Sorry for the cliffie, but it had to be done. At any rate, I feel the characters are taking better form and the story is starting to fit into what I had planned for it.

I’m thinking that the story is slowly becoming Ethan’s, but this is only because of the surprises in store concerning Lee. Let’s just say there are a few of them.

A note of caution: Loose ends will be tied, though split ends may ensue. I hope you brought your favorite conditioner (PANTENE ALL THE WAY!!) because, in my humble opinion, stuff starts going DOWN!

Tears Dry On Their Own

And it was a cute puppy, too. It might have even been mixed with husky with all the fur it had. Ethan would never have a chance to examine that, seeing as he was going to die.

During times like these, it was customary to pray to a god—usually the Christian one. Tell him you believed in him all along, tell him how you never meant to do the thing you were most ashamed of, admit that being gay was a phase…

Ethan couldn’t do it though. He stopped believing in anything having to do with monotheism when the Berber took him those years ago. He was perfectly aware of what he was doing when he disobeyed his mother to go to a concert—he was only ashamed when he got caught. And if being gay was a phase, then it lasted for a very long time…

Are you there God? It’s me, Ethan. I don’t believe in you. You’re as credible to me as Santa Claus, though I have more faith in Santa since I can see him at the mall every winter. If it’s my time to die, I hope you know that I die renouncing you and—

Ethan had no more time to finish his mental last will and testament, for something had hit him by his midsection and had forced him sideways. He opened his eyes and saw a doghouse approaching him like something from Too Fast, Too Furious. “Shit…” he mouthed as he made contact and splinters flew all around the air.

He skidded on a plank of wood and straight into the chain-link fence. He could already feel the bruises waiting to form. They wouldn’t be pretty, he knew. He sighed and looked around. Something had to have pushed him away from his downward fate.

“You’re a nuisance,” the male voice said. Ethan knew he heard it from somewhere.

“You’re a no-sense,” Ethan retorted dizzily, squinting to find the source of the voice. Slowly, a black-clad figure came into view, darker than the surrounding night. Oh no, Ninja-Stalker… But he sounded like someone else.

“Come on. We have to get you patched up. Honestly, you were expected here a week ago.” Ninja-Stalker scooped down and picked Ethan up, hoisting him over his shoulder.

Ethan relaxed into the strong frame of Ninja-Stalker. Under Ninja-Stalker’s skin, Ethan could feel lithe muscles working with one another to keep him hoisted up. They were not large by any means, but they were hard. Ethan decided he wanted to feel more, so he let his arm snake down Ninja-Stalker’s front until his hand rested on a set of rock-hard abs. Still, these muscles were not large, just toned and hard.

“Stop fondling me,” Ninja-Stalker said, but Ethan was too busy now with both hands, feeling around the man’s sides and pecs. He was athletic and definitely did something more than just eat wheaties and work out. There was more... Ethan wasn’t feeling him up because he wanted to, but he remembered this frame from somewhere. It was just too perfect to not remember.

He shuddered a bit. It wasn’t the Berber nomad he left behind in Nigeria. He was nowhere near this hard. He’d never felt up another male—or female, for that matter—before. Lie. He just remembered his time with Lee. But that was more of himself being eaten alive by a wolf-boy, so where could he know it from? He did have a name though.

“Justin Massey.”

As Ninja-Stalker walked, he shuddered involuntarily (his muscles tightening on Ethan) and he continued, saying nothing more. It was a good guess, Ethan thought as he passed out, soreness taking over.

He awoke to a super-white light glaring over him. It looked like a sci-fi type light. Looking around, he noticed that he was in some sort of infirmary. He wasn’t chained down though, thank goodness. He slipped his legs over the side of the bed and went forward. He noticed that he’d been ‘patched up’, but nothing hurt. He felt a bit numb, as if he was disconnected with his body, but that much was fine. The pain was at bay.

He went to the only door in the room and tried it. It was open. He couldn’t help but feel as if he was in a video game of some sort. He walked down the hall to where he heard distinct voices.

“… a coincidence indeed.”

