Since I didn’t know much about Alex’s Anomaly or anything about Rosie’s, I wasn’t sure what I should have been expecting. The only information I had to assess the situation was that Alex was combat-oriented and Rosie had something that looked like a steel potato that could turn into a trumpet. Not exactly a classified document’s worth of valuable intelligence there. I would have been a liar if I said I didn’t want to see Rosie swing her trumpet around as a weapon, though.
Their mouths moved for a little bit while both continued to stand still. If there were any microphones in the training room, they weren’t on for our usage, and unless Lori or Lizzy were lipreaders, I was pretty sure we were all out of luck on knowing what they were saying.
Rosie visibly laughed and nodded her head before putting her trumpet up to her lips. Alex braced his body as a burst of sound sped from the trumpet to him. He put his arms up in front of his face to absorb most of the impact; an impact which pushed him back along the floor a few inches. When he put his hands back to his side, I noticed his forearms were glowing with a dim yellow light. It seemed to be pulsating under his skin.
“Any guesses about Rosie’s power, Ethan?” Lizzy asked me, nudging me with her elbow, causing me to flinch. “Come on, there’s gotta be more to you than just a handsome face, right? It should be pretty obvious.”
“Sound.” I answered, hoping I didn’t give a stupid answer to some sort of trick question. “Can she enhance the sound she creates? That’s why she has the trumpet thing, right?”
“You aren’t wrong, but there’s more to it than that,” Lizzy began to explain, scooting closer to the edge of her seat. “She can manipulate sound to a ridiculous degree. Drop a glass plate in the kitchen? She can completely silence it when it shatters. Won’t help with the cleanup after, but still. Oh, and she’s perfect for microwaving a bag of popcorn past midnight. No horrible beeping from the microwave.”
“Not even I knew it was to that extent,” Lori said, reminding us of her presence. “I thought it was just powerful sound amplification from what I’d heard. I’m glad one of the examples you gave of her Anomaly is devious midnight snacking. If what you said is true, she could move an entire group of people around silently or something along those lines.”
“She can do that, but she also has a wicked singing voice. Her church loves having her perform almost as much as I do.” Lizzy didn’t care that she was clearly gushing over Rosie’s power. “She insists that her singing isn’t great, though. Complete nonsense, don’t let that sweet girl fool you. Insist that she sings to you at least once. Don’t let that chance pass by.”
Our room fell silent when we saw Alex crouch down, the yellow glow in his forearms disappearing. Rosie readied her trumpet by bringing to her lips, her eyes not leaving Alex’s crouched figure. My heartbeat picked up just watching them standoff with each other, still not knowing the full extent of what either could do. I was worried about their safety, and my own. I disregarded those worries entirely to watch the show.
Alex shifted for the briefest of moments before he took off in a full sprint, pounding his feet on the hard flooring. He went left and started to come back in toward Rosie. He was running faster than I’d seen any human run before, yet not so fast I couldn’t follow him. My knowledge of comics was slim, but Alex was nowhere near the speed of some of the guys and gals in those stories, and that was probably a good thing. People who could go that fast would be extraordinarily dangerous, even in a sparring session.
He crossed the distance between them—which I guessed was about forty or fifty feet—in the blink of an eye. He would have put aspiring NFL players to shame with his forty-yard dash time. Rosie never lost her focus. She turned to aim her trumpet at Alex, and another sound blast flew toward him. But that blast didn’t meet its mark. Alex managed to just duck beneath it before it could make contact with him.
The shock on Rosie’s face when Alex crouched beneath her was clear. The weird glow appeared under his right fist, brighter than the last time, and he delivered a punch to the small girl’s stomach. Time seemed to freeze for an instant before Rosie was sent flying backward. Tumbling and rolling along the ground in a mess of limbs and hair, she finally came to a rest in a kneeling position. To her credit, she managed to hold onto her trumpet, which hadn’t suffered any damage from the spill she took. I had no idea how she managed to take a shot like that and not lose that along the way.
“Crap, come on Rosie,” Lizzy said, chewing a perfect nail and nervously bouncing her leg. “I know that was rough. You gotta get up and show him what you can do, girl. You’re better than this.”
Rosie wrapped her right arm around her stomach and used her left for support, her trumpet resting under hand. Her body twitched, and her breathing was ragged. Each breath she took made my chest and stomach hurt. She didn’t appear to be critically injured, thank goodness. I don’t know if Alex held back at all, but I hoped he didn’t. If that punch was the result of him showing restraint, I was terrified of what he could do when he was actually trying to hurt someone, like a someone who might’ve accidentally pissed him off after his work shift.
On unsteady legs, Rosie managed to stand up, still favoring her midsection. She closed her eyes and concentrated, something that Alex saw as an opening. He ran toward her, slower this time. Visibly slowing down still would have NFL coaches drooling over his speed. It was wild. She hadn’t been knocked that far back either, so it wouldn’t take him long to reach her again. In just a couple of steps, he was a few feet away from her.
