Chapter 6: Inception of Heroics

I thought Naturite was a weird name, but I also thought being unconscious in the middle of a crater with trees reaching towards you was weird so I let it go. Daniel explained the sensation of being that close to such an intense fight. He described the feeling as being between a desert and a glacier, but instead of discouraging him, it seemed to inspire him in a way. There was a new determination in his eyes that I was a little scared of.

We walked into my apartment and I expected to see him on the couch but he was gone. I heard a lot of rumbling in the kitchen and, sure enough, there he was gulping down water from my fridge like it was his last drink on the planet. He didn’t even notice Danny til he got close to the kid, who swiped his hand at Danny but as I expected he dodged Naturite’s swipe and backed up a little. Naturite kept swinging at us and, with water dripping down his jaws, he looked like a wild animal. We cornered him and Danny stuck his palm out in an odd, but friendly sort of way. Just that action seemed to take some of the edge off Narturite so he slumped back against the wall and Danny got him more water. I was still a little peeved that he trashed the kitchen but it was fine since he didn’t see us as threats anymore. Enough time had passed while I cleaned the kitchen and I remembered that Wendy’s school was ending soon and I had to get her home. It’d be so much easier if I could drive, I thought to myself. Danny was trying to communicate with Naturite and started calling him “Nate” for short. It didn’t look like he was getting anywhere because Nate didn’t know anything about us or our language so he didn’t understand what was being asked of him. I decided to think about it more when I went for Wendy.

My heart tightened a little when we got near to the spot Naturite dropped in, but instead of a giant crater and scorched or frozen ground due to the two people fighting after we took Naturite, I saw nothing. The intersection ran smoothly and it was as if I dreamed about it. I was sure other people were nearby and had seen it, and the news helicopter would’ve seen the entire ordeal after we’d left. I was going to watch the news and maybe find some answers to the questions swirling in my head.

I got to Wendy’s school, which was Glassdale Middle school, and asked the taxi driver to wait for me while I went for her. Eventually we got home, while Wendy told me about her day at school. She’d left Danica in their favourite game of marbles with their other friends in lower grades. She said that since she was losing she didn’t feel as bad. Her little smirk warmed my heart and I couldn’t bear to bring her into the mess we apparently had gotten ourselves into. I told an exchange student from school that I had come over.

We got home and went inside and nothing had really changed. Danny was still frustrated and Nate was still confused but Wendy was ecstatic. She ran up to him and grabbed his hand and said “Hi, I’m Wendy!” which seemed to confuse him even more, but he understood that it was a greeting, and in turn, did a sort of nod to show that. Danny looked at me and then at Wendy and leaned back in the chair he was sitting on. I took a seat beside him and told him about what I’d seen at the intersection Nate landed near.

“So there’s no trace of the crater or the people that were fighting?” He said with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

“Not even a little bit,” I responded, looking at Wendy interacting with Nate.

She realized that he didn’t understand the English language and started drawing pictures to ask her questions with. It was such a simple solution to a problem Danny and I shared that it was actually kinda funny. After a little while Wendy came over and told us that he couldn’t remember anything. Danny looked at me like a reflection of my own disappointment. This had all been for nothing. But then I remembered the people chasing after him.

“That had to be the people we saw that came to the crater, but why would they want Naturite? Why would Frostbite want Naturite? I thought to myself.” I assumed Danny was thinking the same thing because of the look on his face.

“Thanks for helping us Wendy,” I said as I gave her a head pat. “He’ll be staying here for a while but so you’ll get to talk to him more.”

She grinned at me and it made me think that maybe I wasn’t spending enough time with her lately and it would be good for Naturite to have someone to keep his company after our suspensions were over and done with.

I thought it over for the next few days and brought Danny to the roof while Wendy taught Naturite some words, like water and some goddamn manners to go along with it.

“What’s the plan here Danny?” I sat down. “We have powers, we know about some secret organizations and we wanna become superheroes for sure but how are we gonna do all of those things?”

Danny sat beside me and looked up at the sky. The clouds were thin and wispy and the sky itself was a bright blue. It made me want to go to the beach, especially since the summer was approaching in a few weeks, but I had to focus on the matter at hand.

“I really don’t know,” He said after a while. “ I guess we could just wait for something to happen for us to get involved, maybe not on the same scale as Naturite but if we stop a bank robbery or something like that then we’ll be on the right track.”

He looked down at his feet, “At least I hope so.”

Seeing that he was taking all of this a little hard, I punched him on the shoulder and asked him how many times a bank robbery has ever occured in Chudence anyway and that seemed to cheer him up.

It didn’t take very long for something to happen though. There were two gangs in Chudence that were relatively unknown outside of the slums and the suburbs:

Judas 3:30 and Thames At the time we were discussing our plans of action, they were plotting several attacks on each other and the surrounding area.

Eventually, the week ended and we went back to school. Wendy’s school year already ended and so she was home, now with Nate to keep her company. Samantha and Vanessa welcomed us back with hugs and chocolate and we pretended as if nothing happened over the past week. We already discussed that it made sense for us to keep our powers hidden from everyone so if anyone came for us they couldn’t use our friends and family as weapons to hurt us. We promised that we would never let it affect our family and that was that.

It was after lunch that we heard what sounded like fireworks but much louder going off about a block or two away. It didn’t take very long for us to realize that it was actually gunfire and without a word being said we all knew the threat that was before us. The class and soon the entire school started freaking out and Danny and I looked over at each other. He nodded to me and I teleported outside of the school grounds with him. We cautiously made our way to where the shooting was and saw that the Chudence City Police Department (CCPD) was being attacked by one of the gangs. The weirdest part was the person leading the attack. He towered over everyone at least six feet and had a body built like a bus. His body was covered with weird hair almost like whiskers and his voice was low, almost like a growl and his eyes darted around the place. He didn’t act human, and he hardly resembled one, yet these gang members followed his every order, attacking whoever at his whim.

The scene was horrifying, while not much time had passed, multiple people had been shot letting out horrible screams. The gang members without guns attacked with knives, bats and axes. While no one had died yet there weren’t very far. How the hell were we supposed to help?!