Battlefield (2 page)

JD blinked a few times. He'd never be able to remember it, let alone pronounce it accurately. “Can we just shorten that to Alan?”

The stranger nodded. “I do not mind if it is easier for you.”

“Are you really an alien?” Cadence asked.

“No, he just looks like a freak for the heck of it and fell from the sky in a mass of flames like it was nothing because he's extra special,” JD said and couldn't help but notice how close she was standing to him. His arm moved around her, taking this as one of the rare moments she actually wanted to be touched and protected.

Alan continued to smile at the three teens as though he hadn't heard JD's commentary. “Yes, I'm from a planet that's five galaxies away actually.”

“You speak excellent English for being such a distant traveler,” Orlando said, his voice dripped with sarcasm. JD had never had a class with him before, but if Orlando was this cynical about everything, it answered a lot of questions as to why the guy didn't have any friends.

Alan gave Orlando a bow. “We have been studying your planet for a long time.”

“Are you here to take our planet over and kill us or enslave us?” Cadence asked with a nervous sounding laugh. Her body trembled against JD, and her fingers held his shirt in a tight ball. He'd never seen her like this before.

“No, my people do not have much interest in obtaining your planet or its resources,” he explained with the same soothing tone he'd been speaking in. If he hadn't been so calm, JD was almost positive one of them would have had a meltdown. Did Alan have some kind of ability to relax them? He couldn't help but wonder because there was nothing calm about an alien crashing through the local mall roof, on fire, and then claiming to come in peace.

“So why are you here?” Orlando folded his arms in front of him. His blue eyes never once left the man, almost as though he were trying to intimidate their visitor, but JD doubted it would work.

Alan reached into a pants pocket and pulled out a small shining orb. It glowed and radiated with a similar red light to what Alan had projected earlier—if not more potent. It was beautiful, so much so in fact that JD couldn't help but reach out his hand to touch it.

“Wow,” he said breathlessly. Now it was Cadence's turn to be the voice of reason. She smacked his hand, and he instantly coiled it back against him. “Ow, not cool. What'd you do that for?”

“Cause you shouldn't touch it,” she said. She glanced over at Alan and bit her lower lip worried as to how he would react. “What if it kills you?”

“Or gives me sweet super powers.” It made sense to him, and having super powers was not something he would miss out on just because she had no spine. JD batted at her hands a little and moved in to touch the shining object again.

“It could be radioactive or whatever it's called,” she added.

“Hello, that's how you get super powers.”

“And cancer,” Orlando replied casually. “By all means, touch it so we can see what happens.”

JD looked from the shining orb to Alan and sighed. “What is it? What's it do?”

“It doesn't give special abilities or cancer,” Alan said and motioned for all of them to move closer to get a better look. “I suppose you could compare this to a more sophisticated version of your portable DVD player. Only it's more powerful and more compact. This movie, I guess you could call it that, will explain things a lot better than I can.

“The information may not make sense right away. In fact, you might not realize you've even seen anything until some time later, or I should say, you might not realize how much you've seen. We're not quite sure what it does to human brains from your planet, but they assured me that since you are chosen, you'll be fine.”

Orlando and Cadence took hesitant steps forward to peer down at the ball of light. That hadn't sounded reassuring or convincing to JD. However, he stared inside the orb out of pure curiosity alone. He wondered if they felt the same way.

The more focused his eyes became, the more he could see beyond the mass of red and burning brightness. In this orb, JD saw puppy- and kitty-like animals playing with small children.

“Altura,”
a voice narrated in his mind as different images continued to flash before his eyes. Instead of cute animals and children, he saw large glass cities that sparkled in the sunshine like precious gems
. “A planet similar to Earth, and only slightly larger in size, is home to 9,000,265,563 individuals. Alturans are similar to Earth humans in body shape and mass. The differences in genetics are slight.