“But everything will be totally unbiased. We’ll not take him against his will and should he desire to go home, we will let him. I’m not so terrible a dad, you know. Am I Justin?”

Ethan was not surprised to hear his father’s voice. As it hadn’t been before he made it here, meeting Michael was not that big of a deal. But his words were.

“Course not, Daddy.”

Ethan frowned. He did share Justin Massey’s blonde hair (though Justin’s was much, much lighter), but there was no way he could be Justin’s brother. And then there was the way Justin said ‘Daddy’. It sounded more seductive than anything else. Like he was some kind of… Oh goodness…

Ethan tried to right everything in his mind: He did not know Michael Frost well, but he did know Justin Massey from school. Justin Massey knew Michael Frost and also knew Ethan Frost. It wouldn’t be too hard for him to put two and two together. Maybe that was why Justin was playing the role of Ninja-Stalker for Michael, so that he could gather intel on Ethan and relay it back it back. But there was a third voice that Ethan did not need to hear.

“Could you possibly not do that while I’m here?” came the disembodied voice of Mr. Anderson. “PDA is so very overrated. Oh, Heavens, boy… I have to see you in class on Monday—this will greatly change my opinion of you…”

Ethan couldn’t even hold it in at that point. He fell to his knees and let it all out in the form of restaurant bread and egg-drop soup.

He felt himself fall forward nearly into it before a pair of strong hands grabbed him from under the arms and held him. As if protesting against the awakening of Ethan Frost, his head lolled and Ethan was out of commission for the second time that night. Or morning.

“Come on, Ethe,” Justin said again, trying to get Ethan to talk to him. Ethan just sat on the bed, arms folded and propped up by multiple pillows. The sun was climbing over the horizon and the sky was tuna-pink. He wondered whether or not his mother knew that he was out for far longer than they discussed.

“It’s more than that… It’s… Well, okay, you know, your father was sixteen when he had you and he’s thirty-four now. He isn’t that old…”

Ethan only kept his eyes fixed on a single quarter-sized dark spot on the wall. It hadn’t been that way a few hours ago. A bit earlier, it combusted in a small shower of sparks when Justin made a joke about being Ethan’s dad, but he was pretty calm since then. He only wanted to speak to his father one-on-one. Justin Massey could go to hell. Mr. Anderson would have nothing over his head come Monday morning either.

“Ethan…” came Michael’s voice from the door. Justin stood and left briskly, exchanging something with Michael in a very low voice.

The senior Frost walked in and Ethan could not help but gawk. He was tall and clean-shaven with light blond hair and ocean-blue eyes and thin lips. He looked something like a Nordic model or something. But it was nothing special. Ethan could see where his own genetics came into play. Together, Ethan and Michael shared a high forehead, a strong bodily frame, a very similar nose, and maybe a fast metabolism, but that was debatable.

His mother’s own metabolism kept her petite as she was, and Ethan shared more in common with her as far as he was concerned. He had the dark skin (not as dark as hers, but certainly darker than Michael could ever achieve by any tanning bed), the brown eyes, the high cheekbones and his contempt for the man was beginning to rival his mother’s. With every passing second, he wanted to congratulate the woman for banishing the man from their house all those years ago.

“You know,” Michael didn’t seem to notice his offspring making side-by-side comparisons, “I didn’t leave on my own…”

“My mother kicked you out. I know,” Ethan said snappily.

“Did she tell you why?”

“No,” Ethan said, but it didn’t make him feel weaker, not knowing. If anything, he felt a bit of Lee’s smug confidence seeping into him. “But you’re going to tell me.”

Michael seemed to not be fazed, but Ethan could almost feel that Michael was realizing slowly that he’d lost his son’s favor in a matter of hours. Minutes, really, with all the time Ethan’d been passing out. That had to be a pride hurter.

“Well… Your mother and I met in high school. I had to be two years younger than you are right now…”

Ethan could tell that Michael wasn’t sure and was throwing out a random estimate, trying to seem confident so that Ethan wouldn’t have another reason to hate him. But he didn’t say anything.

