I don’t belong in prison. They stuff too many people into these as it is without locking up every person who happens to have a gay kid. What was I supposed to do about that? Small government my ass.

Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before this absurd law is blocked by a court. But until then, I must rot away in this gray, boring hell. My cell mates probably think I’m mentally ill since I spend all day wiggling my fingers, playing an imaginary saxophone.

One of my rare reprieves is when I get to at least hear a friendly voice. A surly guard walks me to a row of phone booths, each separated by a glass barrier.

I put the phone to my ear to hear Sarah’s voice. “Hello?” she asks.

“Hello,” I say.

“I’m glad I could get a hold of you. I have an update about the case, and Gregg’s mother used up all of his allotted calls.”

“Well, let’s hear it,” I say.

“The district court is hearing our case,” she explains. “We’re not sure which way it will go. One of the new justices on the bench is somewhat of a wild card.”

“What’s his name?” I ask.

“Justice Timothy Pavia,” Sarah says. “He was just appointed to the position not long ago.”

“Shit,” I say. “We’re screwed. He was our Justice of the Peace. Man doesn’t give a damn about anyone who can’t donate to his re-election,”

“Well, we’ll… see what we can do,” Sarah says. “We can always appeal it to the next level up. But if all goes well, you should be home to see your daughters again soon. However…”

“Did you talk to them?” I interrupt. “They’re not doing anything stupid, are they?”

“I… I relayed your message to them,” she says. But there’s something about the way she said that…

They’re doing it. God damn it.

I sigh.

“But yes,” Sarah continues. “To avoid them being transferred into the foster system while we await the trial, we will need to designate some adult figure who’s able to keep an eye on them. Is there anyone who can fill that role?”

I stop and think about it. We don’t have any family in town… it would be rather uncomfortable to have Zoe’s parents be the guardians, but it should probably at least be somebody who they’re okay with so that they don’t cause a stink.

“I think I know someone,” I say.

----------------------------------------

I wake up to see destruction all around. I’m in the middle of a small crater, still smoking from the blast. I look down at my body- nothing seems to be injured, thankfully.

“Wh-what happened?” I ask to no one in particular. “Were we attacked?”

I brush the soot off my clothes and stand up to survey the room. The surrounding tables seemingly were blasted backwards, along with the people sitting at them. There are a bunch of people lined against the walls groaning, and at least one woman is crying hysterically.

Who… did this? I wonder.

And I notice something else. There are new people coming into the room. Not with medical equipment or anything, but with guns. And they’re all glaring straight at me. And their weapons are all pointed straight at me.

Ah, I see.

I’m the bomb.

Oops.

“Uh… I have no idea how that happened!” I say, chuckling nervously, lifting my arms into the air like I’m surrendering. “Everyone okay?”

They just keep glaring at me.

I hear the click of someone’s safety being turned off…

I entomb myself by drawing the knocked-over tables to me as shields just in time to block the barrage of bullets.

----------------------------------------

Nova and I arrive at the site of the explosion we heard just in time to witness a gunfight breaking out. Someone’s barricaded in the middle of the room, hiding behind some of the restaurant’s tables. I try to make out who’s in the middle… I think I see something yellow in between the tables…

“That’s Charlotte!” Nova bursts out. His fists are clenching.

“Hold on,” I say. “On my signal, let’s…”

“LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE!” Nova shouts. He slowly and dramatically smashes the floor in front of him with his hammer, causing an electric pulse to knock back everyone in a five yard radius. About a dozen of the partygoers, several of whom had just been shooting at Charlotte, fly backwards and slam into the wall around the doorway to the next room, suits and dresses torn as they tumble to the floor.

I yelp with pain as my shoulder catches a bullet from a new diner who charges into the room, sights now locked on us. I grab Nova by the arm and dive under the table for cover.

“That wasn’t my signal,” I tell him with gritted teeth.

“I don’t know what your fuckin’ signal is!” he spits at me.

Gunshots begin grazing the legs of the chair nearest to me. I lay down on my front and start firing my Tommy in between the other tables in the room. I can only hit people in the legs and feet, but that’s enough to knock several over and make the rest scramble around to avoid my range.

“Then you should’ve listened to me!” I continue.

“Shit was happening too fast! I wasn’t thinking!” Nova says defensively.

“Yeah. You weren’t,” I snark at him.

Then, from our left flank, a volley of grenades is fired towards our opponents, and the room is soon empty as the fancy people sprint away. A few don’t make it and are instead unceremoniously blasted out of the room.

