by Rob Horner
Then the coliseum was between us, and we began to relax. Turning away from the building, I drove us out about a hundred yards to the middle of the lot, giving us plenty of room to practice, and plenty of time to respond if anyone should approach.
The night air was cool, but not cold. The three of us spread out a bit as I retrieved my purchases from earlier in the day.
"Ooh, are we playing multi-ball?" Tanya asked, seeing the packages coming out of the bag. "Golf balls? Tennis balls. Oh, and is that a Nerf gun? I admit I'm not the most sports-oriented girl, but I'm pretty sure those things don't belong together."
Crystal laughed. "Johnny said he wanted to help you get faster."
"Faster how?" she asked.
Smiling, I lifted the Blast-a-Matic, already loaded with three blaster balls. This wasn't like the Nerf guns of today. It required pulling the handle back to full cock, then twisting and jamming it forward to make one of the balls pop out. It didn't have anywhere near the range or accuracy of the newer Nerf rifles, but from ten feet away, it would be hard to miss.
"Here's what I've been thinking about," I said. "Do you remember the only thing that can't be taught?"
Without hesitation, Tanya answered, "Instinct."
Nodding, I continued, "Just like in our Tae Kwon Do classes, right? You can teach technique, and you can drill response, but instinct has to develop over time."
"I remember," she said. "Slow and steady, learn technique. Repetition builds reflex. Instinct comes with time and experience."
Crystal looked like a spectator at a tennis match, head turning to look at each person speaking. We've all been there, in a similar situation, standing with a group of people but outside of their conversation, a bystander trying to play catch up. She would be included soon.
We had no idea what Tanya's capabilities were. My head was crammed full of things from the comics, telekinetics who could fly, who could bind molecules of air to make shields. In theory, those things seemed possible. They worked in the comics. But before we got to anything like that we needed to work on the basics. My power felt like a natural extension of skills I'd already learned, a boost to abilities honed over ten years of study. I just needed to get better at turning it off.
Tanya had to learn how to activate--muscles?--things that weren't natural to her, how to focus and react. That was the point of the small projectiles.
Walking over to Crystal, I handed her the pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs we'd bought at Spencer's. "You want me to cuff her?" she asked.
When I nodded, she moved to comply, mumbling, "Not at all what I thought these would be used for," which made me very glad for the darkness, so no one could see how red my face became.
"Hey now, you never mentioned any kinky stuff," Tanya said, laughing. (Seriously, I was surrounded by pervs.) But she gamely put her hands behind her back for Crystal. "Hope you remembered the key."
"We're going to play catch," I said, leveling the Nerf gun at her chest. "But I don't want you trying to use your hands..."
"Because that's what my instinct will tell me to do," Tanya finished.
"I get it," Crystal said. "We've got to make it so she has no choice but to use her power."
"Let me know when you're ready," I said.
Tanya closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Unconsciously, her right leg slid out behind her, turned ninety degrees so the toes pointed to the right in a classic back stance. Her weight shifted with the leg, so the back leg supported around seventy percent of her weight.
When she opened her eyes to say, "I'm ready," I let fly with the Blast-a-Matic, yanking back on the handle, then twisting and pushing forward. The ball shot out with a loud pop, arced through the air, and struck Tanya on the chest. Her shoulders jerked right before the ball got to her.
"No arms," I said, and shot again. This one flew higher, coming right for her head. At the last instant, rather than let it hit her, she juked her head to the right.
And the ball juked to the left, pushed aside by an invisible force, almost hitting Crystal, who squealed in surprise.
"What?" Tanya asked.
"You almost made it hit me," Crystal said. "I mean, I knew you'd done something because you flashed white, and then the ball came at me."
"I did?" Tanya sounded confused. "I wasn't trying to. I just didn't want to get hit in the fa...."
The third shot, launched while she was still talking, never made it to her. The ball stopped halfway between us, hovering in the air like a strange UFO. It didn't dip or rise, didn't wobble left or right. Crystal squinted her eyes and turned away, like she was avoiding a bright light. Nothing about Tanya appeared different to me.
"It's momentum," Tanya said, smiling. "I got it. You have to account for the momentum."
Taking a couple of steps forward, I reached up and plucked the ball from the air. It resisted me for a moment, like there was another hand, a set of invisible fingers, holding it in the air.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
She blew air up her face, teasing her bangs. "The first two times, I could see the ball coming at me, but catching it with my...power...it's not the same as catching it with a hand, you know?"
"No," Crystal said.
Tanya's shoulders jerked again, a natural inclination to gesture. "When you catch something with your hand, you put your hand in front of it, right?"
"Right," I said, ambling around the two girls, retrieving the other two balls.
"So, your hand stops the ball, or whatever, and you absorb the momentum with your wrist, or by moving your hand and arm with the object for a little way."
"Okay," I said, reloading the Blast-a-Matic.
"Well, what I can do...it's not the same, it's not like having something in front to stop and hold."
"What is it like?" I asked, easing the priming arm back on the toy rifle.
"It's like trying to catch the ball with just your pincher fingers, thumb and index, you know? Even if you can time the pinch just right, the ball can still squirt through."
