Living With the Enemy

Prologue: Once Upon a Dream

My story begins on a night like any other. I was fast asleep. Dreaming, or more accurately, revisiting my past in a dream.

I was eleven years old. Sixth grade. I had just bumped into someone. A girl.

Her name...Taylor.

"Watch where you're going next time, Harridan, or you'll get far worse than a warning." she had said.

I had been on the ground before, but now I was up. I had grabbed her arm, in a threatening way, and said, "And next time, you should choose another person to pick on."

I didn't notice it, but I had started to make her arm burn. She screamed.

"Stop it! Stop hurting me, you freak! I don't know what you are, but you had better stop!" she yelled, which was followed by a string of words I can't repeat.

That just made me angrier, which naturally caused her arm to hurt more.

After a while, a teacher came and tried to restrain me.

That didn't work.

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That night, my mother came into my room.

"I heard about what happened today." she said.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I figured as much. I'll go get your father. This is a talk he ought to have with you, not me. He can help you-"

"No, he can't! He doesn't know what it's like!"

"Sure he does. He has powers, just like you."

"That's not what I was talking about. His powers can be used to help people. Mine can't. Mine are just destructive. I'm better off running away now and turning evil. At least I can be useful on the dark side. They even have cookies."

She laughed at that.

"Fire isn't all bad, Em. It's used for warmth and light. It can be used to cook food. And, with a power like that, people will never bother you again... Do you remember that cartoon you used to watch? The one about the aliens?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Remember that one who could control fire? All the things he could do with it? That power is in your hands now, Em. You just got to use it for good."

"I'll try that."

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A few years later, I had learned to control my powers, and had come to the conclusion that I would start burning up whenever I felt any extreme emotion. After my parents pulled me out of school (being told they had a pyromaniacal freak for a daughter), I learned to keep my emotions in check and also learned I could do other things with the power I had been given. But all the learning in the world was not enough to prepare me for what happened when I was 15…

Monday afternoon, first day of my sophomore year in high school. My friends and I had just finished up a battle with Toxemia.So far, it had been a good day. But then...he showed up.

"Empyrean." he had said.

"Blazon."

"Pyromaniac."

"Egotist."

"I hate you."

"I hate you more."

Then, I said, "I hope you know that someday, I will destroy you."

He had laughed at that. He had said, "And I hope you know that this isn't the cartoons, and you can use big-girl words like 'kill'. If you want to kill me, just come out and say it."

I thought for a second, then said, " No, I don't want to kill you. I'd have no purpose if I did that. I just want to make you suffer."

He had stared at me for the longest time after that.

"You remind me of someone I knew." he had said then.

"Who? Your grandmother?"

"No. My older sister."

"I wasn't aware you had a sister. Up until now, I thought you had been raised by ocelots."

"I have a sister, that's for sure. She's every bit as ugly as you, too."

"Okay, now I really will have to destroy you." I had said, my hands forming fireballs.

"Getting in touch with our dark side, are we? You know, we're always accepting new members."

"Save it, loser."

Then I hurled a fireball at him.

I woke up.

Why had I been dreaming those things? They were memories, sure, but the last one was completely unrelated.

Then I realized that they had something in common. The first and the third, at least. They both involved me hurting an enemy. Stooping to their level. The second one involved me worrying about exactly that- that my powers could only be used for harming others, rather than helping. And then I asked myself a question.

"Are you really as good of a person as you think you are?"