“We got company from behind me!” Charlotte calls out, seeing us and diving behind our table.

Nova brings himself into a crouch and lifts the table we’re under up, turning it sideway. I jump to my feet and take cover behind it, and Charlotte likewise takes the other side.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Nova asks her as bullets begin ricocheting off our table.

“I… I don’t know!” Charlotte says. “I think I just… blew up!”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“You can do that?” Nova questions. “I thought your ability was Earthbending!”

“It is!” Charlotte says. “Like how I made those tables come to me without touching them!”

“Bitch, these tables aren’t made of earth! They’re wood!”

“Oh. How did I do that, then?” Charlotte asks, looking stumped.

“Can we figure this out later?” I urge. “There’s a ton of people coming that way!” I lean around our shield enough to take a few potshots at the people from the other room. Charlotte begins blindly chucking grenades over the table’s rim. Nova doesn’t dare put down the table as more shots ring out towards us every second.

----------------------------------------

I’m just wondering if I should go investigate what sounds like a full-on firefight coming from across the restaurant when a door slams behind me. I turn to see that Ashley, Zoe, Ted and Ruth managed to find their way in after all.

Immediately, everyone else in the room points their firearms at them-

“No no no! Don’t! They’re with me!” I say hastily. They lower their guns back to a resting position.

“So, how’s it going in here?” Ashley asks casually. “Did you find him?”

“Yeah, I found him,” I say. “But he went that way towards… well…”

“The gunfire,” Ted finishes from Zoe’s shoulder, drawing his own firearm.

“You don’t think that’s the others, do you?” Zoe asks nervously.

“Don’t know what else it’d be,” Ruth says.

“Excuse me…” says a familiar voice. The lady with the neat, dirty blonde hair I had sat with is approaching us, a look of polite concern on her face.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ashley asks.

“I’m Mrs. Schneider. The wife of the governor,” she says.

“Ah. Tell your fascist bastard of a husband to release my parents from jail,” Ashley snarks.

A pang of pain crosses Mrs. Schneider’s face, and she shakes her head at her. “Can’t we please be civil?”

Ashley rolls her eyes at her.

Mrs. Schneider turns to me. “Please… be careful who you associate with, Kevin. You’re too fine of a man to get mixed up with these… terrorists.”

“Terrorists?” Zoe cries indignantly. “That’s not who we are at all!”

“Didn’t you say that you knew the ones who just blew up one of our rooms?” Mrs. Schneider responds.

“Huh?” Zoe asks, blinking confusedly.

“Ma’am, quite the contrary, I am an officer of the law,” Ted explains. “And we didn’t plan any such thing.”

“We didn’t have a plan,” Ashley points out. “Come on, let’s go pull our friends out of whatever shit they got into.”

“Right,” Zoe says, nodding resolutely.

“Aye,” Ted agrees.

Ashley, Zoe and Ted charge away towards the sounds of the fighting.

Ruth doesn’t move. “I don’t think I’ll be much help right now,” she explains. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

“Right. Er, one thing first,” I say. I turn back to Mrs. Schneider. “Ma’am, my friend wasn’t trying to be rude.”

She raises an eyebrow at me.

“Well, okay, yes she was,” I admit. “But, she’s been through a lot recently. Her parents are in jail because of that law your husband signed, and a lot of my other friends have been terrified too. Everyone’s just… tense right now.”

“Well, I certainly can’t deny that things are tense,” Mrs. Schneider says. “But that’s no reason to start calling people names. With that sort of rhetoric… why, who knows what might happen to our family.”

“Compared to having your parents locked in prison, being insulted a single time seems quite manageable,” Ruth interjects dryly. “Listening to this whinging is a waste of time. Come on, Kevin.”

“Right,” I say. “Um… take care,” I tell the state’s First Lady awkwardly, before dashing off in the direction I saw Ashley and Zoe go.

----------------------------------------

It seems we’ve cleared enough of them to where there’s a moment of quiet. I carefully peek around our table to see that there’s nobody pointing guns at us through doorways at the moment.

“You think these guys respawn endlessly?” Nova questions.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But either way, we probably want to just get out of here.”

“I’m so sorry!” Charlotte says, sounding like she really means it. “I don’t know what happened…”

“We’ll worry about that later,” I tell her. “Let’s just focus on getting to safety first, and regrouping with the others.”

“This could be our best chance to skedaddle,” Nova points out. “Come…”

Then, like clockwork, we hear a pair of footsteps from the next room.

