“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
Darkist stood at the front of the classroom, having arrived late due to the antics of lunch. He didn’t care, but his teacher was making a big deal out of it. He opened his mouth to speak, but a familiar, impassioned voice rang out.
“That’s not fair! He stayed to help clean up a mess! Hannah and Roy got into a fight!”
“Kevin,” the teacher responded in a stern, yet instructional tone, “You know that’s no excuse to be late to class.”
With tears welling in his eyes, dangerously perched upon his eyelids and ready to leap from their precarious throne, Kevin slammed his fists onto his desk, shouting, “You can’t do this to him!”
He was ready to go on and on, but the teacher stopped him, “Fine, fine. Gosh, you get so worked up over the smallest things sometimes.”
Kevin’s power wasn’t one of the rare genetically inherited ones, but it was quite unique all the same. His dynamism formed a rift in his mind, creating two distinct personalities. The dominant ego was cool and collected, and made it his business to stay hip and popular, while the less active ego, the one who stood up for Darkist, was very sensitive and effeminate. Though he didn’t have much control over it, his dynamism did have an active form. However, since his split personality was the direct result of his dynamism, his eyes were unendingly stained with an indigo tint that glowed ever so faintly.
Darkist took his seat next to his friend, whispering as the teacher continued his lesson, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I know man. But we’re bros, you know?” The tone of Kevin’s reply made it clear that his normal ego was the one speaking. Darkist couldn’t help but laugh, and the rest of the day passed without much incident. When the bell that signalled the end of the day resounded the school, liberating the children, Darkist made his way to the front of the school where his younger brother was waiting, just as he did every day.
Greeting his brother with a hug, Darkist said, “Hello older brother, did anything exciting happen today?”
Even though Tatsu was a year younger than Darkist, he insisted on being called older brother when Darkist was first adopted. He was eight years old at the time, and Darkist was nine. The youngest of three was excited when he heard that his parents were adopting a new sibling, and had decided before realizing the situation that he would finally get to be the older brother to someone.
When nine-year-old Darkist first came home, being both taller and more masculinely built, not to mention older, Tatsu was livid. The first words that Tatsu ever said to him were, “Hey you! I won’t accept you as a part of this family! Never! Not unless you agree to call me ‘Older Brother’ and agree to be younger than me!”
Their parents were quite shocked at this outburst from the one of their children most excited for the new addition to the family, and they were at a loss as to how to respond. However, Darkist shocked everyone in the room (especially Tatsu) with his response:
“Okay. Older Brother, I agree to be youngest.”
From then on, Tatsu was Darkist’s older, younger brother, and they walked home together from middle school every day.
“Are you kidding?!” Tatsu exclaimed in response to Darkist’s original question, “Did anything exciting happen to me?! You ask me that after what you did in the cafeteria today?”
“Oh, you heard about that?”
“Oh gosh, Darkist, the whole school knows about it! They think you have a crush on that new girl! You don’t, do you? You had better not!”
Darkist shook his head, laughing, “No, I don’t have a crush on her. You know me better than that.”
“Oh gosh, I worry about you sometimes, younger brother. Not having a crush on such a pretty girl.”
“But, weren’t you just getting mad that I might have a crush on her? What’s with this all of a sudden? You don’t have a crush on her yourself, do you?”
“What?! Of course I don’t!” Tatsu practically shouted.
“Oh man, you totally do. That’s so cute.”
“Shut up! You can’t call me things like that! I’m the oldest!”
The two of them argued for the walk to a nearby school where their other brother was about to be dismissed from. Zid, the true oldest, was accepted into a school designated for training its pupils to use their dynamisms, in addition to the standard curriculum. Such schools were common around the country, and, because this town only had one such facility, admission was strictly through scholarship. Students had to excell at the control of their dynamism to be accepted. And even though this school had a modest home, it had achieved national acclaim through the quality of students that it groomed.
Zid took after his father and was a blue-type dynamist. Blue-types are users whose powers deal with empowering their own bodies. Some blue users might be able to sprint for hours on end without ever running out of breath, or be able to increase their speed or reflexes. Zid’s power was similar to their fathers; both increasing their strength and speed, while coating their bodies with a sheet of energy that could withstand physical trauma.
Their sister, Julia, went to the general high school, which was on an opposite side of town, so they hardly met up with her to walk home. After the trio made their rendezvous, they trekked home.
The day was rather uneventful from then on. At dinner, each talked about their day. The fiasco in the cafeteria was by far the most interesting recounting, and most of the talk was spent on it. Then it was homework, and then bedtime.
Darkist usually finished his homework quickly, and then spent the rest of his free time reading books, but today he felt rather sluggish. When he was only nearly finished, he decided to sleep early. He felt like he was having a fever. His mind was hazy, and he fell into a fitful, restless sleep.
His dream was just as haggard. He was alone, a feeling that he thought he would never have to feel again, stranded in an endless black sea. He tried to run, but he was weighed down by a dark, thick oil that coated his legs and arms. The slime began to creep up his body, starting at his legs, going up his thighs, then his torso, and all the while he was struggling to remove the viscous fluid.
When the fluid finally reached his face and covered it, threatening to suffocate him, he suddenly found himself in another location altogether. The oily sea that he was wading in was replaced by a polished obsidian floor, and the walls and windows and ceiling were all an ebony black. Yet despite this, he was able to see, as a sinister sun shone dark, tainted light. Black rays, indistinguishable from the darkness allowed him to see.
And on the polished floor beneath him, he saw himself as a monster clad in a fearsome, jet black armor. Instead of hands, he had great hook claws, which detached from his wrists as he stumbled about in shock, revealing that they were connected to his forearms by chains of dark.
The door to the grand hall in which he found himself opened, and he turned to see many of his family and friends. They were looking for him. They were concerned for him. Overjoyed, he rose to his clawed feet and tried to call out to them, “I’m here!”
But instead, a mangled growl came from his twisted maw. When he tried to shout, “Please, help me! I’m Darkist! Help!” the beast who embodied him gave a ferocious series of barks and growls and roars, which were partly gargled as he choked on the same oil from before.
“There he is!” They shouted.
They recognized him, he thought. He was so relieved. He got up to race to them and embrace them each, but he noticed something wrong about them. They were far too angry.
“There’s the monster that stole Darkist!”
They didn’t recognize him. Instead, they charged at him and activated their dynamisms. His feral body, in an instinct to protect itself, raised its arms against the people that Darkist loved. His sharp clawed hands tore through his sister’s body with ease, and they were easily harpooned like a gun to catch Tatsu off guard from afar. Pulling him back was just a matter of retracting the chain, and he was easily ripped apart.
In the end, Darkist had mutilated and maimed each of his loved ones quite fatally, and dark, oily tears poured from his eyes as he was powerless to stop it. When he awoke, it was with a start, and he was covered in a cold sweat, and quite out of breath. He got up to go to the bathroom to wash his face, but was quite startled when he saw his reflection in the mirror and saw something that he had never seen in himself before.
His normally brown eyes were glowing with the gentle hue of a dynamism, and they were a dark, oily black.
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