Normicane

As she reached the western edge of Destiny's beaches, to her surprise, the sea seemed quite tumultuous.

"A storm approaches." Star thought.

"I can't row a boat towards there in seas like that." Zini said, concerned.

"And that is why you're so weak." Star grumbled. "You're second to the Dreamer for you are her niece. If you even have a fraction of her power, you don't need a boat to reach Mamnue!"

At that moment, Zini knew Star was right. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Moments later, her body started to float above the ground. For the first time, Zini used her powers to levitate herself.

She opened her eyes, pure white and flaring with energy. "Now go!" Star commanded.

Zini darted across the ocean as her eyes returned to normal. She got halfway to her home when she noticed the sea becoming more violent and the winds starting to push back against her.

"What is this windstorm?!" Zini look startled as a cyclone wall that seemed to stretch for miles both in latitude and longitude approached her. She started sweating as the wind wall neared her. The area felt like she was in the middle of a desert. "It has to be at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit!"

"About 150 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact. Only people like you and me can survive being near it! Those Normies will be cooked alive! Then again, these 700 miles an hour wind will smite them before the heat does!" Zeno's loud voice could be heard inside the windstorm with his menacing laughter. "I name this Hurricane after myself! I started in the upper stratosphere with it and worked my way down to the ocean... PURE GENIUS!"

"This is not your average hurricane." Star was on edge now. She didn't scare easily but this time she was. Never had she seen such a power like this. Then again, no one, not even an Anomaly, had super-speed up until now. What's more, Zeno's use of it displayed feats that made Star envious.

"It's so Hypersonifraggintastic!" Zeno boasted.

"What?!" Zini sounded confused. Her lips quivered as she spoke.

"My speed is at hypersonic levels so anything I do is fraggin' fantastic!" Zeno's tone sounded ecstatic while explaining his definition of the word.

"So, you're gonna kill everyone with this thing?!" Zini yelled, quite appalled.

"Queen Crystal will stop me before I get to the east side." Zeno scoffed. "Even now, the winds are destroying towns on the coast. This Hurricane's massive!"

"Zini, what's going on?" Celes's voice reached Zini's mind telepathically. She suddenly saw through her eyes and saw the giant windstorm. "Destiny is getting hammered with violent winds. Everyone is moving further inland."

How is that possible? Destiny was already as far inland beyond the mountains in the forest. "Did hurricanes get this bad on Earth?" Zini asked Celes.

"Theoretically speaking." Celes gave her a hypothetical answer. Her answer confused Zini even more.

"Hurricanes this size are known as hypercanes." Celes explained. "They are much larger than average hurricanes, but their size have only been compared to Continental North America."

"How big was it?"

"It covered half of it."

Zini flinched at Celes' answer. "How do we stop it?"

"Into the eye," Star interjected after swallowing her fear. "DUH!"

Zini felt apprehensive and seeing how visible her fear of the hurricane was, Zeno took advantage of this and sent a shockwave at her from the wind wall. Star took over moments before it hit her and teleported behind the wave, setting her inches in front of the wall. She punched through it and felt the wall try to pull her into it. The lady let herself be pulled in but once she got in, she sliced through it after creating a field of energy around her. Fighting her way through the many layers of pressurized wind, Star reached the eye. There in the center of it was Zeno floating in the air.

"You're a lot stronger than I realized. Too bad I couldn't say the same thing for all the Normies on the island behind me on my way from Mamnue. You may also have to deal with a giant whirlpool if you plan on going back to you little hermit home. I think it might be there for a while though. Nice addition might I say!" Zeno laughed then added in a warning tone, "By the way, that boy you left in the bin is trapped in my noggin. He wouldn't let me kill the rest of ya mates after the Anomaly broke me free from that Celes, so I ran."

"And doing so doesn't exempt me from giving you the same courtesy!" Star snarled in retort.

"So that makes two of us!" Zeno said in surprise. "Humor me this. How long has she been with you?"

"Long enough to know that we both have weak polar opposites that need to be expunged!" Star replied. "The only difference is that I don't kill for the sport. You're not just following orders. I can feel the joy coming from you after every kill. Zini knows you get that out of taking lives, regardless of who they are. Roanoke and everyone on that island behind you was just a test to prove your loyalty to our parents."

"That would make us siblings then!" Zeno assumed in a jubilant tone.

At that remark, Star lost it, taking offense to even be remotely related to filth. She hated both her parents, and anyone like them. That included the entire Anomaly race. Now the one Zini is in love with has been brainwashed.

Star could only utter two words and they were filled with such rage, her voice boomed loudly over the ocean at him, "IT DOESN'T!"

In the intense battle, it became increasing hard for Zeno to move the hyper cane and fight the enraged girl. Soon Star had the upper hand but couldn't go in for the kill. It happened several times.

"STOP HINDERING ME!" Star continued to scold Zini. "I want him alive." Zini pleaded.

"He's too far gone!" Star retorted.

"What use is your empathic powers if you don't use them good enough." Zini insulted her. This enraged Star into backing off and away from Zeno. She scanned his emotions as she took Zini's suggestion into consideration. Then she found that Zeno had an array of conflicting emotions. Anger, Sadness, loneliness. Yet one stuck out much different from the others-helplessness.