"Unless you compensate for the momentum?" Crystal offered.
She nodded. "Exactly. If you compensate properly, your pinchers hold the ball and use up its momentum."
I aimed and fired the rifle once, twice, then a third time.
"Holy crap!" Crystal said.
In the air between Tanya and I were three balls, all hovering.
Tonya jumped in the air, ecstatic in her accomplishment, and the three balls promptly fell to the ground, bouncing and rolling across the parking lot.
Now we knew what to work on next.
The next half-hour went by in a flash, with both Crystal and I trying to hit Tanya with Nerf balls or tennis balls. The box of golf balls lay on the ground, untouched. Though they'd seemed like a good idea at the time, I couldn't bring myself to throw something that solid at my friend. Once she got over the instinctive urge to use her hands, we released the handcuffs. I made a mental note to remember to retrieve them when we left.
"No, it's not like juggling," Tanya said, when Crystal asked about keeping more than one object suspended in the air. "It's almost like a set it and forget it thing. Once I tell something to stay put, it does."
After another few minutes of playing Bop the Brunette, I asked, "Are you ready to get us back?"
Crystal immediately began dancing from foot to foot, bobbing like a prize fighter, while Tanya flashed me a wicked smile, "I thought you'd never ask."
I'm not sure when we forgot that we were out on serious business, practicing with our new abilities in order to fight back against a horde of evil demons. Maybe we didn't forget, and our joy was a retaliation against the fear which had become a constant companion over the past forty-eight hours. To any observers, we must have looked completely insane, three teenagers out in an open parking lot after midnight. We weren't drinking or doing drugs, but we probably appeared drunk or stoned. We ran, we jumped, we ducked, juked and jived.
And we laughed. I remember that more than anything else.
We laughed, full of life and free, while we shot Nerf balls at each other, while tennis balls flew back and forth. Tanya's hands never touched a thing, yet Crystal and I spent more time dodging than she did. When Crystal ducked behind me to avoid a flying tennis ball, and Tanya made it change course in midair, zipping around my shoulders like a bee trying to settle on just the right flower, hitting the blond lightly on the shoulder, it was the funniest thing in the world.
It was the last time the three of us would laugh together like that.
I didn't particularly enjoy it when Tanya figured out her power could be used on people, with me as the guinea pig. I was reaching down to pick up a tennis ball, when suddenly I felt my arms pinned to my sides, the metaphorical invisible hand now grown to massive size, grasping me between thumb and forefinger. My feet left the ground, just an inch, but enough so that spinning me around to face them was probably as easy as you or I would flip a quarter into the air.
"Jeez, so bright," Crystal complained, shielding her eyes with a hand.
"Wow, I didn't know if I could do it," Tanya said. "But it's really no different than anything else."
"No sense of straining, or even some awareness that you're picking up something heavier?" Crystal asked.
While Tonya worked through her answer, I examined my situation. It sucked to be held in the air like a squirming bug being examined by an entomologist, while other people discussed the finer points of your imprisonment. The bands holding me were invisible, felt like one of those rubbery claw-gripper toys, and didn't allow me an inch of wiggle room. Trying to flex my arms out was futile. Though my legs were free to move, I didn't want to look like one of those cartoon figures, legs churning clouds of dust above the ground, running but going nowhere.
"Nothing," Tanya answered. "I'm aware that he's there, but it's about the same as the balls. Once I set it in my mind that I've got him, I can concentrate on other things, like this..."
Crystal uttered a short squeal as her arms snapped to her sides, her body rising an equal measure off the ground. Not high, like Tanya really was being careful not to hurt us, but enough so her feet couldn't touch.
While a tiny part of me fumed that I was being so easily contained, another part sought to find escape. My hands were free, though my arms were not. The band holding me had my upper arms trapped against my chest at about the level of my elbows. I found that, by constricting my chest---kind of like doing that hunched-in shoulder pec flex thing to impress a girl---I could bring my hands across my body. Beginning about three inches from my skin, the air around my upper arms developed a thickness. It became viscous, like the difference between water and corn syrup. I could push in on it, and it compressed, becoming thicker the harder I pushed, until I reached a point an inch away from my sleeve where I could not press in any further. An inch of nothing separated my right hand from my left arm, but it was an impenetrable nothing. Steeling myself for a little discomfort, I summoned my power. Using the trick I'd discovered last night, I pushed power out of my hand.
Light flashed, and I felt a jolt in my left side, a powerful shove which spun me ninety degrees even as the force holding me disappeared, so that I dropped to my feet even as I wobbled counterclockwise. Crystal squealed again, and Tanya let out a grunt.
I staggered, righted myself, and spun back around in time to see Crystal standing tall, no longer bound and held aloft, and Tanya pressing a hand to her forehead, as though she'd been struck, or had a sudden headache come on. I rushed toward her as Crystal called "You okay?"
Tanya shook her head, lowering her hand. "Wow, that was something...odd. Like you and I were stretching out a rubber band, and you let go of your end, so it snapped back at me."
"Did it hurt you?" I asked, reaching her side.
