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Elemental!
Disclaimer: The characters and situations within this story are owned by me, and are pure fiction. Any relation to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
Chapter One: A Hungry Life
Things weren’t going the way he had planned. So far, he was losing this fight, and his opponent could tell that he was fatigued. The lack of food for the past five days and all the rigorous training had really gotten to him. It had drained him of his energy and left him too weak to continue. He even had the thought of forfeiting the fight. That way he’d at least save whatever energy he had left to go school.
Sweat trickled down his forehead, completely soaking his face in a matter of seconds. His muscles were becoming numb, and his eyes stung as sweat got in them. His skin felt like it was on fire, and his legs felt like jelly as he could barely hold himself upright anymore. It started becoming harder to breathe with every breath he took. He needed rest-
Suddenly, he felt weightlessness as he was knocked of his feet. His heart felt as if it had jumped to his throat as pain surged through his abdomen. But for that time in being, he felt relaxed; he wasn’t using energy, or at least not his own; but this short period of time gave his body some time to rest. Then, thanks to the laws of gravity, he slammed onto floor face-first; although it hurt a lot, he still felt somewhat relaxed and relieved. It was finally over; he could finally rest in peace...
“Hiro, you’re still leaving yourself open!” a slightly young, feminine voice pointed out harshly.
Hiro lifted his face from the floor to see a disappointed woman looking down on him. She looked like she was in her early-twenties and had blue hair with matching color eyes. Her hair was tied in a ponytail to prevent less of a distraction to herself during the fight. She was strong and a born fighter, but for someone who fought a lot she didn’t have a very masculine body; instead, she had more of a slender build that could catch the eyes of several males. Hiro wondered where she got her strength, but the rumbling in his stomach easily told him that some of it came from eating; something he hadn’t done in five days. With a close of his eyes, Hiro dropped his head back on the floor in hopes to get at least one minute of rest.
The woman still looked down at Hiro as he lay on the floor, motionless. “You’re not defending yourself properly!” the woman screamed out again. “Have you been paying attention at all to what I’ve been saying for the past ten years?!”
Hiro still lay on the floor motionless for almost a minute when he finally responded, but all the woman could hear was a bunch of muffles since his face was on the floor. “What was that?” she forcefully asked.
“I said,” Hiro started, speaking louder this time, though his voice still sounded a little muffled, “that if I had some food then I might be to – OOF!”
The woman didn’t bother to let Hiro finish as she swiftly landed a kick to the boy’s side, causing him to roll over in pain-and then quickly stand up as if he was ready to fight again; his energy renewed. Hiro’s face burned with anger as he clutched the side he was kicked on and gritted his teeth to help numb away the pain. It worked, but only a little. “What was that for, Raine?!” Hiro screamed with anger. The feeling he had a while ago, the feeling of weakness and fatigue, completely vanished and was replaced with a feeling of pure anger and rage.
The woman named Raine only looked at the boy as he fell to one knee, unable to properly stand anymore. She smiled to herself and Hiro took it the wrong way.
“What’s so funny?!” Hiro angrily asked.
“Nothing,” Raine answered calmly. Although she was his trainer, she knew Hiro’s limits, and he hadn’t reached that point yet. He was trying to find a way to finish this day in the easiest way possible; he was becoming lazy in his training. But even a human had limits when they have hardly any rest and no food for days. “We’re finished for now, get ready for school,” Raine concluded the session as she turned around and exited the training room she and Hiro occupied.
The training room was obviously a room for training. It didn’t have your usual weights and equipment that could be found in a school gym. Instead, it was an empty room that resembled a Japanese dojo-training room. It was about the size of a regular sized living room with no furniture to take up any space.
Hiro didn’t complain as he stood up, and found out it was hard to even do that; this concluded the morning training session, sadly, though, there would be more later in the day. When he finally balanced his footing, Hiro slowly made his way across the wooden floor to the sliding door that led him straight into the small foyer of his house. His backpack for school lay by the front door, ready for a quick departure and prepared for the day ahead. He quickly picked up the red backpack, opened the door quietly, and closed it in the same manner.
