look at anything but each other. Eventually, I started working up the courage to say something, anything that could ease my new friend.

“So…..uh…..that happened.” I said nudging a pebble with my foot. She nodded and we lapsed back into silence. Smooth man, real smooth.

“Ok, this is stupid!” She said suddenly, startling me and a few nearby birds. “We should be able to talk about this like normal, mature adults’ do.” she said sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than me,

Silence closed over us once more. “I don’t feel very mature right now….” I mumbled

She looked at me and sighed, her angry resolve fading. “Neither do I.”

I looked at her and I couldn’t help myself; I started laughing. The sound of my laughter filled the air, echoing through the empty garden. Ava looked at me like I was crazy. “What’s so funny?” she asked. I took me a moment to compose myself slightly

“I was…just thinking about how…how those cops looked…when you. When you…screamed at…them!” I lost control and started laughing all over again. Ava looked at me for a second before laughing along with me. It was a beautiful sound, happy and full of mirth. The sound echoed like before making it sound ten times better. I took in her mousey brown hair and light brown eyes that seemed to shine when she laughed. Her face betrayed her oriental roots that were interrupted only by a splash of brown freckles. How is it that I only noticed her a few weeks ago?

I shook my head and turned to a question that was nagging in my head. “So why did you help out anyway?” I said once we had calmed down. Ava just shrugged and blushed some more. I realized I liked it when a rosy bloom came to her cheeks.

“I figured that since it was partially my fault that you had gotten in this situation in the first place, I owed you one.” she said simply

I grinned “And the part about your virginity?” I said causing an even deeper red to spread across her face until she resembled a cute tomato. “Th-that just came t-to me in the heat of the m-moment…” she said trying to hide her face into her bangs. I just chuckled at her choice of words

“Heat of the moment eh?” I grinned wolfishly and leaned closer to her face. “So you’re saying that if I were to kiss you right now you wouldn’t feel anything?” I said my eyes daring her to make a move.

Her mouth flapped open and closed as she tried helplessly to say something. I laughed at her embarrassment and went to pull myself back up, but was surprised to feel a small hand pulling at my shirt.

“Uh…Ava?” I said feeling a heat creep up my neck. Her bangs hid her eyes from me and she seemed to be trembling slightly. I waited until her voice reached my ears, softly speaking.

“J-just….one kiss….right?” She asked. Now it was my turn to turn into the proverbial tomato.

“Uh…yeah…that’s-that’s right.” I said swallowing loudly.

She stayed still for a moment then, in a quick burst of motion, pressed her lips against mine in a sensual kiss. I blinked, unsure of what to do, but quickly got over my nervousness and kissed back. Ava shuddered slightly and opened her mouth in a silent moan. I took that as an invitation and stuck my tongue in.

Her eyes widened as I did and she relaxed even more, pressing her body into mine. We slid forward on the bench until her back was against the seat and somehow, I was on top of her. Our kiss never broke and our battle of the tongues was getting intense. We eventually took a breather, but I only stopped to suckle on the nape of her neck.

She bit her lip and groaned lustily as I bit, sucked and licked away at her neck. Once I was satisfied with my work, I reengaged our kiss off. As our tongues battled for dominance, our bodies matched their intense fight on the outside and so far I was winning.

Ava’s hand traveled down my back and squeezed my arse, and my hand traveled to her hands, pulling them up and over her head and deepening the kiss as well. I traveled back down to her neck and went back to work biting and suckling. I could feel her groans through her taut skin and the taste of her skin was intoxicating. I wanted to taste more of her, but before I could try, I felt one of her hands slide down and press against my chest.

“I think that’s enough for now.” she said with a slight gasp and a smile. I sat back confused and slightly hurt that she would want to stop right when it was getting good. She saw my look and giggled slightly. “And I thought that I was only supposed to be one kiss?” she said with mock surprise.

I growled playfully, and began tickling her sides, causing her to begin that wondrous laughter again. I smiled and relented slightly so I could get a word in. “Well to be honest, it was a lot harder to hold myself back when you started molest my mouth.” I said with a teasing grin.
Ava wiggled herself away from my attacking fingers and sat herself up right and copied my grin. “Me? Molest you? Why that would never happened to girl of my standards.” she said in mock horror. My grin widened as I replied sagely “Oh really? What about when you took a guy home with you after a party to screw and then tell everyone in the school, including our principal?” I was rewarded with another blush and a friendly punch in the arm.