"Just for a second. I felt it right here." She raised a hand and tapped the center of her forehead. "Like I said, it felt like getting popped with a rubber band." She looked at me, and I recognized the half-smile and the glint in her eyes. As Barney Stinson would be fond of saying some twenty years later, it was a look which said Challenge...accepted.
"That was really cool," Crystal said. "I mean, you surprised me, but just floating there, it was kind of like flying." There was a look of childish delight to her, a smile too big to contain, as she asked, "Could you do it again? But higher this time?"
The look in Tanya's eyes was electrifying. I'd only ever seen it when we sparred, or when we got competitive about something. Imagine playing Monopoly against someone who delighted in driving you into bankruptcy. It brought her features into new focus, beauty and life shining together. It was one of the things that made me want to date her in the first place, seeing that look. I think its absence, when we first went out, is part of why it didn't work. For whatever reason, we hadn't been able to recreate the magic moment when we met. Yet here it was now, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted, so tempted, to meet the challenge head on.
But she was my past, and Crystal was my future. I was here with Crystal, and I needed to keep her safe.
In hindsight, I know that wasn't true. We lie best when we lie to ourselves. If you took Crystal completely out of the equation, presumed we had never met at the carnival, events would still have pulled me here, because this is where I was meant to be.
I walked over to Crystal, put my arm around her, and said, "See if you can lift both of us at once."
That fire remained in her gaze, those brown eyes boring into me. Crystal didn't see it; her eyes were on me. I don't know what might have happened if she had. Would it have kept her safe?
Tanya's eyes narrowed, the flame tamped down to a smoldering concentration, as I felt myself pulled closer to Crystal, squeezed alongside her by the invisible shackles of the brunette's power. Then we rose, slowly and smoothly, five feet. Ten. Crystal was wrong when she described this feeling. It wasn't like floating or flying. I was acutely aware of being held in place by the invisible force, conscious of the fact that it could disappear, and I would fall. I swallowed back my concern, trusting in Tanya.
"Is it any harder?" I called.
"Not really, no," she answered, and we dipped a few inches, then stopped. "I'm just really worried about dropping you."
Crystal's right hand moved across my stomach, reaching for my free left hand. "She's glowing brighter," the blond said, "every time she uses her power, or forces it to do more, her glow increases."
Looking down at Tanya, I saw nothing, of course. Then Crystal's hand captured mine, and a bright nimbus of white light leapt into being around the tall brunette, startling in its intensity, almost bright enough to obscure her form completely.
"Holy crap!" I exclaimed, surprising Tanya, who lost her focus for a fraction of a second. Crystal screamed, jerking her hand away as we dropped. The light went out around Tanya, and I braced for impact, prepared to ride out the fall, hoping my ankle could take the punishment. It hadn't bothered me all night, but this might be more than it could handle.
Our fall was arrested before we could hit, the sudden loss of momentum enough to drive my breath away.
"What the hell was that all about?" Tanya said, dropping us back to the ground.
"I could see you!" I exclaimed. "Like Crystal says. You were glowing!"
"She still is, but not as bright," Crystal said.
To me she looked normal, the brightness gone. What had changed?
"I can't see it anymore," I said.
"How about now?" Tanya asked, and again I was lifted into the air, dragged forward until I was about ten feet above both girls, though I still saw nothing but her glowering up at me. Why was she so upset? She's not the one who almost got splatted against the ground. At least my arms were free this time; the unseen hand held me around the waist.
"Nothing," I said. "But the view from up here is really nice." I hadn't bothered looking before--being hoisted up into the air changes your perspective a bit--but it really was a gorgeous night. The parking lot spread out around me, acres of asphalt di
mly lit by scattered streetlights, mounds of shadows dominating the area between. The Coliseum loomed like a massive spider, back humped up and legs pointing down. Much of the light we'd seen earlier surrounding the carnival grounds was gone. Maybe they had been working, and now the tired little demon-things had gone to bed.
Tanya laughed, and Crystal said, "It happened when we were together. I think we were holding hands."
At this point, Tanya could have lowered me down, and Crystal and I could have linked hands and tested whether that allowed me to share her vision. The night might have ended very differently if she had.
Instead, up came Crystal, who held in her squeal but couldn't suppress her smile. Some people--like me--get nervous with our feet off the ground, especially when we're reliant on someone else to keep us airborne. And then there are those people who were made to jump out of airplanes.
Her hands wriggled but her arms didn't move; she hadn't been fortunate enough to have them free. I could see the look of concentration on Tanya's face as she maneuvered us closer to one another. Whatever else came of tonight, my friend was getting a lot of practice with her new power.
Once Crystal was within range, I reached out, taking hold of her left hand with my right. Because I was looking down, the bright light signifying Tanya's power surged up at me, temporarily blinding me. I turned away, blinking, expecting there to be spots in my vision, like you see after you stare too long at a bright light. Red splotches danced in my vision, appearing to be yards away, seen in the pools of gathered shadow where the streetlights couldn't penetrate. I blinked again, trying to dispel the visual effects, but the red shapes, vaguely humanoid, didn't disappear. If anything, they appeared to be moving.