“The planet's nations are divided into tribes. Each one sports its own animal and color, much like the nations of Earth. Also much like the countries of Earth, the tribes of Altura ally and war with one another. Two nations of Blue and Green have declared war on the peaceful Yellow and Purple. This war has expanded off of Altura and out into the depths of the universe. The next location for their battle is Earth. Other countries, including the nation of Red, have put it upon themselves to stop this expansion.”

The voice stopped, and the light dimmed until the ball was nothing more than a dead, black shell.

“That was...” Cadence started.

“Informative?” Orlando supplied for her.

“Amazing,” JD stated and nodded at her. This was almost like a dream come true for him. He'd been waiting for so long for something interesting to happen.

She shook her head at them both. “Disturbing.”

Orlando scratched his chin. “You've definitely got my interest piqued, Alan. But I gotta ask, why us? Why involve us in this?”

JD wanted to ask if any of it was real. For all he knew, they could have been randomly chosen for some kind of obscure and demented reality television show.

Alan let out a hearty laugh. “Two good questions. You're smart and observant. There is something about your youth that makes you much better candidates for help than any military-trained adult. You're smart enough to know when to ask and have enough faith to know how to trust.”

“Okay,” JD said with a shrug and glanced at Cadence. “I can buy that. But how are we supposed to help you? It's not like we can do anything super cool. We're just kids.”

“You can do a lot more than you think. You were chosen because each of you has something locked inside, ready to be exposed. I'm here to release this inner power, that is, if you'll let me. It's something all humans have. That's why the tribes chose Earth as their next battlefield.” He gave them a sweet and innocent smile. If he was trying to charm them, it was working. At least it did on JD. His charm was hard to resist.

“Confused...” he said.

Alan faced JD for a moment. “There's a lot your science is just now beginning to unravel. Like I said, we've been studying your planet for a long time. You can be among the first to have what your species won't discover for another fifty to one hundred years.”

“And that's what exactly?” Orlando asked skeptically. He kept his arms folded in front of him and tapped his fingers on his arm.

The alien pointed at JD. “Super powers.”

“I knew it!” JD shouted and began to dance around in a circle. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”

“Shut up. Do you want everyone to look over here and see him? I don't think we want to deal with that kind of a freak out,” Orlando snapped at him.

Alan laughed as he watched them. “Don't worry. They can't see me. Only those chosen by the Red can. To anyone who's passing by, it looks like you three are having a rather interesting and animated, if not strange, conversation. My entrance will simply be described as this building falling apart. You were chosen by us for many different reasons. Your youthfulness, your knowledge, and your willingness to take risks are a few of them. After all, you did come to see if I needed help instead of running away.”

JD had to soak all of this information in. He had a lot to understand, and Alan wasn't even done explaining things. Super powers? He would have never thought any of this was even possible. Hoped and dreamed about, sure, but it didn't feel real. This was all supposed to be fantasy.

“I understand if this makes you afraid. We aren't going to overwhelm you. Right now, the most we want is for you to learn about the powers you were born with and have had locked away your whole lives. After that, we can talk about the bigger picture. If you're not interested, then you walk away with something extra that sets you further apart from the rest of the world. If you are interested, then you get to help a cause that's quite possibly the most important thing you will do with your lives.”

“That doesn't sound like a bad deal. So I mean, we don't even have to do this if we don't want to?” JD said.

“Exactly.”

“All right, show us how we can use these 'powers' then,” Orlando said.

“Glad you asked,” Alan nodded at the three of them. “When you looked into the Wimosiphyer, that was what unlocked your powers. It not only imprinted the information you need to know into your brain, but it also released a chemical that opens up the ability to use the powers you have. What they are, I don't know, but I'm just as eager to find them out.”

“So then we will...just experience them?” Cadence asked. Alan nodded at her with a huge grin, breaking out of his mature and elderly-like persona.

“What if I hurt someone or myself?”

“I will be watching you.”

A blush spread over Cadence's face, and JD couldn't help but admire it on her chocolate-colored skin. And then he clenched his fists in anger. Why was she blushing? Then her hand let go of his shirt.

“Okay. Good to know. And then?”

“I'll contact you again when you're all ready.”

