It’s a re-enactment of the battlefields Paige once described to me. A field of flowers and concrete stained with blood as the enemy nation released one of the first ever metas on them.

All around me, the thirty-one other metas with supposedly weak and useless powers went berserk. Some dying the instant their powers got boosted past the point their fragile bodies could handle.

Muscle growing and expanding until it tears through skin, weak pyromancers suddenly lit aflame by their own powers. Speedsters and flyers slamming into the ground with force unbound.

It’s not a complete suicide though. Steve does get what he wants. The most common powers are emission powers, and there are a lot of emission users here.

Cynthia, the girl I spoke to earlier, rapidly begins to cool the temperature around her, her body turning pale as she and I and everyone else trapped on this side of the barrier scream in pain and horror.

A cold and wicked frost blasts out of her arms, it’s powerful, very much so, but even I know that the output she’s dishing can’t be maintained. Powers have to be trained, and honed lest you burn yourself out.

But none of that matters, chances are all of us are going to die. Including me.

With her frost emission as well as several other emission users shooting out widely and frying the factory’s turrets and breaking down the walls, the next response to put us down from the people inside that building happens to be a march of Death Droids.

Where they got those highly illegal and deadly droids, I’m sure I’ll never know. They start firing.

Still in unparalleled pain I glare heatedly at Steve and T.V on the other side. They watch, content with letting us go wild with pain and panic as our own powers kill us.

Wait…are they blinking?

Through gritted teeth and a fading consciousness, I manage to take a round look about myself. True to my suspicions, there are many others around me who aren’t moving, not even a twitch.

There are some, a man’s powers of flight keeping them suspended in air with their faces etched in terror and even a bit of joy. But glancing at the ones on the ground with me, the ones with their hands and feet phasing through the very ground they’re seated on, I realize…it’s not that man’s powers keeping him suspended.

It’s mine.

For the first time I notice something new about my powers. They don’t freeze all of time, just the time of whatever is in my radius…How big that radius is I don’t know but I’m sure a limit exists because just outside it, there are other writhing metas moving about, completely undisturbed.

Then…that toaster that went off, it could have been out of my range of influence.

Immediately I think it I doubt it. I don’t know the beginnings of what my power actually is, I haven’t the slightest clue what exactly can move or what can’t move under my influence.

It could be just organics and not inorganics, like machines or more threateningly…the killer robots headed my way.

“Argahhh!!!”

My head whips up to look, that scream is much closer than I’d like. Running towards me is a man that’s half-solid, half-liquid and half-gas. Shit I’d run crazy too if that was me.

But that’s not the most concerning thing. He’s within my radius. I know for sure because he’s just run past a woman frozen midway through her body exploding from the inside.

Why isn’t he stopping? Why isn’t he frozen!

Fuck!

“Urgghhh.” I don’t have any more luxury to think as my mouth spews out a chunk of blood. I feel something slip away from me and in that moment the woman explodes, the flying man zooms off into the sky, the kid phases straight through the ground, nothing to stop him from falling deep into the earth, never to be seen again.

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My power has been deactivated. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the screaming gas man gets blown to bits along with the woman doing the exploding.

The death droids keep moving forward though, their numbers thinned out but so have ours.

My head hits the ground, I see Steve and T.V panicking as the scenery before them undoubtedly becomes a completely foreign one compared to what they’d seen a mere second ago. They don’t hesitate for long though; their route to whatever it is the want to snatch is cleared.

The factory is burning, a result of some wild meta rampaging through no doubt.

I blink once and open my eyes just as soon as I close them, but the scene I’m staring at is not the same. Steve, T.V and their goons have barged into the factory, the Death Droids no more thanks to some meta or another.

I blink again and the factory is on fire. I’m still not sure how I’ve managed to make it out of this so unscathed. Steve and his men troop out, a lot less in number than when they went in, I suppose the place had more than enough security to thin their numbers.