"You're right." Star shook her head after knowing that Glen was the emotion calling out to be rescued. "But I can't fight him anymore. You want him alive? Fight Zeno yourself!"

Star quickly let Zini take control. Immediately, Zeno took advantage of the situation, believing that his opponent was at odds with her alter ego. This gave him the perfect opportunity to charge of a shockwave strong enough to knock Zini into the wind wall behind her with enough force to be pancaked into oblivion.

At seeing the shockwave seconds before it hit her, Zini's eyes glowed white. The shockwave dissipated instantly. A steaming hot burst of air flashed around her from the dissipated wave.

"You think you can beat me?" Zeno boasted. "Try you best, mate!"

Zeno started choking. His mouth didn't close as it was stuck on the first syllable of the last word. Suddenly, he started screaming in pain while his nose bled.

"So, you want to kill him instead of me?" Star assumed from the psychokinetic attack Zini was using on Zeno. She added jokingly, "Frickin' kill stealer!"

"You wish... I know he can heal as fast as I can, but enough pain will cause him to blackout like so!" Zini sounded like a sadistic madwoman that enjoyed the punishment she inflicted on her victim.

Before long, Zeno stopped screaming and fell unconscious from the intense pain from the repeated psychokinetic attacks on his mind. His chin and upper chest drenched in blood. The hyper cane started to dissipate. Still in her telekinetic hold, Zini carried him back to a small town southeast of London. She surveyed the damage on the way to the town and saw that Hurricane Zeno's destructive winds wiped out every town in its path.

After reaching the place, Celes bounded him in a dungeon with energy chains. She began trying to undo what the Anomaly scientists did with the Nightmare's coaching. This task was hard for her because she never used her psychokinesis in this way. Her evil twin had years if not centuries of experience doing so. On the Nightmare's level of evil, never has she seen anything like it beyond what she already had in her world. What Dr. Lunningham did was tame in comparison to what the Nightmare has done. Through the eyes of Zeno, that glass was even more tainted.

Each day Celes began to believe that PowerLand was more than just an alternate timeline but another dimension. PowerLand wasn't Earth. It had its own landmasses and probably its own cluster of celestial bodies-none of which have been confirmed because no civilization has discovered space travel yet. Telescopes picked up no unique planets or constellations either. She also recognized that one constant remained between them-evil is the same in every dimension compared to her own. In this world, evil happened to be a clone of herself. Thinking about all this was a form of discouragement that prevented Celes from completing her task. She saw it as impossible, believing her evil twin was a lot stronger than her in this department.

"Need any help?" Zini offered.

"You know nothing about reversing that kind of influence." Star's condescending tone discouraged Zini from trying. This went on for a few days while Celes frustrated herself in removing the Nightmare's influence from Glen's mind.

"But I know my mother's tactics," Zini countered Star's reasoning. "She used Glen to get to Mackie, even if she didn't know there is evidence of the contrary. Remember the Lawrence family too."

Star stayed silent because it was all true. Don and Crystal singled out Maryna's family just to get to their mother who was leader of the resistance in Caprice. In the end, the rebellion fell apart.

"Of course!" Celes welcomed Zini. With two powerful minds working, Zeno cried in agony as removing the Nightmare's influence became extremely painful.

In his mind, Zini could see all the evil deeds he did, He massacred Roanoke and killed his parents for not standing up to the council that banished him. Glen was an adventurer and Roanoke's lockdown wasn't going to stop him from being one. The Nightmare used that anger, sadness, and loneliness he felt during his exile to turn him. Then came the memories of Mackie. She did at one point reciprocate but only once. He did something she considered sweet which was buy her a bouquet of flowers every time he visited her in Destiny. She responded by kissing him on the forehead while she gave him a big hug other times. Crystal took these deeds as a sign that Mackie did like him even though she really didn't.

Star laughed hysterically at her mother's faulty reasoning. "Mackie just loves flowers, not him!" Star scoffed.

Continuing, both Celes and Zini found that Zeno was her parents' endgame. Crystal knew the potential PowerLand's first speedster had in creating a near apocalyptic event to destroy their enemies. Zeno just decided that a massive hurricane would be the route to go.

"He's far faster than any I've read about in fiction." Celes shook her head.

"Who's to say my mother got it from them?" Zini reasoned. "If she has your memories of your time on Earth, she probably used their existence as a blueprint and had her scientists create one who was faster than any speedster Celes read about or watched on TV!" Zini reasoned.

"Strangely enough, PowerLand's speedsters don't display colorful lightning streaks when they run," Celes joked. "Only afterimages and gusts of wind in their wake."

It took Celes and Zini hours to undo the brainwashing. They hammered Zeno's mind until the alter ego ceased to exist. The success of this feat concerned Star very much, but she believed it wouldn't happen to her. Next to change was his skin. The higher concentration of Dark Matter in his system was the result of a deeper purple color. Nonetheless, Celes succeeded in reverting the color back to his original light olive skin tone.

"More beautiful!" Zini thought as she looked over at him. She scanned him from head to toe repeatedly for a few moments.

"I let him keep his speedster augments," Celes decided. "Let him rest for now!"