I’ve had the pleasure of having at least one normal day after my encounter with drunken Vixel. No sign of her agency trying to kidnap me for knowing her secret, so that’s good. Maybe she didn’t tell them about it. I don’t think she would. It might make her look bad.
But … I noticed the strangest thing when I got in my car yesterday. My passenger window somehow looked crooked; the little streaks on it were slanted. I tried to push every button to lower it, and nothing. It didn’t work. I was legit confused for that entire day. A little mad too because out of nowhere it happened. I’ve rarely had trouble with this car. So maybe I got robbed? But nothing looked out of place. Nothing was taken or left behind. I’ve been scratching my head at this all day. Then the thought of it being some sort of magic trap or something scared me. You never know now.
Daylight was still showing, peaking through the white clouds. Today had been completely normal and I was happy that I might have at least one more normal day. But then I picked up this guy, Kaiza, an average looking black-haired dude. The only thing that stood out about him was the band shirt he was wearing. I didn’t recognize it. Three-Tongues it was called. The shirt had three different tongues all touching each other with lasers. Maybe it was some obscure indie one.
We were driving for at least 10 minutes, silently, and I didn’t have a problem with that. Although I like getting to know the person, a lot of my trips, people like to just get to their destination and leave. No small talk or anything. It’s understandable. But then we saw someone in the air, a hero. His suit was blue and white, matching the mountains and the sky. I recognized the costume even from the distance we were at. And so did Kaiza.
“Is that One Step?” he asked.
“Uh,” I stuttered, caught off guard by the sudden mouth noise. “Yeah, I think so,” I replied. One Step was another locally known hero and was probably the best one so far. He was by far the strongest by a long shot. I didn’t really know his exact powers, but he was super jacked, even his legs were. He definitely never skipped leg day. I did know he couldn’t fly because he would hop off buildings to get around. His costume had a big O in the middle, and I remembered catching an interview where he said a big 1 would look cocky. He seemed like a cool humble dude to me.
“You ever see any of the guy’s fights?” Kaiza asked. “That guy is stupidly overpowered.”
“Seen his fights? What do—” The car behind honked for me to move, as the light turned green already. “You can watch his fights somewhere?”
“Yeah, man. People post videos online all the time and some guy stitches all of them together to make it one seamless video.”
“Wow, that’s cool. I’ll definitely look that up. Hey, wait. By people, you mean like, people that’s on the ground floor, with others probably running for their lives, away from the fight?”
He chuckled. “Crazy, yeah, I know. People gotta record everything now, you know? I hear people make a killing by selling footage of hero clashes. You know, selling to news outlets and websites. Like get me videos of One Step!” he jokingly shouted as he banged on my dashboard. “The guy who makes the videos probably just steals all of it though, because it gets taken down sometimes.”
People dying is probably the real reason it gets taken down, I thought. I don’t know if I could watch that.
Even though there was a screen separating me from it, seeing people running from a threat always made me nervous, too nervous. I get legit sweaty palms and everything. “You can actually watch that? People gotta be screaming in those, right?”
“Ah … yeah. But I watch so much stuff online that I’m like immune. I can pretty much stone-face the majority of it. I mean I’ve seen beheadings—”
“Stop, stop, stop!” I brought my fist to my mouth and tried to forget what he just said. I didn’t want him to continue for obvious reasons. I might’ve had to use my own doggie bags for the first time ever. He chuckled again as we stopped at another light. I looked down and watched the boy crossing the street with his mother and shook my head.
I didn’t look at him, but I could tell he was smiling as he said, “I once saw this kid get completely wrecked by—”
“Alright, alright, come on.” I began to drive extra cautious for some reason after he said that. “Alright, you gotta tell me something good about you, so I don’t think you’re a dick right now.” I raised my finger to him. “One thing.”
“What?” He laughed. “Okay, I uh … I donate to kitten shelters. Like the sanctuaries or whatever they’re called.”
“Alright, see that’s good, man. You’re fine in my book now.”
“Yeah, they save kittens from drowning in the rivers around here. I don’t tell them that I’m the one tossing them in.”
I sighed. “You’re a bastard.”
“The perfect scheme.” I turned to him as I noticed him moving, and he pulled up a video on his phone. Screams quickly poured through it and he put it in front of me. “Check this out, One Step is just wailing on the guy. Look at that, he actually throws in more kicks than you’d expect. I think his legs are the source of his power.”
He was getting a kick out of me being turned off by the stuff, so I switched gears to dull his fun and to ease my suffering. “Oh yeah, that is pretty cool, man. So, what do you think of One Step? His outfit is cool, right?”
Taking the bait, he backed off. “I guess. He’s actually less annoying than every other hero, especially these new ones. They try way too hard.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dude, you know what I mean. If a damn firecracker goes off, at least 15 newbies will start pouring out of the sewers. And there’s that occasional unmasked one with their mom there and two of their cousins for some reason like it’s their damn graduation. You can’t even stub your toe and scream without some jackass in a mask asking if you’re okay.”
“Alright, which hero knocked over your ice cream?”