I manage to get a glance at what they’re carrying, it’s soaked with blood and guts even as the kick past me, it’s long and silver in places not red. Whatever it is, Steve sure looks happy.

I blink again, this time my vision is blurred past the limit and I’m snorkelling in my own coughed up blood-when I coughed up so much, I don’t know- but before me and the smoking factory there stands a woman.

She’s cladded in a black, tight fitted dress with a slit by the side that gives no doubt to the curvaceous of her figure, even with my head feeling hazy and my eyes seeing double.

She touches my cheek, gently. Sound is all but a scrabbled muffle to my ears but her moving lips shows she’s saying something. There’s a soft blue-gold glow, and odd colour but….

It’s soothing.

***

When I wake up my head is no longer on the hard uneven surface of the ground, swimming in my own vomited blood.

Instead, it’s nestled gently between something soft, thick and beautifully scented. Peering my eyes open to find out exactly what I’m rested in is, I’m greeted to a familiar bubbly and rounded pair.

“Paige?” I croak, my voice sour and sore like I’ve been screaming for days. Given the pain I was in coupled with all that puking, I shouldn’t be so surprised.

Either way, my best-friends blue eyes glare down at me, although my view is beautifully obstructed by her bosom.

“What happened?” she chokes out.

For the first time I notice the twinkle at the sides of her eyes. Tears. “Why are you crying?” I ask, raising my hand to wipe off the offending tears.

“Why do you think.” She yells, pinching my sore side. “Where did you get all these wounds? Actually, never mind that, why did you get all these wounds?”

Wounds? I remember coming out unscathed. Why is my body full of sores and bruises?

Wait…How- “How did I get here?” I ask, panicked. “How long has it been?”

She scowls at me, tears completely absent now, “Seems like you’re just fine and dandy, asking me questions instead of answering them.” with that, she shoves me off her lap and struts off to the kitchen.

I just realize I’m back at our place.

“Seriously Paige, how did I get back here?” I manage through gritted teeth, somehow every single part of my body is either inflamed or sore to move without any clear injuries or memories of getting hit.

She marches back, whistling kettle and white cloth in hand. She slams said objects just a foot away from me and declares, “Take care of yourself then, don’t answer my questions, I don’t get to know why the hell my friend gets carried home by some sultry woman, bleeding from god know where and certainly half dead!”

A quiet falls as I take that in and she fumes. “I’m not sure what to say…” I murmur.

“Just tell me what happened to you.” She sniffs, crumpling down on the floor.

“Right.” Where do I even start?

Still she’s staring at me attentively and she did take care of me up to this point if the red stain cloths in the corner are anything to go on.

“It’s Steve. He gave us some drug that boosted our powers past the level our bodies could handle and unleashed us on some factory.” I start with resignation. Seeing this she begins to wet the cloth with the hot water, I’m ever surprised by how well she handles the heat but then again, she lived through the first meta wars.

Slowly she begins to dab at the most extensive bruises, which happen to be on my abs. “Go on, this might burn a bit so…”

I nod, “Thanks. A lot of them died. Either by the hands of each other’s powers, their own powers killing them or the Death Droids firing live rounds into their bodies.”

“Death Droids?” She gasps, “What were those doing here?”

I shrug, “I’m surprised I’m alive at all, especially given that the drug is meant to push your powers past the breaking limits and kill you.” I pause, remembering that soft, soothing glow, “I think that woman…where is she?”

Paige sighs, “I’m not sure, she just barged in with you I thought she was Neil trying something again. But it wasn’t she just said to take care of you until you’re fit to use your powers again…not sure why your powers matter.”

My powers. Now that I think about it…I was using them for far longer than just a few seconds. By the time I realized it…

“Do you know who she is?” Paige asks, dabbing away at the bruises studiously.

“No…no I don’t but I think I know what she meant by focusing on my powers and not my health.”

“What did she mean.”

With a grim look on I tell Paige, “Neil will be coming, and so will T.V and Steve. We have to move.”