“Did you see that?” Asked Adria. “Is that the new Hero? What was his name?”
“Was it Puelche? Or, like, Mistral? I know it had something to do with wind, I mean, look at the dude!” Said Damián.
“You are thinking of those other wind based heroes, Mistral’s retired now and Puelche works in Santiago,” I said as I looked up at the man floating ten meters in the air in the middle of what looked like a tiny tornado which he seemed to control with his uncovered hands. The hero kept a watchful eye in the crowds of people moving through Concepción’s city center. He wore a black and white suit with a spiral pattern that went from his feet up to his chest, his head was covered in a pure white mask and green goggles. “This one’s Travesía,” I answered. “Like the wind that comes from the ocean.”
We knew each other from childhood, and while we were now studying different things at university, we still got together every once in a while. Damián placed his arm over my shoulder. “Could you imagine how it would feel to fly around like that?” He asked. “That would be so cool!”
“Not like you would like being an Ignited,” Commented Adria. “I mean, they take you away to train you, right?”
“I’ve heard they brainwash them…” He answered. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be an ignited, too much trouble…”
“Doesn’t look that bad…” I said. “Also, the brainwashing part is only a rumor, there is nothing factual about it, also, if that’s the level of costume the government can buy, I’m not too interested in joining.”
Adria smiled at my comment. “Yeah, they brainwashing thing is just a rumor, but then again, what isn’t one these days.”
“To be honest, though,” Said Damián. “I much rather be a ro-!” I elbowed him in the side.
“Don’t even joke about that…” I whispered. “Not when we are this close to an agent.”
He nodded. “Sorry… I wasn’t thinking…”
“Yeah, you weren’t…” She whispered before rising her voice once more. “What time is it?”
I looked at the watch in my left wrist. On the glass I could see Travesía looking at us, he had probably heard Damián’s comment somehow, or maybe I was just being paranoid. “Three o’clock,” I said. “Well, shit, I’m late to Lopez’ class again, I should sprint.”
“Go,” Said Damián. “I have to go pick something up at the post, wanna come Adi?”
“Sure.” She turned to me. “Good luck, Alex.”
“Thanks Adi, Dan.” I waved at them and sprinted towards Campus.
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The class was Spanish Literature, the time was late. I opened the door and entered the room from the back.
“Mr. Cruz, thanks for blessing us with your presence.” Said Mr. Lopez from the front of the room. He was a tall, slender elderly man with white silky hair tied in a ponytail and with a sense of style many would call not fitting with his age. Overall, he was cool and I liked him.
He was also a friend of my grandfather.
I looked at my watch as I thought of an excuse in the spot. Even sprinting, I had only managed to make it 10 minutes after the start of the class.
“Sorry Mr. Lopez, I got caught in… um… traffic.” I said, bowing slightly and going to an empty desk at the back of the room. Only then did I notice that most of my classmates were already putting their stuff in their backpacks and that the professor was cleaning the white board with quick movements. “Did my watch get the time wrong again?” I asked.
Mr. Lopez sighed from the front of the room and turned to look at me. “You just missed it, Mr.Cruz. We got a notice from the police that a rogue Ignited had taken hostages nearby and that we had to evacuate in case he decided to run away towards campus.”
“Oh…” I said, grabbing my own backpack and standing up. “Is he anywhere I know?”
“They didn’t give much information, but they did tell us to advice students to stay away from the post office.” He said, turning and tapping at the mountain of paper stacked over his desk. “Did you bring todays assignment? If you have time we could talk about it as we walk…” He looked at me as I stood there looking out of the window. I’m sure he could notice I was nervous. “Mr. Cruz?” He said. “Antonio?”
“My friends told me they had to do something at the post office…” I said.
“Oh…” He said. “So it wasn’t traffic.” He began taking the stack of paper and pointed to the door. “Go, you can hand in your assignment later, your friends might need you nearby when they get out.”
I looked at him and nodded. “Thanks.” I said.
“Don’t worry about it, boy.” He said. “Go.”
I turned on my heels and sprinted back out of the door I had walked into just a few seconds before.
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The Convergence began in Chile some 70 odd years ago, back in the days when my grandfather was still a young boy. News didn’t travel that far or very fast at the time, so, although we now have records indicating that other countries had already experienced some cases of Ignition, the news that a boy in Santiago had developed a fever that raised his temperature over 80°C spread like wildfire among the populous, as a fact at first in the city where it had happened and more like a rumor in other parts of the country.
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It didn’t take long for other cases to start developing around the country. I call them cases, but, at the time, little to no connection was made between the different occurrences, as symptoms seemed to vary wildly between the Ignited.
It didn’t take long for the government of the time to label every one of these strange cases as a danger to society and to decree a law that allowed the government to take the guardianship of the child from their parents under the idea of treating them in hopes of stopping the spread of what was painted as a deadly epidemic.
Little is really known about what truly happened to the kids that were born and developed the symptoms around the time, but I think it’s safe to say that they were studied in order to understand the “disease” and to find some way of using it to their advantage, and I can also assume that those studies bared fruit, as, slowly but surely, information about what they were starting to call the Ignition began to trickle out.