“And we… well, we had you. We were only attracted to each other on a hotness factor. She was hot, I was hot… She wouldn’t abort… Some years later you were three. She thought that I wasn’t carrying around my weight so she kicked me out. I was just too ashamed to come back, so I never did.”

He was blunt. He told it like it was, but Ethan knew there was something more. No one was so bold as to admit stuff like that. There had to be other offenses. “You’re lying,” Ethan said, shocked at how easily the words came from his mouth. Now he understood Lee’s obsession with confirming anything anyone said.

Michael sighed. “You know how your mom is smart? How she’s so good at everything there is to be good at—like starting a successful business in a year or finishing school while rearing a child single-handedly? And this is without the help of my lazy self,” he laughed dryly. “Well, I was smart too. But I was into genetics.”

“And when she found out that I was trying to make a kid that was half plant and—”

He didn’t get to finish, because by that time, Ethan had jumped up and punched him squarely in the nose, getting a resounding crack and forever damning one of the few traits that linked them. Michael looked as if he might deck him back, but he stopped himself and closed his eyes.

“I deserved that,” he said as he ripped his sleeve and stuffed it up his nose, now having to breathe from his mouth very deeply. Five minutes passed where Ethan stood atop the bed, huffing and breathing heavily while Michael stood on the floor, and was tall enough to look height-enhanced Ethan dead in the eye. “I deserve more than that...”

Ethan was more than happy to oblige as he forced his leg out and spun to get the most damage. He never connected the kick with Michael’s head as he’d planned, for the man ducked and caught Ethan when he toppled over. Ethan bared his teeth and pulled away, sitting back on the bed.

“I said I deserved more, not give it to me. Anyway… I was stupid. I was a man—not a man, a boy—who was currently into genetics—never studying it so much as watching Batman’s Poison Ivy and reading a few books—and so I tried to infuse your blood with the genetic traits of a plant. Specifically, from the cell of a leaf of poison ivy. She thought it was immature and sent me packing…”

Ethan stared at him. “God, you’re stupid…”

“Yeah… And look, you’ve got weather-controlling powers—I just wanted to make you resistant to ivy… and hope that you could bend plants to your will. I succeeded in more ways than one, don’t you think? Whuh—”

Ethan sprang off the bed to deliver another punch at the man, but the man had seemed to be able to anticipate every movement and had spun out of the way. Ethan tried to kick him again to trip him up, but the man jumped back to avoid its arc. The last blow was a charge, but somehow Ethan only made minimal connection. He was out of breath by now and Michael just shook his head.

“I know what you want to do. I hated my father the same way you hate me. In fact, I can recall pulling the same tricks you’re pulling now. We’re very alike, you and me.”

“I hate you,” Ethan said. “It’s because of you that I’m like this…”

“That you could fly and summon lightning bolts and make the atmosphere bend to your will? I would gladly take credit for that,” Michael said, looking strong despite the pathetic bit of bloody cloth dangling from his nose.

“But you can’t, Frost,” came Mr. Anderson’s voice. He strolled into the room as if he owned it. “I ran some tests on the boy’s blood and there is nothing accredited to you, save for his immunity to poison ivy—which could have killed him, mind you, the way you just injected into him.

“And I found a genetic match for the reason those odd bruises were on the boy’s face: Lee Jensen. They’re obviously bite marks. And it seems that Ethan here didn’t have the heart to wash his face after… Whatever they did. At any rate, I located the poison ivy immunity gene within him as well. That’s why Justin went to Lee’s house before Ethan’s. Michael, I’d hate to say this to you in front of your son, but you’re a loser. You lost your woman because of some space-age fantasy you tried to perfect. And your son.”

“But what about Justin?” Michael asked, still not looking defeated after all this. The man was freaking unbelievable. “He’s got the genetic marker as well!”