The school bell rang, signaling the end of second period. We both looked at each other before sighing. “I guess we should be getting back, huh?” Ava said sounding slightly disappointed. I kicked an overturned rock. “Yeah, I guess so….” silently we walked from the garden and into the hallways. It was a comfortable silence. Eventually we made it to her classroom and separated, leaving me alone to think. I made my way to my English period (one of the only classes I had honors in) but, as soon as I walked in, the classroom grew deadly silent.

I sighed. This was going to be a tough day…

§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

By lunch period the next day, the school had focused on other things, giving me the peace of mind that I’ve been praying for. I happily had slipped back into the crowd. Or at least, as normal as my life could get. I smiled as I recounted the days that everyone had nervously smiled at me and rushed pass as if they were all on in some big secret that I wasn’t allowed to know about.

I toyed with the idea of searching through a few people’s thoughts to see what was going on, but I opted against it. It’s one thing to find out things through people’s thoughts to protect myself and my family, but going through people’s minds is a total invasion of privacy and I would hate for that to happen to me.

I walked my way to the lunchroom, pondering over the twist and turns that my life has made recently and grinned. I opened the doors and a sudden hush fell over the lunchroom instantly putting me on guard.

I stood still, letting my combative instincts take over as I shifted my eyes around the completely still and silent room. Now, a completely quiet room isn’t usually something I would go all commando mode on, but when everyone has suddenly frozen in mid-action, as if time were frozen, I immediately assume something is wrong.

I waited there like that for a moment, unsure if I were dreaming or something, when I saw something dart out from near a corner. I instantly locked in on it and prepared for a battle. The figure was dark and shadowy, so it was hard to describe its features, but it moved fast and with a purpose.

With a sudden change in interest, the dark figure rushed at me with lightning-like speed. In that I didn’t have time to think about any moves, I just reacted by throwing up a mental shield that encased half of the cafeteria.

The figure slammed into my neural wall and bounced back, obviously stunned and in that instant my commando mode kicked and I fashioned my wall into a net that I then draped around the figure and pinned it against the wall.

As it struggled against its invisible bounds, I breathed a sigh of relief before going to check out who this mysterious person was. Before I even close enough to get a good look at the figure, a familiar voice rang across the silent room, scaring the pants off of me.

“Not bad for your first time.” Another figure said, standing in a shadowy corner. As he walked into the light I felt a mix of emotions, mainly consisting of rage and relief.

“Paleos!” I exclaimed as the long bearded man from my dreams walked towards me, a small smile on his face. “What are you doing here? And what’s with the shadow man?” I asked angrily Motioning towards the now still dark figure that was still pinned to the wall.

Paleos waved his hand and the shadow man disappeared into thin air. I stared at the spot where he once was, bewildered at what I had just seen.

“What was that?” I asked incredulously

Paleos chuckled. “That was a little trick I picked up when training with a few shinobi in china.”

“Do you think you could teach me?”

Paleos pondered this for a moment. “I could try, but the technique is very difficult. It took me almost a whole five years straight to figure out and another ten to master it.”

I slumped my shoulders in disappointment, and then perked up as I was struck by a great idea.

“Wait a minute…what if you could teach me how to do it in only a few seconds?”

To say that Paleo’s eyebrows shot up would be understatement, the more accurate response would be that his eyebrows flew up like they were attached to a weather balloon that had way too much caffeine that morning.

“Well, I’d say if you have a way to do that then I’d be happy to help out in any way that I can.” He said with obvious disbelief in his voice. I grinned and motioned him closer.

Once Paleos was within reach, I put my hand to his head and activated Mental Shift. My astral-self floated out of my body and into the old man’s head. The first thing that I noticed was that everything was very slow and coordinated, as if his mind were in a constant state of relaxed precision. I made my way to his control center and focused his thought towards the shadow man technique. In an instant, hundreds of thousands of images surrounded the screen.

As I watched them go by, I realized that I had no way of copying his recollection and making it my own. I stood there and thought for a moment, letting my enhanced thinking run wild with ideas. Finally I had an epiphany, if the control center is like a complex computer, then all I needed to do was copy the information regarding the Shadow Man technique, and then copy it down to my own control center.

I set to work downloading all memories that had to do with his training. It took me a bit longer than expected, but I eventually had all the memories ready for transport. I closed my eyes as I imagined a big hunk of pie that represented the shadow man memories, and concentrated on making two separate pies. The process really drained me, especially when I had gotten distracted or lost track and had to start over again.

