Ray's Crazy Kids

Saving Private Grandma

Have you ever tried to meditate? It's really hard. Concentrating on nothing but blankness, and then you realize you're thinking of white, but you shouldn't be thinking of white because white is a thing and then you derive off into the complete opposite of meditating.

Now try accomplishing that goal in front of a crowd of dozens, the questioning stare of your sibling, all the while standing in front of a building that was burning down. Oh, and as if that wasn't enough, you're expected to know how to do it.

It was a miracle Ray was able to even find his power source. Sometimes, it danced around, just out of reach. Other times it wasn't even there. Fortunately, with intense concentration, Ray had learned to stabilise it long enough to tap into it's energy. As soon as his eyes were closed, he saw it, in the corner of his eye, a small, blueish pinprick he snatched before it could run away. All of a sudden, he felt his entire body flood with liquid, lava... silly putty.

That's the only way to describe it; a liquid, viscous blue sheen that flowed through his veins and under his skin, burning yet icy at the same time and malleable into whatever Ray wanted it to be. And right now, he needed it to be fireproof. With that thought, the sheen spread over his body, covering every inch of his skin and making it as tough as steel, and just as fire-proof : a Shell to protect him. It was the only thing Ray knew how to do, from watching Mika so many times. His sister could do it in a heartbeat - it was to her like a constant, an ever-present shield against everything that might have wanted to hurt her.

Ray opened his eyes and saw the shield doing it's job : Mika was standing in the middle of the burning lobby, the cuff of her pants glowing with burning jeans and yet she took no notice, simply staring at him with eyes that screamed come on already.

Ray gave her a wicked smile and ran after her, the siblings bounding through the lobby towards the thankfully concrete stairwell. At least the stairs would be steady. Or Ray so hoped as they raced up endless flights (why Miss K lived on the fifteenth floor when she was partially handicapped was beyond him). Even if his skin had the quality of a metal alloy, Ray  was starting to hurt - his sin might not be burning, but his lungs were : contrary to his sister, he hadn't had the foresight to tie a wet cloth to his face to try and prevent inhaling enough smoke to make his lungs look like the ones of a twenty-year chain smoker. As they struggled up the stairs, Ray hoped more and more that there wouldn't be a s much smoke at the top of the building, where the flames weren't as infernal as in the lobby. No such luck.

Mika pried open the door to the Tower's top floor and was greeted by a wave of smoke cascading past her feet and spiraling around her body like a monster about to swallow her up. Ray choked and coughed as they pushed forward into the hazy hallway, a couple people still running out of their apartments to a nearby wall that had been knocked down so that they could escape by the means of being carried by any flying firemen.

Finally they came across the door number Karry had been screaming in their minds the entire way up. Mika pulled back her fist and crashed it into the wooden panel, sending it flying back into the apartment where it crashed against a wall, dislodging a picture frame and sending a porcelain cat to smash on the floor.

The Dunst twins ran into the tiny apartment, smoke starting to billow in through the opening where a door had once been. Mika and Ray found Miss K sitting in her rocker by the fireplace, her withered old hands clutching a picture, her walker folded next to her.

"Miss K! You alright!?" Ray bellowed as they helped the old woman up. She touched a long finger to his forehead and suddenly he could hear her as clear as if they were talking in a library.

"I'm fine, now get me out of here!" was all he heard before a resounding crash shook the building, throwing Miss K to the ground as Ray and Mika clutched the Lazy Boy for dear life.

"That'll be that idiot Allison boy's firework collection! I'll be darned if that delinquent's bombs haven't blown out an entire wall!" Miss K's voice resounded. Then, a moment later, Karry's frantic voice rang in their heads like nails on a chalkboard, his telepathy so rough Ray felt as though someone had punched him in the brain.

"There's been an explosion! The main supporting wall is completely gone!"

Ray winced, heaving himself up as the ground below him started to shiver. Mika and he hurried to help Miss K up, Ray grabbing her walker as Mika picked the old woman up in her arms and raced out the door the best she could. The entire building was groaning, walls cracking, sparking lamps dangling loosely from the ceiling as the last few people jumped into the arms of flying firemen who were weighed down by a charge too big for them. Someone screamed for them to come down, saying the entire building was going to collapse.

"I always said this place was built like a house of cards-"

"Not now grandma!"

Ray, walker in hand, and Mika, Miss K in her arms, screeched to a stop before the hole that had been blown through the concrete wall of the fifteenth floor. The Dunst twins peered down the side of the building, Miss K's spindly arms tightening where they were strung around Mika's neck.

"That's a hell of a fall..." Ray gulped.

"Think you can make it?" came Mika's voice, muffled behind her bandana. Ray looked at his sister : her ash-greyed hair, soot-covered face, sweat glistening forehead. The effortlessly strong arms that carried Miss K and the legs that wouldn't be harmed upon the impact of jumping down a fifteen-storey height.

Ray glanced down the building again, peering down at the dizzying drop that led to a bustling crowd. Fire and screams rose through the air to him as a spotlight was pointed directly at them. Now someone below had gotten a speaker and was shouting at them - probably instructions - but the building lurched dangerously and the Dunsts couldn't e bothered to listen anymore.

"Ray. You need to be able to make this. I can't carry you both," Mika screamed over the crashing sound of an entire storey of windows smashing into pieces below them.

Ray closed his eyes, feeling the blue sheen enveloping him. Would it be enough to secure a fifteen storey fall? He could barely get it to start, but maybe, maybe it would prevent him from dying. Unsure about everything, Ray still smiled at his sister, nodding his head before shaking the walker in the air.

"You go, we probably shouldn't jump at the same time. Collisions," he yelled over the roar of the fire below them. Mika brow furrowed into a worried knot but the allied forces of Miss K tugging her ponytail meaningfully, Karry giving a particularly sharp jab of psychic energy and Ray screaming for her to go made her jump into the empty air.

Ray's stomach lurched as much as his sister's did as he watched her fall down the crumbling building, suspended in the air as if in slow-motion, her blond hair whipping behind her, glowing golden with the light of the flames. There was a loud crash when she hit the ground, and a small cloud of dust hid her from sight until she ran out of it, Miss K a tiny dot attached to her as they scurried back towards the crowd.

Ray took a deep breath, readying himself for the horrible fall and the bone-crunching impact. As he took a deep breath, there seemed to be a moment of tranquility in the chaos. A split-second, where the roaring fire took a breath and the building stuttered in it's groaning, where Ray's ears miraculously picked up the sound of something horrible.

"Mommy!"