And that’s when all the sound vanished. The nervous bouncing of Lizzy’s leg, my heartbeat, my breathing, all of it was just gone. Lori, Lizzy, and I shared surprised looks. Lizzy mouthed something at us, and she had another look of shock before snapping her gaze back to Alex and Rosie.
The former was now the one on unsteady legs, his hands cupping around his ears. Rosie’s face was scrunched in concentration and sweat had begun to run down her forehead. Whatever she was doing, it didn’t look like it was easy on her, at least not in her injured state. It wasn’t easy on her larger opponent either. Rosie wanted to try and level the playing field while she still could.
Rosie’s eyes opened, nearly exploding out of her head. The sound returned to us, and I could hear my heartbeat again. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until it was gone. Perhaps it was because I had spent my entire life being able to hear, or it could have been the jarring change, but that brief time without any sound left me with a feeling of wrongness. Something like that just went against the rules of the world, and it creeped me out.
Alex had since removed his hands from his ears, but he hadn’t stood up yet. Seeing her own window of opportunity, Rosie readied her trumpet, took a deep breath, and blasted Alex with an attack that we could hear in the protected spectator room. It was like someone took their trumpet, put everything they had into just making as much noise as possible, and that noise went through every amplification system the world had to offer. Even in the protected room, I could feel the sound, just like those people who listen to their radios with the bass turned up too high.
That’s when it hit me why we couldn’t hear anything. If microphones were on to hear conversation, something of that volume would probably be severely damaging to hear, if there was recording equipment that could have even successfully recorded the sound. Alex was dealing with that nightmare firsthand. The poor guy wasn’t just dealing with the hearing end of it; he had been sent back by the force of the sound blast as well. I didn’t even think sound could do that, but Anomalies didn’t seem to play by any conventional knowledge I possessed.
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The fight hadn’t really gone like I’d expected either. I’d seen some superhero movies and shows in the past, and everyone always seemed to be able to dish out and take punishment really well. It was a dumb way to think, considering we were still just normal people with something different about us, but that’s the kind of mindset I had going into the match. I had thought it would be a slugfest between two superhumans, but they both looked out of it after a couple attacks.
Alex managed to make it to both feet, though he didn’t look so good. His clothes were partially torn from being blasted along the ground and blood trickled down from the ear that I could see. Assuming it was happening on the other side too, Alex was not in a good spot. He probably needed medical attention, something that Rosie noticed as well.
She turned to our window and frantically waved both hands over her head, trying to get someone’s attention. Looking more nervous than I thought she could, Lizzy stood up and started to move toward the door she originally emerged from. It wasn’t until Rosie flinched down in the training room that she stopped and looked at Alex, something we all did. He was shaking his head with his familiar glow under his fists again, albeit they were losing their brightness.
It was hard to be certain from my distance, but to me, it looked like he said “one more” to Rosie. The poor girl was clearly distressed about the situation, but she nodded and prepared for one last attack. She tapped a few spots on her trumpet, and it turned into one of those large drums that the kids in my school’s marching band wore. I wish I’d known the proper name for them. She slipped on the straps that were attached to the drum and nodded toward Alex, a motion he returned.
Mustering as much as he could, he took off in a straight-line sprint directly for Rosie for an all-or-nothing attack. She hadn’t been fully expecting that and struggled to get in a position where she could see him better, but it was already too late by that point. Instead of trying to dodge left, right, or down, Alex jumped into the air, something I wasn’t expecting him to do. It seemed like his power was something that would work better with a solid base on the ground, but he seemed confident enough to put his body on the line like that.
Or maybe it was just the first time I saw his quick thinking; his way to try and fake out an opponent.
Rosie put both her arms out to the side and brought them in toward the drum just as quickly. It was sad, but victory might have been hers had her hands not met her drum right as Alex’s glowing fist connected with her mouth. Instead, there was a loud thud that shook our room like a vicious clap of thunder, and both combatants were sent to the ground in different directions, each ending up in a motionless heap.
“Shit, that did not go as I planned,” Lizzy whispered, making her way to the door again. “I’m going to call some healers. You two go down there and make sure that there isn’t anything horribly wrong with them. Don’t mess with them too much in case someone is actually severely hurt.” She paused for a second and looked back toward us. “Just make sure they’re not dead. Yeah, do that.” Her brow furrowed and bit her lip making her way back into the room she came from.
“We have good healers, don’t worry. They can help regenerate serious injuries.” Lori must have sensed my feelings were matching Lizzy’s. “She’s just worried about her friend, which to be fair, she did take a wicked hit. Let’s get down there to double check anyway. Better safe than sorry.”