Any time between the ages of 5 and 10, a kid could sometimes develop a symptom that could be completely unrelated to any other underlying condition they might have. Symptoms varied wildly, some being as obvious as the child’s skin turning blue all of a sudden, or as small as some unexplainable joint pain, but in order to “treat” as many of the sufferers as possible, the government approved mandatory yearly doctor visits to every kid between the ages of 4 and 11 under the guise of “preventing the sickness”.
At first people complied, I mean, as soon as the government showed how “deadly” the disease was (by showing records of how many kids that had had the condition had suddenly “died” while in their “care”) the population began pouring into the emergency rooms all over the country so their kids could get checked for the disease.
It didn’t take long for some people to start noticing that the kids that went into the government facilities, never really returned home “cured”, they just vanished, replaced only by a jar of soot and ashes that the institutions claimed was the kids remains after being cremated so the disease wouldn’t pass onto some other kid, and so some of the more aware parents began “missing” appointments or simply moving out to places where doctors were not as interested in following the government regulations.
That was how my parents were born.
Out in the countryside, no one would come and check for every one of the kids that were born, so they managed to stay off from any list. My father, the third son in a family with 7 kids in total was the only one to show any symptoms, he developed a crazy itch when he was six, an itch that disappeared after two weeks of what he describes as hell (though he knows he had it fairly easy). It took a few months for his parents to notice that he had developed a higher than average recovery speed, in other words, he developed a healing factor that was fast enough to heal small wounds from one day to the next but not fast enough to see wounds closing.
My mother, on the other hand, had it a bit rougher. She developed intense joint and muscle pain when she was eight years old that lasted for the better part of a month. My grandmother says she was about to take her to a big hospital in another town before the pain subsided and she went back to normal, well, as normal as a kid can be when, two weeks after recovering, she broke her two legs when she managed to leap seven meters into the air and crash against the ground. After two months in casts and some months of careful moving and learning, my grandparents and the town’s doctor (who was kind enough to not reveal anything weird that happened in the town) came to the conclusion that my mother was able to somehow store some of the energy she used when moving somewhere in her body (although the doctor had the idea that it could be in her muscles and bones) and then release it suddenly for a quick boost to her strength. They also came to the realization that her bones weren’t made to withstand such explosive feats of strength, so she was taught to slowly release the power stored within her whenever she was alone so it wouldn’t build up too much.
10 years or so later, as none of their towns had high schools, they had to leave their respective towns and go to a boarding school in Temuco to study, all while keeping their powers a secret, and it was there that they met, fell in love and stayed together for long enough to get married and have me.
Around the age of 5 I was sent to my father’s parent’s house under the guise of them being unable to care for me due to work, but it was really so they could keep me hidden in case I developed an Ignition of my own and, as if on cue, I fell ill for more than a month with muscle pain so great I would go in and out of consciousness. My grandfather also tells me I would spend every waking second scratching my skin as if I had the worst rash, but I don’t really remember that much of that month.
When it finally passed, we took some time with my grandparents and my mother’s childhood doctor (Who, again, was kind enough not only to travel to a different town but also to keep ever meeting me a secret) trying to discover what my Ignition was. In the end, we found out that it was a mixture of my parents’. After that I was taught how to keep my high recovery speed a secret and how to manage the almost dangerous amount of strength I could exert if I didn’t release energy once in a while (Which is done by focusing on using up energy when flicking my fingers, you damn degenerates, it’s nothing weird, I just have to use up the energy slowly over time instead of quickly in a second).
But I ended up being an quite active kid that didn’t listen to what adults said, so I obviously ended up hurting myself constantly in the hills around town as I taught myself how to use my Ignition. As I grew up, I learned more and more about my power and came to understand it quite well. As opposed to my parent’s generation, I didn’t grow up scared of my skills, I learned how to use them so I could use them if I ever needed them.
I thought of them as a part of me, and I wasn’t going to hide them just because some far away government people told me I had to do so.
And then I went to live with my parents to Temuco and soon after, I fucked up, I almost got found out and government officials were deployed to our home. They took us to a facility and, after weeks of studies, they released us, not having found any sing of an Ignition in any of us.
We were saved because they didn’t know enough about ignitions to find out about ours.
That honestly scared the shit out of me and I swore never to use them again if there was the slightest of chances I could put myself, my family or others at risk of being found out. And yet, here I was, standing in front of a half destroyed building among a crowd of scared people. Travesía laid unconscious in the ground along with several other Heroes, all downed by the hand of a huge half man half bull monstrosity. Behind him, I could see a group of people surrounded by other people dressed in strange costumes. “Villains…” I whispered.
And my friends where somewhere in there.
“COME HERE HEROES!” Yelled the beast. “LET MINOTAUR BEAT YOU UP AND SHOW YOU WHO’S BOSS!”
As people began running away, avoiding me in their way, I looked down and saw Travesía’s cracked goggles in the lying in the ground just two steps away from me. The part of me that was scared of being found out was telling me to run as far away as I could and let the other heroes take care of the situation, but as I bowed down to grab the goggles before turning to run away from the place, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing that I could have done something and didn’t.
I remembered being a child, telling my grandfather about how my arms seemed to snap into one or other position when I used the energy stored within me. He hadn’t been scared of me back then even knowing that I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, and I wouldn’t be scared now, not when I was needed.
I was going to Ignite the power I hadn’t used in years.