Chapter 5: Naturite

I brought her up to the roof of the apartment. It was quiet, except for the few cars zipping down the street. The sky was clear and the moon glowed above us like an oversized street-lamp. I looked at Samantha staring at the moon. Her mouth was open just a little, though I doubt she noticed, and her unblinking, blue eyes were fixated on the moon.

She was beautiful, like a lily in a garden.

Almost as if something pulled her out of a trance, she regained her awareness of me and blushed, and I could feel my own cheeks getting hot knowing that she noticed me staring at her. I cleared my throat and guided her to the chairs that were up there.

We sat for a while in silence, partly because the night was unnaturally peaceful but also we didn’t know what to say.

“So,” She broke the silence. “How’s Wendy?”

“She’s pretty good, sleeping like a baby right now,” I answered with a little nervousness in my voice.

“She does enjoy her sleep,” Sam looked off in the distance.

The words hung in the air for a few seconds before I became conscious of the silence.

I thought for a while before speaking, “She wants to stay up late like you do.”

Samantha looked kinda shocked but said nothing. We stayed silent for a little bit more before she turned to me with a sly look on her face.

“Will?” She asked me. “How’d it feel to knock out Scott?”

I couldn’t help smiling at her, “It felt really, really, really satisfying.”

We both tried to suppress our laughter so we didn’t cause too much attention to ourselves, but I continued talking about my prior experience in the fight with Scott and his cronies. She listened intently to my ranting and called me stupid for starting a fight with Scott but she did find it relieving that I won at least, considering I’d still get suspended if I lost.

“Does your face still hurt?” She raised her eyebrow.

“Only when something touches it, I think,” I poked my own face.

“How about this?” She reached towards my face.

Her hands were soft and warm against my skin and it gave me solace with all the things that were happening. I felt like everything was happening really quickly, I already knew Danny was already thinking about superhero suits and catch-phrases but we were just normal middle schoolers less than a month ago, but feeling Samantha’s hand caressing me helped me realize that there are things close to me that I want, no, need to protect.

“Will?” Sam tilted her head sideways.

“Huh?” I snapped back to reality.

“Does this hurt?” She asked.

“Oh, no, not at all,” I shook my head.

She lifted her hand and patted my head.

“Sam?” Daniel’s voice whispered from the staircase. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking up on Will,” the tone in her voice changed. “And you too.”

“Your parents let you visit this late on a school night?” He walked over to us.

“Nope,” She played with her hair. “I snuck out.”

At first Danny and I didn’t know how to respond to that but we all ended up laughing for a good while.

The next day, Danny and I tried to understand our abilities. We quickly found out that I couldn’t teleport anywhere that wasn’t dark or shady. I had to touch the shadow to pass through it. Since Danny’s powers were basically automatic, he didn’t have much to practice so he opted to discuss our plans for being superheroes while I experimented. He showed me some designs he made for our suits but neither of us knew how to sew so we put it off for later. He also talked about our superhero names and decided that Reflex was perfect for him, however, for me, he bounced around names like “Dark Blade”, “Shadow”, “Shift”, and “Nightfall.” I wasn’t very good with coming up with names for things so I just asked him to keep it as simple as his name.

“So how about Shade then?” He sat on my couch with his face full of the pancakes that Wendy didn’t have before going to school.

“Shade and Reflex?” I said, trying to grab the milk through its shadow. “I can work with that.”

He gulped down some milk and wiped his mouth on his sleeve before turning to me, “So, what’s going on with you and Samantha?”

My hand jerked from the shadows as I tried to find a response. What was going on with me and Sam? We were friends, that much was obvious. So I told Danny that Sam and I were friends, the same way he and I were. He kicked back in the chair and gave me a look that said he didn’t really believe me.

“Will, be honest with yourself,” He leaned forward again. “Dude, everyone in the school can see that you like each other.”

I didn’t know what to think about that at the time. Maybe it was a bad thing that everyone else knew or maybe it was a good thing that she probably did like me, but I wasn’t entirely sure I saw her in that way. Especially since the three of us have been friends for so long, I thought it would feel kind of… wrong to like her.

I stayed silent and Danny sighed before chomping on another pancake. Again, I tried to grab the milk through its shadow and was actually successful that time but my mind was on… other things and I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate it.

It was then a bright light shone through the windows and an explosion rang out in the distance soon after. Of course, it had to be a meteorite landing but the last one was weeks ago, this one was different. We took off to the origin of the light and got there in a few minutes of Danny parkouring and myself teleporting toward it. When we got there, the meteorite we expected to be there was gone and the only thing sitting in the massive crater was a boy. He looked around our age but he seemed a little different and by different I mean he had a brownish-green aura emitting from him while the nearby plant-life seemed to try and touch him. The trees creaked and groaned as they bent (or bowed?) toward him but none of them were close enough to reach him.

Danny looked over at me and I realized we had to make a decision soon. We could hear the fully expected sounds of sirens fast approaching and Danny told me he could hear a helicopter coming with them too. I assumed it was a news helicopter and slid down the side of the crater with Danny to grab the kid laying at the center of it.

“Can you do what you did with the milk but with him?” Danny asked while looking up towards the area we heard the sound of the helicopter coming from.

“I can try,” I picked the boy up and slowly sunk into the shadows we were casting on the ground beneath us.

“Take him back home while I’ll try to throw them off,” He started running up the slope.

And just like that, we were gone. I felt the familiar cold feeling from before and I couldn’t help but wonder if this kid was also feeling the cold, if he was still conscious that is. I attempted to teleport from the crater to my home but it felt more like grasping for something that was just barely out of my reach. I didn’t think there was a limit to how far I could teleport so I never did any testing for it. I used multiple full range teleports and walked with the kid to my apartment and laid him on the couch. I knew that it was probably a bad idea to bring a random, almost naked person to your home but I didn’t have time to think about it since Danny was probably in danger. I teleported again and looked around for any sign of him when I saw Frostbite and someone else fighting around the sides of the crater. It seemed like if one of them fell in, the other would win. The unknown person used fire powers and he had a deadly aura coming from him. There were others as well, wearing dark clothes and fighting with various different weapons. It looked like a war around the empty crater and I felt good about getting that kid out of there, but where was Daniel? With all the shooting and fire and ice everywhere I couldn’t stop myself from thinking the worst but I saw him in a window of a nearby building watching the fighting with a strange, excited look in his eyes. I teleported to the ceiling above him and we ducked behind the wall.

“I’ve been watching those two fight and trust me when I say,” He put his hands on my shoulders. “They’re awesome!”

“Should we really be here right now?” I sounded a lot calmer than I actually felt.

“Will, this is a once in a lifetime chance to see two actual superhumans fighting up close,” He looked out the window again. “With my reflexes I doubt I could get hit by any stray bullets either.”

“And you’re sure you wanna take that chance??” I pulled him back down.

He sighed and told me that I never let him have any fun. I teleported us from there to somewhere a lot more safe and we walked to the apartment. While we walked up the stairs Danny stopped me.

“When I was near the crater I could hear them talking about the kid who fell,” He said. “I didn’t catch very much but apparently his name is... Naturite, or something.”