Orlando sighed and shook his head. “I don't know. I guess we don't have much choice since you already did it without our permission. I'm done here. I'll catch you later if something happens.” He gave them all a salute and left.

JD snorted. “What crawled up his shorts and died? This is awesome!”

 

Super powers. Orlando wasn't sure how he felt about having them now, let alone since birth. The whole situation was too surreal for him. Aliens crashing to Earth and wanting his help for some kind of grand mission? That kind of thing wasn't something he'd ever wanted, nor was it something he ever thought possible.

Sure, he'd wondered about life from other planets, but he didn't expect to ever make contact with it. Nor did he imagine this other life to be so similar to him. Alan had looked just like them to the point where he wouldn't have believed the man came from another planet if he hadn't witnessed his descent onto Earth. As much as he wanted to remain skeptical about the whole situation, he couldn't. In his gut, it felt too right.

Growing up, Orlando was constantly told about how different he was from everyone else. His parents had said he always would be and to just accept it because it was part of life. Had they known all along what was inside of him? What was inside of all of them? He made sure to add it to the long list of all of the things to quiz them on whenever they decided to grace their home again, which could very well be never.

He drove back to his mansion. Everyone called it The Library because of how massive and old it looked. His father had designed it himself, and it was built the year Orlando was born. He'd never known any other home. He didn't want to be ungrateful, but he wished they hadn't made such a spectacle out of their wealth. It made things awkward with his peers.

“Orly?” He heard Lyssa, his older sister and stand-in guardian, call from the den the second he stepped into the house.

“Yeah?” He was ready. The whole drive home he had been planning his conversation with her carefully. She stepped into the room and blocked the doorway so he couldn't escape.

“Don't 'yeah' me,” she started, and so did the lecture. “I got a call from your school while I was at work telling me you sent a kid to the hospital.”

“It wasn't that bad. It was just a concussion. He gets them all the time on the football field, and you don't see anyone throwing a spazz about that,” he rolled his eyes.

“That's a little different.”

“But only a little different.”

“They want to expel you.”

“So I transfer. Big deal. It's not the end of the world. There are a lot of great schools in the area that will gladly take me because they want the big fat alumni check.” He shrugged.

“Sounds like you've been plotting this for a while,” she folded her arms in front of her. “What if I say you aren't allowed to transfer and work out a deal with them?”

Orlando sighed as he removed his shoes and hung up his black leather jacket. “I didn't do it on purpose. They just...they got to me. Do you know what they said about mom? About you? I wasn't going to sit back and let them get away with it.”

She took a step towards him and moved a few strands of his dyed black hair away from his eyes. “You're better than this, and you know you're—”

“Different, yes, I remember.” You have no idea, he wanted to say, but he wasn't about to tell her about his encounter with the alien from the sky. “I can take care of myself, Lyssa. You don't need to worry about me. I know what I'm doing, and I'm improvising with my mistakes. Trust me, I've learned my lesson, but I'm not dwelling on it. I'm taking it as a nice blessing in disguise.”

“I don't want to trust you, but I do. I'm going to have to punish you though. It wouldn't be right for me not to, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do that just yet, outside of taking away the car and grounding you for the weekend—or a month.”

He didn't go out anyway. “I'm guessing grounding means no TV, or video games?”

“And lots of manual labor. I'm giving the lawn boys a break for the weekend.”

The last thing Orlando resembled was a green thumb. By Sunday the lawn would be dead, as would every flower in their garden.

“Lyssa,” he started and gave her the weakest, most pathetic looking face he could muster up. “Are you sure you want to do that? You know I can't exactly mow the lawn. Do you remember what happened last time? I'll do the dishes by hand. I'll wash the floor with a toothbrush, but don't make me do the lawn.”

She smirked at him. “The last thing you want to do is give me more ideas to add on to your sentence. I think I'll leave it at the lawn. And to prevent you from going completely insane, you can have people come over here, but you still can't go out,” she paused. “That is, if you have any friends to invite over.”

