“Don’t bother trying to get it to work. You won’t be able to.” I say as the skinny boy picks up his dropped phone.

“Why the hell wouldn’t it? I just cracked the screen.” There’s a moment of silence as he attempts to turn the phone on. Much to his chagrin, his repeated attempts yield no success. Turning to the stocky guy who had bumped him, he yells, “Ant, you broke my fucking phone!”

“No, I didn’t! You weren’t paying attention and dropped it!”

“I only dropped it because you bumped into me!”

“So what? Just fix it, you’re the techy guy!”

As the two continue loudly bickering, I hear Dusty let out a defeated sigh. The tall boy looks concerned, and Abby has a mild air of disgust. I don’t know what I was expecting, but whatever my expectations were, they were shattered.

Suddenly, the skinny boy spins on his heels to look directly at me, “And you, how did you know it was broken? Please tell me you also have tech powers.”

“Sorry, nope. Not tech powers. I can sometimes see bits of the future. Last night I saw you break your phone. You couldn’t get it working again, by the way.”

“Damn it.”

Exasperated, Dusty finally interrupts, “Please, can y’all not completely derail this introduction.”

“Yo, I’m Antoine,” says the stocky boy. He is wearing a soft blue sweater and white pants. Holding up one of his hands wrapped in white knitted gloves, mist swirls around as a large shard of ice forms above his palm. “I’m an ice caster. I specialise in ranged attacks and crowd control.”

“Takara,” says the skinny boy. His green button-up shirt is slightly oversized, as are his black jeans, which have been rolled up a few times. “I’m technically a shifter, but it’s not the standard shifter stuff. I can interface directly with electronic devices. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a demonstration without a working device,” he says, giving his best death glare to Antoine, “I specialise in overwatch, scouting, and support.”

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Hakan,” the tall boy says quietly. He looks like the poster boy for goths. Eyeliner, black baggy cargo pants, a black long-sleeved shirt with a purple and grey striped t-shirt overtop, and plenty of chains alongside his other jewellery. The one thing that didn’t match was his shaggy blond hair. “I’m a shifter and enhancer. I’m extra strong and can move through shadows.” He steps into Antoine’s shadow and seemingly falls through the floor. Jumping back up, he continues, “I’m a scout and melee fighter focused on ambushes.”

“Fire caster as well as both a strength and toughness enhancer. I’m a frontline brawler,” Abby dismissively says, as if she hadn’t just said she had three separate powers. She has on a brilliant red blouse and loose black pants, complete with fingerless leather gloves and boots.

“I guess I should go too,” Dusty says smiling, “Watcher and enhancer powers. Got spatial awareness in a certain radius and heightened reflexes. Now it’s your turn.”

“Hi, I’m Vilde. I don’t really know much about my powers yet, so I’m here to figure them out. I’ll tell you what I know so far. I have two mystic class powers. One gives me dreams about things that either are happening or will happen. The other can curse things, I think. Oh, yeah, I also have some sort of expendable resource tied to the curse power. I know the curses charge it up, but I have no idea what it does. I can use it up, but it doesn’t seem to do anything, and sometimes it goes on its own.”

“That’s fascinating! I’d love to run some experiments,” says Takara, “Mystic powers are so esoteric and poorly understood.”

“What do the curses do?” asks Hakan.

“They give bad luck as far as I can tell.”

“Wait, bad luck?” Takara says, “How does the power define bad luck? How the heck would that even work.”

“I don’t know. It makes unfortunate things happen to whoever is cursed. Like tripping over your shoelaces and things.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Abby suddenly starts paying attention. That can’t be good.

“Bitch, you cursed me! During the rift, I kept falling over nothing and missing my attacks. That was you, wasn’t it!?”

“Um, sorry, it was an accident. At the time, I had no idea that I did it, let alone what my powers even were. Plus, I took it off as soon as I realised.”

Abby was now fuming.

“Calm down Abby,” Dusty says, “There was no harm done, right?”