Soon, I had finally created the two separate pies and returned the original back to its source and kept the copy. Memories that weren’t mine flashed through my mind, years where I hadn’t been born yet rushed past me in an instant.

Once the process was complete, I double-checked to make sure everything was in the right place, then exited paleo’s mind and returned to my own body.

Now, back in my body, I released my grip on paleo’s head and grinned. He opened his eyes and looked towards me with confusion written on his face.

“So what happens now?” He asked and I smiled before closing my eyes and summoning a Shadow Man right next to me, causing Paleos to jump a foot in the air.

“Hell’s bells man, give a fella a little warning next time!’ He said putting a hand to his heart, but a happy twinkle in his eyes.

I grinned as I said “If you think that’s impressive check this out!” I closed my eyes again and concentrated hard. I heard Paleos gasp as my Shadow Man’s feature’s changed into an exact replica of himself.

“But…how is that possible? I was still trying to perfect that myself, so it should have been impossible for you!” Paleos said examining the new face of my Shadow Man for a flaw, only to find none.

“Well, when I got the memories of your training, I got some of your recent training as well.”
I explained as I made the Shadow Man move his arms, startling the old man.

“Well it’s obvious that you’re a quick study…but this may not be enough to defeat Jerald in your upcoming battle. You be able to react quickly and efficiently. Paleos said as he finally tore his gaze away from the Shadow Man who was currently doing calisthenics and focused his gaze on me.

“Jerald has had years to improve and perfect his power, while you have only had them for a short amount of time and still have much to learn.” Paleos said, his gaze becoming intense.

“Yeah…by the way, you really haven’t explained how my powers relate to you guys having powers as well.”

Paleos blinked. “You mean to tell me that you are unaware of how your powers came to be?” I nodded my head, intrigued to hear the old man’s explanation to say in the least.

“My son, while you were on the field on that fateful night, you had unknowingly stopped underneath a plain of battle between two of the most powerful beings this world has known.”

He paused as he thought of a way to phrase his next sentence as I watched in rapt attention.

“Keratous, Lord of Mischief, Corruption and the Mind, was one of the two. He fought against his sister, Semeria, Lady of Truth, Honor and Form, over a most serious matter. The had raged over this over this many times throughout history and it didn’t seem to grow closer to closure as time marches on. They continued arguing for ages, each and every argument becoming more and more heated, until it finally reached a climax on the field of battle, which was placed far enough outside of sleepy town that we thought that no one would be hit by anything that fell from the sky.”

Paleos rubbed his eyes, suddenly appearing very tired and weary.

“It’s evident now that we were wrong.” He whispered sadness tinting his voice.

“A powerful blast from both Immortals combined between them and refracted downward towards the ground where you were struck. It was only after the battle that we took notice of you, and by then you had already slipped into a coma in which it did not look like you would wake.”

I sat as still as a rock as I listened intently as questions bubbled in my head, but I quieted them down and remained silent. I wanted to know more off what happened that day, from someone who has the answer that I’ve asked myself dozens of times, over and over and over again.

“We knew that you would most likely die if nothing was done to save you, so all the immortals had come to a meeting to figure out what to do. We had come to the consensus that the two responsible for your state will be the ones who will fix it. So, Keratous and Semeria allied with each other, promising to fix the damage that they had wrought.”

“The damage they’d done to your system was too great, though, and if they did not think of anything quickly, you would surely perish. Because they knew that if you were to die, they would surely be stripped of their powers and rank if that were to happen, they hatched a desperate plot to save your life. They turned themselves into their purest essence and combined it with your own. The end result was that your life was spared, but only as long as the two immortals hold on to the thread that your life hangs on.”

I stared at Paleos, my mouth hanging open so wide you could my heart beating feverishly. I almost died? There are freaking Gods of unimaginable power attached to my soul? I almost died? Could these Immortals, being controlling me with my notice? I freaking DIED?!

It was too much to handle, I suddenly began giggling like a madman. I couldn’t help it, after all this time of wishing I could just curl and never wake up, I had actually died and I couldn’t even do that right!

Paleos simply looked at me for a second before nodding his head, his eyes still remorseful.

