Aidan:
"Are you ready?" I asked Kane, who was sitting across from me on the other side of the closed door. A loud hissing could be heard outside. I just nodded. In one hand I had my pistol that I had just reloaded, a Desert Eagle to be exact.
In the other, I held my dagger tightly.
Kane kicked open the door, let fire appear all over his arm, and set fire on fire all over the corridor of our school. A relentless heat permeated the air, as if the flames were swallowing the room and the temperature shot up in a heartbeat.
But I couldn't let that distract me. He had done this so that we would have some cover while we pounced on Ghost. But he spotted us a few heartbeats too early and laughed. "Did you really think it would work?"
He floated high into the air, gathering energy in the blade of his scythe, and red lightning began to dance around it.
"Fuck!" I shouted before he shot a powerful bolt of lightning at us. With the presence of mind, I was able to create a portal with a black vortex and pull Kane in with me.
When we jumped out, we were right behind Ghost. I raised my right hand with the gun and tried to shoot him in the back, but he had smaller creatures that looked like him – huge hood, white robe, instead of a face and body, only black mist and glowing red eyes.
"I'll take care of her!" Kane assured me, raised his hand, concentrated and the ground under the critters that attacked us was on fire.
I pocketed my knife, formed a finger sign with my left hand, and activated my shadow powers. My body was now surrounded by the same black fog as Ghost.
Silently, I ran up the wall, along it and finally jumped into the void, directly towards the mad scientist slash wizard. Would that work? Meanwhile, I put my powers into the weapon so that the next shot would be more effective.
I was just about to pull the trigger when I saw a portal in the corner of my eye that was just appearing and before I knew it, I felt a strong kick in my side and shortly afterwards the ground under my face.
I turned around and jumped up immediately. I looked around and raised the gun, and in front of me stood a boy my age. He just shouted: "Alexis! How many times have I told you that you can't play 'supervillain' when you're attacking real people?!"
"Stop calling me that! My name is Ghost!"
"That's not the point right now, come back here immediately and take your actual form! Your parents will kill me when they find out about the mess you've made! Although I don't even know who your parents are..." With a wry smile, he turned to me and Kane, who was still writhing on the floor.
"Sorry, guys. Hopefully you're covered, but anyway, who needs school, right? Anyway, I was looking for you! Man fucking shit Ghost! The caretaker is not being hunted now! No, wait, forget you heard the expression! Okay, I've had enough!"
He created a small portal with a purple vortex, and right in front of Ghost, who was just running away – and was suddenly much smaller! – and reached into it with one arm. Ghost disappeared through the portal and the boy had now grabbed him by the white robe – which was now much too big for him.
"So. Where were we?" he asked, while the little magician tried to tear himself away from him.
"You're coming to me... Kane, who had appeared next to me, said and narrowed his eyes. "Don't surprise me, but I know you, Aidan and Kane. I'm Ethan. We heard a grunt from Ethan's direction.
He frowned, pulled out a revolver hidden under his jacket, turned around and shot the tiny creature created by Ghost that wanted to shoot a bolt of lightning at him.
Damn, the guy was fast!
"Hey!" shouted Ghost, still fidgeting. "These things also have feelings!" Ethan just rolled his eyes.
"The things that are just identical clones of you, or what? Let the big boys talk. But I think we should slowly move away for that, we have drawn quite a lot of attention to ourselves."
His left eye suddenly turned dark blue and a flood of water appeared out of nowhere and extinguished the fire in the hallway.
Around us, Kane and I's classmates and teachers began to gather.
We exchanged a slightly perplexed look. "Aidan, Kane, are you responsible for this?!" our principal roared. "That's going to have consequences—" "Shut your goddamn mouth!" Ethan interrupted him and shot him in the head.
A mass panic broke out. He created a portal, turned to us, and said, "I'm not forcing you to come with me, but if you want to stay here and explain all this to your parents, please."
We didn't need to be told twice. We jumped through.
I found myself on... Wait, where was I? I looked down. I was standing on clouds?! "Oh shit!" Kane exclaimed, holding on to Ethan's arm. "Does anyone have parachutes with them?!"
"Chill out, we can't fall down. We are not in the air, but in another dimension. The Cloud Dimension. There is one of my places to stay.
The sky above us was dark red, because it was dusk.
"What did the principal do to you that you shot him?" Kane wanted to know. Ethan shrugged. "He annoyed me." "And then you just killed him?" He raised an eyebrow.
"If you want, I can bring him back from death, but I know what comes after death, and I bet he wants to stay there."
Kane and I looked at each other. I shrugged my shoulders. Ethan was apparently quite powerful. But he dressed quite simply. Normal sneakers, black sweatpants, black T-shirt and orange fabric jacket over it.