“Ouch. That was a little below the belt,” he mumbled.

“Well, maybe if you had some friends, people wouldn't pick on you so much at school,” Lyssa said.

“Introduce me to someone who's not annoying or stupid, and I'll be friends with them,” he replied. She gave him a glare, and he shrugged while waving a dismissive hand. “Why waste my time with people who are only going to frustrate me?”

“Because having a social life is a good thing.”

“I never disagreed with you there. I'm just picky. Jesse and all of his jock friends who made up my old crew are nothing but a bunch of idiots. The rest of the school worships the ground he walks on. It's not my idea of a good time.”

“I have dinner ready if you're hungry,” Lyssa said, and then she left him for the kitchen.

“Let me guess,” he said taking in a whiff as he followed her through the hallways. “You made hamburger lasagna tonight.”

“Your nose is correct.”

“Made with love, right?”

“By yours truly.”

“Seeing as how we don't have a personal chef or butler, I would certainly hope so. Unless there's something I don't know about?” he said.

She briefly glanced back at him from over her shoulder, rolled her eyes, and then continued onward. “You know Lania won't do anything beyond cleaning the bathrooms and washing your clothes. Which I still think is bogus by the way. You're a big boy now, Orly. You should be able to do that on your own.”

“I'd rather not dye the whites lavender again.” He scrunched up his nose as he recalled his one attempt at doing the laundry. After that, he wouldn't so much as touch either machine.

“Like you have anything white to wash anymore.”

“Boxers, undershirts, socks? Those are all white,” he pointed out. She didn't say anything as she entered the kitchen to dish up their plates.

He dragged his backpack to the kitchen table with him and set it on the floor next to 'his' spot. He had a lot of homework to do this weekend. Though, was there a point in doing it anymore? He might never be setting foot in Morningtide High again.

As much as his sister tried to guilt him into feeling ashamed over what he had done, all he could do was beam with pride. Those jerks had deserved every second of what they got. How was he supposed to make her understand that he had to defend her honor? This wasn't the first time Jesse and his crew had teased him. Orlando made sure it was the last.

“I got an email from Mom and Dad,” Lyssa said casually. She said it like this kind of thing happened all the time. Truth was, their parents hardly ever contacted their own children. They had far more important things to do apparently.

“Okay, that's nice,” he said and took his plate from her. He waited for her to join him before starting to eat.

“You don't even want to know what it said?”

“No, the same old stuff as usual right?”

“Actually, no. They're coming home for a little while. Sometime—”

“Soonish, right. Which will mean they'll have something else come up before they even get this far and send us some other new thing or toy to make up for it or whatever.” He nodded again and took a large bite from his heaping serving of the cheese and beef lasagna she had made.

“I think they mean it this time. It sounded urgent. I mean, with how much you can tell from an email,” she said quietly.

“I'll be more surprised if they follow through on what they claim,” he said. Orlando stabbed at his plate. He did not enjoy the mind games his parents played on them, nor the great amounts of secrecy and run around to keep the two of them in the dark. “Anyway...”

He had a great topic in mind, but it became lost when he saw the saltshaker slide across the table and into his right hand without anything touching it. “I'll mow the lawn tomorrow.” He continued to fill the awkward silence, but that wasn't what he originally wanted to say.

How did that happen? He hadn't even been thinking about grabbing the salt. Wanted it, sure, but this had been a completely subconscious thing. He also wanted a glass of water.

Slowly raising his blue eyes, he took a nervous glance at the refrigerator's filtered water dispenser. Sure enough, there was a glass floating its way across the kitchen to be filled. He stared with wide eyes. Lyssa, thankfully, sat with her back to the kitchen. Her eyes were focused on her plate as she ate, and she was oblivious to it all. That is, until she looked up at him and noticed the shock on his face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. His concentration broke, and the glass shattered on the kitchen floor with a loud crash. Lyssa jumped in the chair. “What was that?”

