We Are

I immediately saw that Isana had returned (and that there was a new person too, which probably meant that he was someone who she’d been attempting to recruit) and that there were tears streaming down Aleeza’s face, though there was relief in her (and in everyone’s) face that the two of us had returned.

“We were trying to transport to where you were, but no luck.” Shoma said, “Are you two okay.” to which I responded, “The answer to that is complicated, but I’m guessing that you all felt when the string-puller murdered Manisha and Pallas. I’m very sorry for your loss, Aleeza. I know that you trained with them long before they lost their way.”

Diago nodded along with my words, and had a look of sadness on his face, and Aleeza responded, “It’s so hard, because things could’ve turned out so differently if just a few things had gone differently. I’ve never wanted a time machine more than I do right now…”

We all were silent for a while; and, surprisingly, Diago offered to say a prayer.

No one had any objections, and he said, “We pray that Pallas and Manisha are in a better place and that we’ll see them again someday, and we pray for comfort for their friends and family. Also, we pray for help in bringing their murderer to justice. Amen.”

Aleeza was sobbing, and nodded appreciatively at Diago’s words. I was kind of surprised that he’d been able to pray in such a way about the two people who he’d so recently admitted to having tried to kill, but the situations were very different and perhaps he regretted having been about to attempt to kill them and wished that he’d been about to attempt to knock them out instead. Also, Aleeza was his friend, and it made sense that he’d have sympathy and/or empathy for her.

After we’d all spent a fair amount of time grieving for Manisha and Pallas, Shoma gently said, “We might be on a limited time frame here, and one thing that we can do for Pallas and Manisha is focus on bringing their killer to justice. So, we’ll introduce our new recruit to you In a minute; but, first, any details that you both can give us about what happened may be able to get us that much closer to making sure that nobody else is harmed by whoever it was who committed this wicked deed.”

Diago and I described what’d happened, and it certainly didn’t lift anyone’s spirits.

“Definitely sounds like string-puller is powerful enough to kill by using the power, which is unheard of…” Diago said, in a troubled voice.

“Also,” Isana added, “we don’t know what to expect with you both having triple the amount of power that’s usually given to people. Things that we aren’t able to do may be doable for you.”

“I can’t understand why Manisha and Pallas attacked string-puller instead of fleeing…” Aleeza said, sorrowfully, “Didn’t they know that their power wouldn’t be enough to win that fight?”

“Maybe they thought that because string-puller was already using power to temporarily paralyze Khin and Diago that they might be able to pull off a victory.” the new recruit said, adding, “Oh, and I’m Oron.”

“Good to meet you, Oron.” I said, and added, “It felt like they were kind of desperate when they did it. Perhaps they’d agreed at one point that they’d do whatever was necessary (up to and including giving up their power), but had been taken by surprise that string-puller was acting like them specifically giving us their power was the new plan.”

“I could see that.” Diago agreed, “And, so, they went into fight-or-flight mode, and somehow managed to convince themselves that the two of them together could defeat the somewhat already-engaged string-puller.”

“We can take this as a lesson” Shoma cautioned, “not to get overconfident when it comes to string-puller.

Whoever this is is clearly powerful in ways that we didn’t even know were possible, and we’re going to have to approach this very wisely if we want to have a chance at bringing string-puller to justice.”

“Would that no-power zone that y’all keep going even work in taking away string-puller’s power?” Diago asked, dubiously, to which Aleeza responded, “It’s never failed to make people unable to use their power before, but string-puller could possibly be immune I suppose.”

“What if we tested the no-power zone to see if you and Khin are able to use your power in the no-power zone?” Isana suggested, “After all, you two have 3x the power of anyone else, and if it’s able to keep you from using your power then that makes it more likely that it’ll work with string-puller.”

“That sounds like a reasonable place to start to me.” I agreed, and we all began preparing for a trip to the power holder containment facility.

Isana and Shoma said that we’d use their car and power to travel to the containment facility.

It turned out that their car had windows that you couldn’t see out of, and the two of them wore glasses that showed them video of what the outside looked like.

I supposed that this made sense, seeing as the location of the containment center was top secret and all. This way, only they would know what route the car had traveled on in order to get there.

We all got into the car, Isana started it up and got it going, and Shoma and her had soon kiss-started the car into flying-and-speed mode, which meant that we reached the containment facility within only a few minutes.

When we got out, we were greeted by someone who only seemed to recognize Shoma, and Shoma explained to her that our car had a couple of 3x power holders in it and that we wanted to see if the no-power zone would work on them or not.

“Y’all been experimenting with holding more power?” she asked, suspiciously, “I thought that the tradition was to always follow in Amira’s footsteps and only give half of a power transfer to each person.”

“Long story, Ramona;” Shoma answered, “but, no, we didn’t want this; it just kind of got dropped in our laps. We want to test out the no-power zone on these two in order to try to gauge whether it’ll work on the person who’s responsible for forcing 3x power onto them.”

“Fair enough.” Ramona sighed, “We’ll just go barely into the entrance and not interact with any of the contained power holders. That’ll be fine for testing it out.”

We were all then led through a gate, and Aleeza, Oron, Shoma, Isana, Diago, and I all tried to use our powers.

The other four were all unable to, but Diago used his power to transport to the other end of room, and I used my power to pick up a pen and begin drawing a picture of a butterfly onto a piece of paper.

“Looks like your question has been answered.” Ramona said, shrugging. “Perhaps, if more power holders were to create a stronger no-power zone, then it’d work; but you have your answer as to whether this no-power zone will work.”

“Damn.” Shoma said, “And we have no idea how much power string-puller has, which means that even if we were to create a zone that’d work for Khin and Diago it wouldn’t necessarily work for string-puller.

Well, we’d better head home and try to figure out what the next step for us is. Thanks for your help, Ramona, perhaps we’ll be seeing you again before too long.”

“Happy to be of assistance,” Ramona responded, “and I very sincerely wish you the best of luck in figuring out how to contain this string-puller person, because I don’t like the sound of them one bit…”