The first plan of operation: leave for school early before Raine found out he had left. Hiro summoned the last bit of his energy to power walk away from the house. This way, if he made it at least a block away, he’d have an excuse-
“Hiro,” came the cry of Raine’s voice from inside the house, “don’t forget that you need to go to school in a full sprint today!”
Hiro continued power walking, ignoring what his Guardian had said.
When he was finally a safe distance away from home, Hiro slowed his pace to a slow walk. Every time he headed for school Raine would always have him run. Mondays through Thursdays was a simple jog, on Fridays he would have to sprint all the way to school. To Hiro, this wasn’t hard, sometimes, but when he didn’t have anything in his stomach, that complicated things a lot more. And to make sure Hiro was doing this every day, Raine either hired a spy on him, or she spied on him herself, because every time he didn’t run, he was punished and she somehow knew.
School wasn’t far away: only five blocks from where he lived. So he could take his time walking since he had left home early.
“Hey, Hiro!” a voice called out from behind Hiro.
Hiro turned around and saw one of his friends riding a chrome BMX bike as he crossed the street to the side Hiro was on. The boy had somewhat of a messy, dirty blond hair with some streaks of brown that ran down to above his eyes. He had dark brown eyes and was well built, considering all the work he was involved in. Hiro instantly noticed who he was, “Hey, Joey,” he weakly responded.
It didn’t take Joey long to realize, “Raine and her training, huh?”
Hiro weakly nodded with half-shut eyes.
“Man, she pushes you kinda hard, don’t you think?” Joey asked, now trying to match the speed of his bike to the speed of Hiro’s walk, which wasn’t very fast.
“She’s been doing this since I was five! And every year it’d get harder and harder,” Hiro complained weakly.
“What does she have you doing now?” Joey asked curiously.
If he could, Hiro would’ve told his friends about Raine’s new training schedule, but he was forbidden to say a word to anyone. Raine was sure making a big deal into keeping this secret. Maybe she didn’t want rumors flying around saying she was abusing him. Instead, Hiro answered, “The same thing, all she did was kick it up a notch.”
“Oh,” was all Joey said. Inside, he felt sorry for Hiro, but at the same time he was glad Raine wasn’t his Guardian.
The way things were going, Hiro was ready to collapse at a second’s notice. He’d never felt so hungry and weak at the same time. Today was supposed to be the last day of the training schedule he was now doing, the hunger one, but knowing Raine, she might add an extra day or two to this torture!
“We didn’t have any homework due today, did we?” Hiro weakly asked. He hadn’t done his homework, so now was as good a time as ever to think of an excuse. The “my dog ate my homework,” excuse was easily out of the question since he didn’t have a…
CRAAASH!
The crash quickly caught Hiro’s attention. Not much, but you could say it was more like his wake-up call for the day. Hiro soon noticed that Joey was on the ground with his bike almost on top of him. He was surprised; Joey was too good a rider to just fall down like that…
“Dude, Hiro,” Joey said as he stood up from the ground, wiping dirt from his jeans. “Try walking faster, will ya. I can’t ride that slow!”
“Sorry Joey,” Hiro apologized. He didn’t even realize he had been walking so slowly. He must’ve been more exhausted than he thought.
“You sure you can make it through school today? You’ve been acting weird since Monday,” Joey asked. It was clearly obvious that Hiro was tired and his friends were able to distinguish this fact without him telling them.
“Yeah, man. Watch me, I’ll make it through school, no sweat,” Hiro confidently said as he hit his chest with his fist.
“Of course he’s there, who else is this?! What kinda dumb question was that anyway?” another voice interrupted. This voice belonged to Joey.
“Well, sorry! I was just asking!” the girl exclaimed.
“If you were gonna ask him something, you should ask if he can hear us,” Joey suggested, his tone of voice beginning to pick up.
“What good will that do?! If he can hear us then he’s probably faking it!” the girl pointed out to Joey.