“The cat,” Orlando said with a swallow. “One of the cats batted it off of the counter. Probably just wanted some attention and then ran off. I'll clean it up.” He'd be sure to make it up to their two large, long-haired tiger cats later with extra treats and affection.

He had his dinner wolfed down soon after, and then went to get the dustpan and broom. It didn't take him long before he had the mess cleaned up and the floor spotless. “All clean. I'm going to my room to think about what a naughty boy I've been today.”

“Right you are,” Lyssa said with a roll of her eyes.

“Okay, you caught me. I'm going to read.” He waved, then ran up the stairs to his room grabbing one of the cats on his way and shutting himself in. After a bit of debate, he decided to lock his door. They never locked the doors within the house. Neither he nor his sister believed in it. More often than not, she was good about knocking before entering, but there was the off-chance she wouldn't.

“All right Timmy,” he said to the tiger cat in his arms. “Where did I put my yearbook from last year?”

He had to look up Cadence or JD's number and tell them what happened. Hopefully their alien encounter at the Plaza hadn't been some kind of hallucination. The problem he had was remembering their last names. Once he found what he was looking for, Orlando nervously dialed Cadence's home phone.
She's going to think I'm crazy.

Knowing the kind of luck he had, he probably imagined the whole encounter, and had been hit harder than he originally thought by Jesse's gang of thugs. Forcing Timmy to stay and cuddle with him, he hugged the large cat tightly and waited for her to pick up.

“Hello?” Cadence said.

“Cadence? It's Orlando. You know, from school? I don't think we have many classes together, but...”

“I know who you are. What can I do for you?”

“You remember what happened earlier today after school?” That was a good way to ask. He didn't have to flat out say: 'Do you remember earlier today at the Plaza when the alien crashed through the roof and said that something interesting would be happening later?' He waited, every second adding more and more internal angst.

“Yes.”

“At the Plaza.”

“Yes, I was there. What about it?”

“Well,” he said and shifted awkwardly on his bed where he sat. “The strangest thing happened...”

How he was going to elaborate on this, he wasn't sure. He was completely paranoid that their phones were tapped, or their rooms bugged, and some secret government agency was waiting for them to verbally confirm that they were freaks before they came to take them all away.

“I might just be crazy and all, but I think I did something not normal,” he finally said after an uncomfortable silence.

“You show me yours, and I'll show you mine.” He could imagine the smile on her face while she said this. “Hang on, I'll get JD on three-way.”

Orlando sighed with relief. He wasn't crazy after all.

“Yo. 'Sup?” JD's voice came in.

“I guess something interesting has happened. To both me and Orlando, so I was wondering if you had a strange encounter as well with the unknown,” Cadence said.

JD was quiet for a long time. “No, nothing interesting has happened to me yet.”

“Oh.” The disappointment in her voice was obvious.

Orlando felt the same way.

“It's okay,” Cadence quickly added. “Maybe it'll happen later today or tomorrow or something. You always were kind of a late bloomer. I think we need to meet up and talk about all of this.”

“That's probably a good idea. Where at, though? Can't do it here. There's no privacy,” JD said.

“I'd rather not have people over at my place. Maybe at a park or—” she said.

“I'm grounded,” Orlando stated, finally chiming in and joining the conversation. “But you can come over here. I just can't go out. We shouldn't have any privacy issues. Let me know when works best for you so I can plan my schedule around it.” The mansion felt more dead than a morgue.

“I've got all weekend,” Cadence said.

“Me too. So how about we plan for tomorrow afternoon? I know some people, aka Cadence, have a hard time getting up before eleven in the morning. Question Orlando. How can you be grounded if you're having people over? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of being grounded?” JD said.

Orlando rolled his eyes, tempted to just hang up the phone, but he couldn't help but stay on the line and make an attempt to be friends with them—no matter how irritating he thought they both were, or rather, no matter how irritating JD was. Cadence hadn't bothered him too much—yet. “My family believes it would be good for me to maintain some social interaction while I'm under house arrest. It'll be a nice break from chores.”

“You mean you're actually having to do manual labor?” JD quipped.