“Michael! It’s an immunity gene. All three of these boys were born and raised here in a town that’s known for its high level of poison ivy. Two of the three boys are naturally immune. You and your pipedreams, you tried to make a poison ivy-human and failed, merely succeeding in creating a broken home and a fatherless son. But… also in these three boys, lie certain genetic oddities. Perhaps we’ve been looking for the wrong markers. Perhaps the poison ivy resistance is a coincidental trait. We need more accurate numbers.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Ethan asked, causing both men to look down at him. “ARE YOU SERIOUS?!” he roared. His teacher and his estranged father were sitting here talking about… Ethan couldn’t even categorize it.

“Oh yeah, Ethe—” Michael started.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Okay… Ethan. Um… I called your mother and she’ll be here to pick you up within the hour. And I wont blame you if you don’t, but do you want to be part of a study that we’re doing—”

“NO.”

“Okay then. Do you think Lee—”

“NO.”

“Right then. Um… So, you can wait in here until your mother gets here and I’ll never send Justin after you—or Lee…”

Ethan closed his eyes and pulled the blanket over his head and sat there. The men said nothing, and Ethan heard their retreating footfalls.

Ethan’s mother came for him in about twenty minutes, but she refused to go inside the house, or even step foot out of the car. Justin came to inform him, and Ethan disregarded him, vowing silently to never ever trust him. Ethan marched throughout the house behind Justin until he was out. When Justin let him exit, Ethan slammed the door behind himself and glanced to make sure no one was watching. He ran to his mother’s car and opened the door, diving into her open arms and crying silently.

They stood that way for a few minutes.

“Close the door, Ethan,” she said, eyes focused on the road.

“Wait, Mom,” he said. He ran out and back toward Michael’s house. He ran along the side to the backyard to the destroyed dog house where the little husky-shepherd slept under the morning sun tied to a pole. Ethan rushed the dog and picked it up, quieting it down as he let it lick his hand. He undid the leash from its collar and then forced the pole up from the ground with a haul that was bound to hurt his back the next morning.

Running back along the side of the house, he pushed the puppy into the car and took the metal pole in his hand, admiring it like an extension of his arm.

Ethan closed his eyes and stood in the front lawn of the property. He breathed lightly and then let it fall into a heavy rhythmic song, barely aware of the dark clouds circling him overhead. He raised the pole in his hand and felt not its weight, but its power. It’s raw channeling power.

With a flood of memories, he tossed the pole high into the air and let everything out—the Berber nomad, his transformed disdain for his mother, his unwillingness to stand up to Lee, his fear of his own power—and felt the lightning within him call down the lightning from the sky. The two energies traveled up to meet each other and did so at the pole that was steadily rising.

“You’ll pay,” Ethan said under his breath while his fists clenched. The rod exploded into a million metal shards and the accumulated energy struck the satellite dish of Michael Gregorio Frost’s house at ninety-seven Graham Street. Ethan watched with pitiless eyes as the resulting flash rivaled the light of the golden morning sun.

Everybody would see. Everybody would know. He watched in temporary blindness as people began coming out of their homes, roaches crawling from the cracks to see what disturbed their daily routines. He stood in the lawn, hearing their voices and sounds of awe.

Michael, Mr. Anderson, and Justin stayed inside. Naturally.

Ethan staggered in his sightlessness toward the car, asking his mother to stop by Paine Street where he could buy some goggles. He would need them. As the car revved up, the puppy hopped from the back seat into Ethan’s lap and licked his hand, flinching slightly as the residue of electricity was still there. Ethan chuckled as his fur stood on end.

“And Mommy?” Ethan asked tentatively.

“Baby boy?” she responded, something she had not called him in a very long time.

“I’m sorry… It wont be like this forever… Things are going to change. You’ll always be my mommy,” he said, petting the puppy’s head and falling into dreams of the next time he would see Lee.

“I know,” she said, tears flowing freely down her eyes now. “Change is coming. You are becoming a man. You were always my little catalyst…”

TO BE CONTINUED in CATALYST GIFTS

I hope you liked it! This is the end of this short section. Review and love’ll make the new story come faster with many more surprises! :D Big thank yous to Quintessence X (times 10!), Kyuuketsuki-Yaoi Fan, DeadnightWarrior, DevilishMisfit for all the support and the will to take my entire Sunday and get this thing on a roll! Hope to see you in the next story!