“I hear people talking when I’m asleep,” Joey shot back.
“Then you weren’t asleep!” the girl countered.
“Wha…” Joey didn’t continue, either he just wanted to end this senseless discussion or he had nothing left to say. But there was no denying that Joey had lost this fight with the girl.
“You guys,” another voice spoke up, this one a male, “maybe we should try waking him up now.”
“Ooh, I know,” the girl started, “let’s dump some hot water on him.”
“I think you mean cold water,” Joey corrected.
“It makes no difference, he’ll wake up either way when we dump the water on him,” the girl protested.
“Yeah, but it’d be better to use cold water so he won’t get burned,” Joey complained.
“Hot!” the girl nearly screamed.
“Cold!” Joey exclaimed.
These two continued arguing for minutes, but it was getting harder to hear them as someone else was speaking, this time to Hiro. “Yo, Hiro, you got to wake up.” It was the same person who suggested waking Hiro up a minute ago. When Hiro didn’t wake up the person went to the next best thing…
SPLAAASH!
It didn’t take Hiro even a second to jump out of his desk and fall to the floor, a good potion of his clothes completely soaked. Someone had splashed water on him - and it was cold too.
“See, I told you cold water was better.”
Hiro opened his eyes. If he didn’t he might have more water dumped on him. When his eyes adjusted to the room, he noticed that Joey was standing not too far in front of him in front of him, holding a bucket that had nothing in it but hundreds of small droplets of water that had cohesively stuck inside the bucket…He was the one who dumped the water on him…
“It would’ve worked the same way if we dumped hot water on him.” Hiro noticed that beside Joey was a girl who had light-brown hair with small streaks of highlight showing on her hair, she also had brown eyes that were darker than her hair color. Hiro knew who she was: Alie. “How are ya feeling?” Alie asked.
“Freakin’ terrible,” Hiro answered. It was one thing to be woken up. But having it done with cold water being dumped on you is another thing.
“Well, what do you expect,” a voice spoke up, the same male voice from before. “Having to do Raine’s training is hard enough, but having it everyday is something else.” Hiro noticed that this voice came from beside him; when he looked he saw another one of his friends. He had brown shaggy hair and hazel colored eyes. He was taller than Hiro, but not that much, and was well-built from all the sports he played.
“Hey, Dustin,” Hiro greeted.
Dustin only responded with a nod.
These were all of Hiro’s friends. A small group, but he liked it that way. Going from age, he would be the second youngest. Alie being the oldest and Joey being the youngest; but ironically, Joey was the tallest of the four. Hiro couldn’t help but feel relaxed when he was with his friends, mainly because they were so unpredictable that was almost anything could happen with them.
“It’s amazing,” Alie started, “you were able to sleep through the entire class and then some.”
“’Yeah, man. Watch me, I’ll make it through school, no sweat,’” Joey mocked. “Man, you fell asleep even before class!”
At this, now realizing he was on the floor, Hiro jumped up, “What!”
“Yeah,” Dustin spoke up, “you slept through the entire school day.”
“You gotta be kidding me!” This wasn’t good. Or at least Hiro thought it wasn’t. On one point, he did get a good nap…but he was still sleepy! “What time is it?”
“Um…it’s 6:40,” Alie said pointing to a clock that was in the room.
No way! School ended more than four hours ago! “Why didn’t Mrs. Rekab wake me up?!”
“Well, she said that I’d be pointless since you were already asleep before class started,” Joey responded.
“Yeah, but she was totally steaming at the same time,” Dustin added. “She almost exploded!”
“But don’t worry, because we got all your homework assignments that are due Monday.” Alie said as she brought up a stack of papers with what seemed like thousands of questions on them, and a whole lot of blanks to be filled in. She handed the papers to Hiro, and he accepted them half-heartedly. Hiro was exaggerating a little; it really looked like ten assignments.
More homework, great…
He hadn’t even finished the homework he was assigned to already. More homework would only slow him down to finish the previous homework!
