It was five twenty and Kelly was twenty seven laps
into her morning mile swim. She had left the school but her coach worked at the
Y.M.C.A and had given her access to the pool. Some kids swam because the team
had a long history of victory. Others swam because no other sport appealed to
them or their friends swam. Kelly swam because it gave her peace of mind.
Following the line on the bottom of the pool had become a sort of mediation for
her.
As she headed into the last half of her laps she began
to feel like someone else was in the pool with her, while not uncommon she
couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. She rebounded off the wall and tried to
out swim the hysteria rising in her chest. She started to panic, the water had
become too choppy to see where she was, she began to flail her arms trying to
find the surface, she felt lost, scared and confused. Suddenly a single desire
filled her mind. She needed to breathe. She dove for the surface in a panic,
terrified that she might suffocate. Her head broke the surface of the water,
she took big gulps of air, wiped the water from her face and looked around the
pool. She was alone, standing in the four foot section of the pool. The panic
was gone, the paranoia was nonexistent. She gave herself a few seconds to shake
off what was left of the quickly receding panic off and dove back into the
water.
By five fifty she had gone ten laps past the mile to
cool down. When she could delay no longer she climbed out of the pool and
grabbed her towel, revealing her flashing glasses. She threw them on to hear
Technarious’ voice
“Where have you been?” He asked.
“I was getting ready for school, just got out of the
shower what’s up?” She asked.
“Something has refaced, off the coast of California, something
that shouldn’t exist.” He said, “The others are waiting for you.”
She fished drying off gathered her things and ran into
the empty girls locker room to change and teleport to California.
She arrived on the roof of a beach side hotel next to
the other Shades. They were watching five impossibly large tentacles emerge
from the ocean, flailing wildly creating chaos and destruction on the coast
line. She felt the same exact panic from the pool well up inside her and she
had no clue how but she knew she was feeling what this creature was feeling.
“Nice of you to drop by.” Sonya greeted her.
Kelly held up her middle finger. “I was in the shower,
sue me.”
“How many laps you do in the shower every morning?”
Sonya shot back.
Kelly’s advance on Sonya was stopped by Dante. “Hey! We’re
all tired and stressed, this isn’t a prison sentence. She wasn’t neglecting her
duties and I can guarantee she won’t be the last one of us that is going to
miss a few calls. Life is unfair like that. Now, let’s call blinding light and
get rid of whatever that thing is.”
Kelly relaxed and Sonya threw her hand in the air. The
others followed her lead and together they called their giant Mecha. It
appeared a ways into the surf as far away from fleeing beach goes as possible
and the Shades teleported in to the command station.
Blinding light came to life and launched itself at the closest two tentacles grabbing one with each of its hands. Each of the tentacles wrapped itself around the arm of the hand that had grabbed it. The other three tentacles zeroed in on Blinding light and began to wrap themselves around its legs and chest as Blinding Light futilely tried to fight its way free.