Kaiza scoffed. “It’s not even like that. I don’t have some sort of grudge and hate heroes. They’re just annoying. You hear about that new one?” He snapped his fingers. “What’s uh, what’s her name?”
“Gr—Uh … Kriss-Kross?”
“Yeah! Her name is so stupid. But that’s exactly what I’m talking about. A Shake Shack? Really? Like, why was she even there? The guy couldn’t even leave the damn store with the money before getting tackled like a quarterback.”
I scratched my neck and chuckled awkwardly. “Uh… I guess. But maybe she likes the custard?”
“Dude, no one eats there! You get your food and leave!”
“People can’t sit down and eat?”
“Nooo!” he shouted, stretching his arms ahead of him. “Somewhere else maybe. Like the damn curb.”
“Okay, but isn’t it good that he didn’t get away though? She did kinda destroy the store, but it turns out the guy killed someone before that.”
“Oh, it just so turns out. Dude, like she knew that before springing into action. I don’t even care about the damage to the store. Not like I could do any better now. And no one got hurt too. But it’s so ridiculous how fast they are now.”
“Wait, what do you mean by, not like I can do better? You have powers too?”
He sighed and leaned his head back into the chair. “Not really. I know how to do like one spell, and it used to be small. But I think I got so good with it that it became this destructive ball of hell. It like leveled up or something.”
“What? No way. You’re a wizard?”
“Barely, Hagrid,” he said, looking out the window.
We approached his destination, a nice cul-de-sac with a huge loop so none of the houses are on top of each other. I pulled over next to the house near the middle then turned to him. “Hey, before you go, can I see it?”
Kaiza chuckled. “Of course you would ask that.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to see it? It sounds really cool.”
“Alright, dude,” he said opening the car door. “Just hold on to your skin.”
I had no idea what he meant by that. I got out of the car, excited to see a wizard up close, aside from the Castodians outside my apartment. They usually say the same spell over and over again so it gets kind of boring to me. I leaned on my car’s hood and watched him walk to the sidewalk. I looked around, not a person in sight. Cul-de-sacs are usually dull. “Hey, where you gonna do it? There’s a bunch of houses, but I guess you can aim at the pavement, right?”
“Nah, it’ll mess up the street.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Whoa, now you’re raising my expectations. Where you aiming then?”
Kaiza smirked as he rubbed his hands together like a cartoon villain. He held his right hand far away from his face and said, “Ni… Nina scorches the wings, wait, no—Ah!” he shouted as a small flame burst in his palm. He shook his hand like he was burned.
I was impressed to actually see something happen. Not every day you see a free agent wizard. “What happened?” I asked. “Did you—”
He cut me off and tried it again. “Nina vigorously scorches the winds of this land.” It looked like his arm turned silver before a blaze erupted around it. “Alright, there we go.” He turned to me and chuckled once as I almost fell back on my car and cursed in shock. “Okay, dude, now watch this.” He cocked his hand back then swung to the sky and the hellish blaze on his arm took off like a rocket.
I stood up straight and watched it soar straight up in amazement. It was fast. “Wow, so how long does that thing last? It looks like it’s about to take out a satellite.”
“It’ll fizzle out once it reaches the cold atmosphere.”
My hand over my brow, I kept watching the red ball of death. “You sure about that? It’s still going.”
“Yeah, yeah. But hey, best case scenario, it blows something up and it rains shrapnel down on some spoiled kid’s birthday party.”
The fireball soared and as it neared the cloud above, it cleared a hole right through it and continued. As the cloud parted, I noticed a large silhouette in the air overhead. I pointed up. “Wait, what’s that? You see that thing. Is that a bird?”
“No bird can fly that high.”
“Are you looking?” I glanced down and he wasn’t. “I’m serious, look at that.” Before he could, the fire expanded as it hit the thing. The blaze separated and curled into nine different streaks, completely clearing the cloud in the process and revealed the huge creature hiding behind it. I noticed a green light resonate through the flying thing’s apparent body before the sky quaked. The expansive fire was swiftly gone after and so was the thing. I was so awestruck in the moment I couldn’t say anything until it was gone. “What was that! Did you see that?”
“The explosion? Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I told you it was too strong.”
“No, the freaking thing behind it!” I shouted, still looking up and trying to catch another glimpse without any luck.
“What are you talking about? You never saw a cloud before?” His phone alerted him. “But, yo, I gotta go. Later, man.” He jogged toward one of the homes and hopped the backyard fence.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what I just saw. It looked like a dragon but there’s no way that it was. We might have magic now but dragons? No. There was no way. Maybe it was just a really big bird, and I’d accept that, but never a dragon. I shook my head, chuckling as I walked to my car. So much for my normal day streak of one. Back to zero we go.
I ended Kaiza’s ride. 4 stars and I was tempted to give him 2 because he didn’t see the freaking thing I did. I took off a star because there was something genuinely disturbing and dark about him. Not just his sense of humor, his inner person. At first, I was getting the feeling he tried to become a hero himself but always showed up late then he gave up. But then it sounded like he lost his ability to try, by becoming too powerful to even help. So he still has a good heart … for now anyway.
Magoch 