But I couldn't yet make out whether he was good or evil. I also had the feeling that I knew him from somewhere. "Why were you looking for us?" Kane asked as Ethan led us somewhere.
After a few meters, a huge couch with a refrigerator next to it could be seen. In the middle of the clouds! Weird.
He opened the fridge as he answered. "My life is really shitty. So I tried to kill myself. Unfortunately, that didn't work out, and I was sent to some mental hospital. Believe me, you do not want to go there. And before I suffer there, I'd rather travel through dimensions and universes and just get myself be killed at some point before I kill myself. It's hard to explain. Do you want something to drink?"
"Oh, I want a Coke!" Ghost exclaimed from his shoulder. "Haha, forget it, the last time you drank a can, you ran away from me and blew up an orphanage. Never again!"
"Oh man!" Ghost jumped from his shoulder onto the couch. I looked at him. It consisted only of black mist – no definable body, the cloak only limited it a bit – and the bright red "eyes". He was also small. He was about the size of a cat.
I estimated him to be about eight to nine years old... if beings like him aged that way at all. In any case, he was a child.
"No thanks," Kane said.
"Okay... and what is your goal now?" I asked. I had the feeling that he was hiding some things from us.
"Revenge. Action. Maybe even money. But above all, revenge." He threw himself on the sofa and took a sip of iced tea. Kane laughed. "So you're not a hero."
He grinned. "I don't want to be either. Well, but the fact that I penetrated the Woodwalkers universe and prevented Bo's death was pretty noble of me."
"What is the Woodwalkers universe?"
"Woodwalkers. It's a book," I replied for Ethan. "You don't know that."
"What about Ghost?" I asked. "Are you babysitting him or something?"
"Long story. On the way to you I found it in a garbage container. At first I wanted to kill him because he was an evil, powerful magician..."
"Oh, thank you!" came from Ghost. „… but then I noticed that he was friendly to me and wanted to go on, but he clung to my leg.
I said he should go to his parents, but apparently his parents are complete idiots and abandoned him. So I thought to myself 'why not', took him with me and gave him something real to eat. I'm not a do-gooder, but I'm not heartless either.
I also found out that Alexis..." "Ghost!" „… is quite strong. He can grow, as you've noticed, and his games can be a bit... well... going too far. I have no idea how old he is, he doesn't know exactly, but older than eight... He can't be human years."
"You call attempted genocide of students a bit too far?" I had to laugh. I liked the guy!
"Okay... what are your abilities?" He shrugged his shoulders. "That's also difficult to explain, different. But I'm definitely not useless! What are yours? I already know it, but what the heck, better than uncomfortable silence."
"I have shadow abilities." "And I can control fire and light." "So pretty much the opposite of each other." Ethan raised an eyebrow. "But your friendship works pretty well!"
"I know, so where do you want to start your adventures?" Kane asked.
"First: Never call it that again, it sounds embarrassing. Who am I, Kung Fu Panda or what? And secondly, a new zoo has been opened in another universe, which is apparently supposed to reach a new level of animal cruelty. That's what I'd take care of first."
"Sounds boring, but okay. When do we start?", it came from me.
"I would say now, but..." His voice grew quieter as he said this, and he pointed to Ghost. He had fallen asleep on his lap.
When he wasn't trying to kill people, he was pretty cute, even I had to admit.
… that can wait," Ethan said and the hint of a smile formed on his face.
"You can tell me in the meantime how you managed to hold out against Alexis for so long."
A soft ringing sounded. "Hm," he said and took out his cell phone. "Someone sent me a video." He beckoned us to his side of the couch, and we sat next to him. Then he played it. Two faces appeared. That of a boy with brown hair and that of a girl with green eyes and medium-length, black hair.
"Maya? Why is she hanging out with this cardboard nose?" The boy grinned and spoke into the camera. "Hey Ethan, since you're gone now, I'll take care of Maya for you!" The two began to kiss. "Is that your girlfriend?" Aidan asked. "No, worse. My crush," he answered curtly, his fingers clawing at the fabric of the couch.
"Wherever you are, you don't need to come back!" Then the video ended.
"That motherfu—"
"Shh!" Aidan said, pointing at Ghost, who was still snoring. "That's right, sorry," Ethan sighed.
"Change of plan?" I asked.
He laughed. "Of course not, even if it is tempting, preventing animal cruelty is more important than revenge. After that, we can teach him a lesson, this fucking ret--
>TO BE CONTINUED
Author's Note:
So, yeah, what's up! This is my story, and I hope that y'all will like it. For all german people here, this story is actually written in german, I just tried to translate it as accurate as possible, here is the link: https://www.fanfiktion.de/s/6601bae2000e3ddc31c55ff3/1/Alternative-Reality
Anyways, bye^^
SilentFate