“I understand that this is a lot to process-“

“A lot to process?” Interrupted, still smiling my joker smile. “I’ve just been told that I basically died and came back to life, on the condition that two gods, that have been fighting for eons over some feud by the way, play nice together with my soul. Why would that be a lot to process?” I said and heard the note of hysteria creeping into my voice, but was unable to do anything about it.

Paleos watched me for a few seconds as my emotions became more and more intense until it looked like I would be crushed beneath the sheer volume of them, then, quick as a snake, darted his hand out and slapped the back of my head down. Hard.

“Owwww!! What the hell was that for?” I asked furiously, rubbing my stinging head.

“You were becoming hysteric. I need you to calm down and it looked like reason would not work, so I chose the next best thing.” Paleos answered calmly.

As I glared at him, I realized that he was right; I did feel a lot calmer than before.

I mumbled a word of thanks and Paleos smiled before continuing his story.

“Now that your life was secured and no longer in danger, we turned away from your life to focus on our individual lives. Imagine our surprise when a few weeks later we hear of a human sporting the powers of an immortal and found out that it’s you of all people!” Paleos chuckled lightly from the memory

“We kept you under close surveillance for the next few days and were stunned not only by your appearance, but your intense power that you radiated. However, because of how much attention we were giving you our own children started to feel neglected and grew to resent you. They planned to fight you in the upcoming transference ritual.”

“The Transference Ritual is one of our oldest customs. It’s when all immortals gather their favored children and have them compete against one another in random battles. The winner of the battles would go on to the fighters that won their round and so on and so forth until only one is left remaining. That person is then officially declared the winner and is given the gift of immortality and granted a title and a realm.”

“Because you have sustained the powers of not one, but two immortals, we could see no reason that you could not participate. Jerald had known this and was paired to fight you in a month’s time from today. I pleaded to be your trainer as you’ve had no schooling in immortal relations, rituals or reasoning. It was agreed upon and here I am.” Paleos said wrapping up his tale.

“Wait so…I’m going to fight the spoiled storm kid? And these Immortals expect me to win?” I asked my eyes widening.

Paleos let a bark of laughter so loud, it startled me. “No of course not! Most of them are expecting you to lose within the second you step in the arena.”

I felt my checks heat up with anger. So these immortals think I’m going to lose this fight, eh? Well won’t I have a surprise in store for them? I was already formulating a plan when Paleos glanced at his wristwatch that he wore and his eyebrows shot up. “Good heavens look at the time! I must be off, but make sure to find someplace secluded where we can begin training tomorrow.” He stood and stretched and I followed suit, questions still buzzing in my head, but I tried to wait patiently until tomorrow to ask.

“Oh and J.P? A word of advice?” Paleos said looking at me with a strange mix of sympathy and mirth.

“Sure Paleos, what is it?” I asked cautiously

Paleos’s grin was big enough to blot out the sun. “Next time you go somewhere private; make sure to check your surroundings better to avoid situations like this.” Before I could ask what he possibly meant by that, time returned to its normal pace and Paleos was gone, his laughter ringing in my ears.

I looked around at my classmates eating lunch in a daze. What was that all about? I shook my head to clear my thought when I saw Jo looking around the lunchroom.

I smiled, thinking there couldn’t be a better way to clear my head of all this Immortal nonsense than to spend time with my girlfriend/sister. I waved her over, a smile on my face.

Jo spotted me waving and her expression instantly froze over. She walked towards me quickly in four powerful strides of her long legs. It was only when I was close enough to see her eyes that I saw the absolute hate blazing in her eyes, and realized that I was in trouble way too late for Jo reared her legs and swung them for all she worth…right into my crotch.

My eyes rolled back into my head as I screamed in pain and slumped to the floor, my vision turning black as I came closer to passing out from the pain. As tears clouded my vision, Jo knelt down to whisper in my ear. “I hope it hurt you bastard.” She stood up, dropped something at my face, then turned on her heel and left the once again silent cafeteria.

I lifted my head to try and see what Jo had dropped at my head, hoping for some explanation for the sudden and very brutal onslaught of my private sector, What I saw was my face looking back at me, or more accurately, my face in Ava’s face as we kissed on the bench.

I felt my pain-wracked body go cold as I realized what this was. It was our school newspaper. And our kiss was on the front cover for everyone to see.

We had been captured in the light perfectly, so that there was no mistaking our faces. The headline read High school Hero hooks up with Harp! More juicy details inside! Thankfully, that was the last thing I had seen before the pain had become too much and I mercifully blacked out.

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