Nova and Charlotte visibly tense up, and I’m pretty sure I just did too.

And… it’s him. Governor Schneider. He steps into the room and glares at us through the table, hands behind his back as though he were here to give a speech.

“Put the table down,” he commands calmly.

Nova scoffs at him. “Make me,” he taunts.

Charlotte and I both leap backwards as a saw materializes, seemingly out of thin air, and cuts the table into two. Nova leaves the halves to tumble to the floor, jumps back with us, and shrugs. “Hey, man. It’s your table, not mine.”

Schneider is now standing right behind where the table had been in the same pose, although I didn’t see him move. “You have come here and slaughtered my people,” he says calmly. ‘You will find that such crimes will not go unpunished.”

“They’re not real,” Nova points out. “They’re just your cognitive people.”

“Ah. So it makes a difference to you after all?” he says.

“Shut up,” I say. “Don’t pretend for a single second that you care about human life! You… do you know who I am?”

“All too well,” he says nonchalantly. He twitches his head up slightly, and…

Aunt Kierstyn enters the room. Not bothering to hide her identity anymore.

I bare my teeth. “You… both you of you. You’re the reason my mother is dead,” I say. “And your worldview is the reason I’ve been bullied for years. You’re the ones who need to be punished.”

“You and your mother brought this all upon yourselves. Why should I care about your sob story?” he says dismissively.

My fists clench. “You will,” I say.

And before I even know what I’m doing…

I lift my Tommy gun up, and

I point it straight at his chest…

And I fire.

And I keep firing…

He shakes and shutters as the bullets tear through him…

He’s soon standing in a puddle of his own blood…

And I empty the entire clip.

And then the gun goes silent.

And he stands there… hunched over.

Nova and Charlotte share a scared look, but they don’t say anything.

And then…

He lifts his head.

“Only fools use their hearts to live,” he says.

And I’m mortified as I look to his chest and see… something inhuman. Where human skin would’ve been is a bloodstained metallic body… a hole, made up of smaller holes, is ripped through the metal sheet, revealing a hollow interior.

Suddenly, behind him, Kierstyn grunts.

Ashley is here, and she’s grabbed my aunt by her hair with one hand, and used the other to hold her sword to her neck. Zoe and Ted are here too, standing in the doorway. Zoe’s holding her shotgun up and trembling, while Ted is perched on her shoulder like a parrot with his own pistol.

“Hm?” Schneider says. He turns his head to see the battle’s new arrivals. He tilts his head at Ashley curiously. “Are you going to kill my highest general?” he questions.

Ashley turns her eyes at Kierstyn’s face, who’s glaring back at her. Kierstyn’s expression is hostile, but…

“I wouldn’t,” Ashley responds. “If anyone should make the decision on her fate, it’d have to be Anja.” She shakes her head. “But, it doesn’t matter. She’s not the real one.”

Ashley swings her sword into Kierstyn’s neck… and she dissipates, like any other shadow.

Schneider continues to watch Ashley curiously. “You… you must be…”

And in the blink of an eye, Nova has launched himself at our state’s governor. He smashes Mjolnir into the side of his head, breaking it open…

Schneider falls to the ground, and Nova sticks his foot right through the hole I ripped in his chest. Where the hammer had hit him, there is now a dented metal skull showing on half of his face, including a smashed LED lightbulb for the eye on that side.

The rest of us quickly surround him, weapons drawn.

“Now, here’s the part where we tell you where you fucked up,” Nova tells him. “Listen carefully…”

He’s interrupted by a strange whirring sound.

Something detaches from Schneider’s gut… a sort of cube with a propeller. Before any of us can think of how to react, it zooms away, crashing through the ceiling. And in its stead, a strange beeping noise… one that’s getting faster…

I take in a confused flurry where everyone moves at once before I’m tackled to the ground by Nova…

Boom!

----------------------------------------

My heart races and my breathing is out of control as I see the clouds below me…, stretching as far as the eye can see… I’m falling, I’m…

Not falling. They’re not getting any closer, are they?

I look up, and my eyes meet Nova’s. We’re suspended in air, Nova using Mjolnir as a propeller to keep us steady. Above him, I see that a huge, smoldering hole where the floor of the room we had just been standing in once was.

And then I feel drops of water on my face… I turn back to Nova to see that he’s in tears.

“I’m sorry, Anja,” he says. “I… I didn’t wait for your signal…”