We did a sort of fast walk down the stairs and stood in front of the door that led to the training room. With a grunt and some effort, Lori slowly slid the door open, granting us access to the prone bodies. I decided to check on Rosie since I think she liked me more than Alex did. Plus, that let Lori get the chance to dote on her wounded hunk of a guy. I had no idea how to wingman for someone. I just knew I wanted to support her in her love life.
I jogged over to Rosie and knelt beside her, trying to check for any obvious damage. She was already starting to stir and sit up, so whatever happened, it didn’t kill her. Besides that, I was just impressed she was already starting to get up after taking a punch like that. Maybe it was because I was a massive weakling that I was so impressed. There was no shot I could have taken that and been stirring moments later. That would have kept me down for the whole ten count and then some.
“How’re you feeling down there, champ?” I asked. I reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, hesitated for a moment, and finally decided to go through with it and give her some support. She tapped what I noticed were buttons on her drum, and it returned to its small shape. “We felt your attacks from the spectator area. They were awesome, Rosie.”
She blinked at me a couple times, glanced at Lori and Alex, then shook her head, probably trying to get rid of the cobwebs. “Well, now I didn’t know y’all were coming to watch us. Oh goodness, I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too bad in front of everyone.” She moved her mouth a bit before grimacing. She looked to the side and spit out a small amount of blood and a tooth.
“Damn, he got you good with that last one, didn’t he?” I matched her grimace at the mess on the floor. “Your smile is going to make a hockey player proud though.”
I remembered all the pictures of old hockey players in a restaurant Shelly would take me to on the rare occasions when money was right. In response, she gave me a toothy grin, and sure enough, there was a space where one of her top front teeth should have been. There was also blood leaking out of her mouth.
“Our healers can fix this, I think,” she said, running a finger through her mouth to make sure everything else was stable and secure. “They’re a good bunch over there. The only thing that really gives them trouble are limbs and organ removal. Even then, they’ve worked some real magic! They can handle just about anything that they get.”
“Think you got any of Alex’s teeth out?” I knew she did some good damage to his ears, but I couldn’t see anything else from where I was sitting. Like me, Lori was helping Alex to sit up, albeit she looked much happier about the chance to touch him than I did Rosie. “I think that one was a draw.”
“Yeah, I put a bit too much on his ears, poor thing.” Rosie attempted to stand, but grabbed her stomach and wobbled a bit, needing to place a hand on my shoulder for support. “You know, I think I’m just gonna sit my happy butt down and wait for the medics that I am sure Lizzy called.”
“You know her pretty well,” I said, confirming her guess. “She was worried to bits about how your fight went. You two that close?”
“Sure are! She’s my best friend in the world.” Rosie beamed and flashed another gap-filled grin. “I gotta try to meet everyone I can when they’re new, and she was part of that. Lizzy had some issues with bullyin’ because of her looks and her kindness, but we clicked since the second I said something to her.”
“She was bullied before?” I asked, having trouble imagining that.
“It’s sad, but it’s true.” Rosie shook her head and looked down. “Some girls would get jealous of how she looks, and boys would try flirt with her, but get upset at her strange responses. She hardly has a mean bone in her body, so she’d never be rude to them. Though she’d say plenty of weird things. Her attitude didn’t give her a spot in the meaner social circles. Everyone who thought they weren’t as good as her were too shy to say anything, so she ended up a bit of loner. She was sorta popular, but only from a distance, sort of how you’d might admire a piece at a museum. Eventually, her classmates only started carin’ about her looks.”
“Everyone here seems like a bit of a loner, don’t they?” I asked, mostly thinking out loud. “Lori, Lizzy, and I. Alex is a bit prickly, so I’m not sure how many friends he has either.”
“Hm, you may be right about that, Ethan.” Rosie stopped to think for a second, tapping a finger on her forearm. “Most of us have a sense of comradery here, but old issues are hard to beat. There are still bullies and everythin’ ain’t perfect yet, no matter how hard we try. Still, Lori might have been a loner, but she had Lizzy’s number, didn’t she? She might not be friends with many folks, but we should all be allies joined by the same reason here, and I think that’s a pretty good alternative if everyone isn’t pals.
“I reckon Lizzy already considers you and Lori her friends anyway. You and Lori have each other, Lori and Alex seem to be getting along well, and I’m sure we’ll get along great too. So, don’t worry too much about who is or isn’t a loner or none of that. It’ll all happen naturally.”
“I haven’t even been here a day, Rosie,” I reminded her.
“Most friendships start that way. They all start by people talkin’ one day, and then bam, y’all are friends before you know it.”
“Do I have to lose a tooth for it to happen?” I asked, trying to inject some humor into the discussion.
“Naw, but that’s how you know you’re dealin’ with the right people,” Rosie said. I noticed that her southern accent came out more when she was excited about something. “You get whacked that good in a friendly spar, and you know you got a good person right there. And it’s somethin’ you better get used to, because I wanna spar with you soon enough too.”