“You guys, we have to get going soon,” Dustin stated, as he started heading for the door. “The school only gave us permission to stay here until Hiro woke up.”
“Yeah, we should get going,” Joey agreed.
Now that he paid attention, Hiro realized that they were still in Mrs. Rekab’s classroom. It kind of felt weird for him. Normally, this room would be packed with students, but now it was empty excluding him and his friends; he’d never seen it like this before.
Hiro followed his friends as they exited the room.
Hiro was wondering what his friends had done for the fours hours that he had been asleep. That’s a long time to wait for someone, especially when the person they were waiting for was sleeping. That’s why these people were his friends; they stuck with him at the cost of some of their weekend. That’s true friendship…
“We went to the movies,” Alie responded cheerfully.
WHAAA…Some friends.
Scratch that paragraph about true friendship. They went to the movies! Why didn’t even bother waking him up earlier?! There may not have been any movies that he might have wanted to see, buy still, it wouldn’t have hurt to wake him up to go with his friends. “Really…” Hiro asked, hoping that they were joking around.
“Yup,” Joey answered calmly as he continued playing an F-16 game that was rocking him side-to-side to simulate the movement of the jet. “You were asleep for a long time we didn’t want to bother you.”
“And you didn’t even bother to wake me up earlier?!” Hiro nearly shouted, but it didn’t get carried far thanks to all the beeping and buzzing from the arcade machines in the area.
“Joey told us that Raine’s making your training harder, so we just assumed you were tired from all her exercises and needed the rest,” Dustin responded casually as he was playing an arm wrestling game that had a robotic arm against his real arm. So he far, he was losing.
Now that he thought about it, Dustin did make a reasonable point. Raine was pushing him to his limits for the past week and he did need the rest. Maybe they did do the right thing.
Hiro still was tired, though. And he still had an empty spot in his stomach that wouldn’t stop reminding him how hungry he was. At least he had some time to have some fun before he returned to Raine; he didn’t sprint to school today, so he was surely expecting a scolding from her. He’d just have to deal with her later.
“Yes sir,” two voices replied to the first.
“Den let’s gets readys, we can’ts mess dis ups or da big guy wills has our heads.”
It was already dark, so it was now the perfect time for them to pull this off. Luckily the cops weren’t very dependable in this city, all they really needed was fifteen minutes and they would be finished.
“Get’s da bomb readys, we has an items to purchase.”
It had been an hour since they entered the arcade, and there was no doubt that Raine would surely kill Hiro by now. Hiro told his friends this and they understood, mainly because they knew how Raine was sometimes like a time bomb. And they didn’t want to see their friend all beat up because of them.
After saying his goodbyes Hiro departed for his house. That still didn’t mean he ran or anything; he did an easy walk since he was still too weak and tired to do anything of the sort.
Right now, Hiro noticed that there was hardly anybody outside. It wasn’t that late, was it? The last time he checked, it was somewhere close to eight. There weren’t that many cars outside, either. This left Hiro to have an eerie feeling, but he quickly ignored it as he continued walking home. The streetlights were on, but that didn’t surprise him. It was like something was going to happen. Something big…
KABOOOM!!!
The explosion was bigger than he’d ever heard in his life. It even shook the ground just enough to make Hiro almost lose his footing. A lot of people inside neighboring buildings also noticed this explosion. Many of them opened their windows to get a good look outside to see what had happened. But all they saw was a large trail of smoke coming about a block or two away from where they were. They couldn’t see what exactly had happened because other buildings blocked the view of the action.
Hiro was excited. It wasn’t everyday something like this happened, not to mention that this would also count as an excuse to stay away from Raine a little longer. Summoning up hidden energy, Hiro started running towards the direction where the smoke was coming from; unknown energy beginning to rise up inside of the boy.
Next Chapter: Unyielding Power
Hiro investigates the explosion that occurred in the city while a group of men threaten an old shop keeper. But when a mysterious power gets into Hiro’s hands, his life will quickly be turned upside-down before he knows what is entirely happening.