After a few terrifying seconds, she gives up on her glaring and storms off toward the exercise equipment section. Could this get any worse? Abby hated me enough without a reason. Now that she has a reason I can’t imagine what she’ll do.

“Well, that was awkward,” Takara says, “Anyways, let's run some experiments. I desperately want to see some mystic powers in action!”

“Guys, is it alright with you if we all use this morning to help Vilde with her powers?” Dusty asks.

As Antoine and Hakan nod, Takara gets even more excited as he takes this as permission to start. “You said one works with dreams, right? That one's gonna be a bit tricky to experiment with, so we’ll have to work on that one at another time. Right now, we should try out your curses. You mention them working on people, but can you place it on objects?”

“Uh… I don’t know?”

This gets a massive eye roll from Takara. “Well, then let’s try it. Do it on the phone. It’s broken anyway.”

I try to focus on the phone and try to trigger the curse once again, but nothing happens. I keep focusing with no effect. I sigh as I give up. “Doesn’t work.”

“Interesting. It also seems you apply it with your mind. Is that right?”

“Yeah, how else would I do it?”

“No clue, just being thorough. Do you know if it works on all living things or just people? Does it work on plants or animals?”

“I have no idea. I feel like this is going to be my answer to everything.”

“That’s fine. We’ll just have to figure them out. I don’t think we have any animals, but I’m sure one of the other practice rooms down here has some plants.” With that, he dashes out of the doors.

“Is he always like this?” I ask.

“Yup. Your powers have now become his new hyperfixation. Good luck,” Antoine replies with a smirk.

Takara bursts back through the double doors, clutching a medium sized potted plant. “I don’t think anybody will miss this, and if they do, I took the liberty of interfering with the security cameras.”

“What have I told you about messing with the security system, Takara?” Dusty reprimands.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyways, Vilde, try and curse this!”

This time, as I focus on the plants, ethereal purple vines spring from the soil, wrapping around the delicate stalk and crawling up and around its leaves.

“It took. But I don’t know what it’s going to do.”

There’s a moment of silence as Takara stares intently at the plant. After almost a minute, he says, “Maybe there aren’t many unlucky things that can happen to a plant. Anyway, leave it cursed in case something happens. We can also see if you can have more than one curse active this way. These curses won’t harm someone right?”

I internally cringe at his question, “Not outright. They won’t stop your heart or anything, but there’s no telling if an unlucky event could get you hurt. You could fall and injure yourself or something.”

“Got it, that sounds fine. Now, Antoine, move over onto the sparring mat so she can curse you.”

“What? I don’t want to be cursed!”

“It’s for the sake of science! Plus you’ll probably be fine,” he says as he starts to push Antoine towards the sparring section.

“I’m not so sure about this,” I say.

“Come on it’ll be fine. You mentioned you could take it off when talking to Abby, so you can do that once we’re done.”

Antoine, sounding defeated, says, “It’s ok Vilde, I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?” I say dubiously.

“Yeah. Just do it. What can go wrong?”

“Alright then. Just be careful.” I hesitantly reach out with my thoughts, letting the curse’s ethereal vines take root around Antoine. “It’s done.”

“Do you feel any different?” asks Takara.

“Nope”

“Then try walking around a bit.”

After about ten seconds of walking around aimlessly, I feel a slight pulse of power as he steps on one of his shoelaces and it comes undone. “Was that you? That could have just been my fault.”

“I don’t know, but I felt some power come from the curse.”

“Fascinating,” Takara comments, “Ant, try using your power now.”

He holds up his hand, pointing in the direction of a target across the room. Mist begins to gather and condense around his hand, and a large icicle quickly takes form. Antoine doesn’t notice as the base of the icicle draws a little too close to his hand, and the ice creeps slightly into his glove. I feel a slight flow of power start.

Antoine launches the icicle forward, ripping out the yarn of his gloves. The glove's yarn unspools as it is dragged in a long line across the room. The icicle swerves off to the side, pulled off course by the trail of yarn, crashing directly into the terracotta pot holding the plant.