The Red Bird

Chapter 2-The Red Bird Flies Again

Gladys has us sit down on the couch in the living room. She then stands in front of the TV, which is currently on the news. They're all talking about the Thinning and how the 'volunteers' were very kind to contribute to society.

Gladys clears her throat (which really just sounds like a bunch of gears clacking together) and takes a deep breath.

"A long time ago-"

"Seriously?" Heather says, rolling her eyes. "I want to hear the real story. Not some fairy tale!"

"It's not a fairy tale!" Gladys snaps, glaring at Heather. "It's a true story! I don't know the approximate date this all took place, so I went with a general time!"

"Pfft. Fine," Heather says as she leans back and crosses her arms. "Proceed."

"Gladly." She clears her throat again and begins. "A long time ago, there was a group of three people. They were a bit like you two: not always happy with the way the Queen ruled..."

"Wait... Are you telling me that our Queen is, like, really old?" Heather asks, leaning forward for emphasis.

"Well, I'm sure it was a different Queen..."

"Oh..." Heather shrinks back in embarrassment.

"Anyway, the three people were just like your average civilian. At least, they were in public. At home, they lived very different lives. One of them was an inventor that had a secret laboratory that you entered into from the stairs, another one was an amazing artist that had a studio in the sunroom, and the last one had a special talent that most wouldn't expect her to have."

Heather and I leaned forward, interested in what Gladys was about to say.

"She was very in-tune with nature."

"Well that's boring..." Heather said, leaning back again.

"I wouldn't rule it out just yet..." Gladys said, wiggling her finger in Heather's face. "Her's was only possible because she was a descendant of one of the last magic users in this part of the world."

"Gladys, are you kidding me?" Heather says, standing up and walking into the kitchen. "You can't expect me to believe in magic! I swear you're just telling us a story meant for kids!"

Gladys beeps in dissatisfaction and crosses her arms.

"Fine! Don't learn about your heritage!"

"It's not my heritage if it isn't true!"

Gladys shakes her head and returns her attention to me.

"You believe it, right?" she asks.

"Of course!" Not really. But I'm not going to tell her that.

"Good..." she mutters, shaking her head and glaring at Heather.

I'm just glad that we didn't upgrade her to have the lie detector...

"Now, shall we continue?" she asks me.

"Sure."

"Okay. The magic users are a story for another day, but I'll talk about them a little bit so you can understand this better."

I nod, telling her to go on.

"Once, there were many magic users. There were many different kinds, but the rarest of them all was the nature magic users. They could bend nature to their will. And because they could do this, this made them the most dangerous. They never once did anything that would harm another though. However, when their new Queen came to power, she thought that all magic users were dangerous, and so she ruled them out in the first Thinning. She chose the ones that she thought would be the most dangerous and killed them. Or so everyone thought. What she actually did was create robots of them and then take the actual people to testing. You see, she was one of the few people who couldn't use magic, so she wanted to take their powers and give them to herself. All of her successors couldn't use magic either, so it's still going on today."

"Wait, why? No one else has them today! Why would she get rid of them?"

"Well, my theory is that she doesn't want someone more powerful than her. She takes people that she assumes to be magic users and then tests on them to see why they can use them."

"Wait..." Heather says, slowly walking back into the living room. "If your story is true, which I'm not saying it is, but if it is, you're telling me that the Queen thinks I have magical powers?!"

"Well, yes. That's exactly what's going on."

Heather then starts laughing. "Okay, Gladys. Whateeeeever you saaaay..."

Gladys beeps and glares at her.

"Just think about it, Heather!" I say excitedly. "You could be like that one person that was an artist! You love making paintings and creating new outfits!"

"How is that special? I feel like that artist person got kinda ripped off... The inventor dude could probably create all of this cool stuff, and that nature person could probably build skyscrapers out of sunflowers, but the artist person? What could they do? Throw glitter bombs at people?"

"Actually, that was one of their favorite weapons..." Gladys adds quietly.

"Weapons? Oh, now they're all superheroes?!" Heather says bewildered. She also starts throwing her arms around like she does when she's flustered.

"Well, kinda!" Gladys says. "They all worked together to make some amazing things!"

"Like what?" Heather asked, trying not to look interested.

"Well, first of all, their outfits were always super awesome thanks to the artist! And when it came to their 'superhero' suits, the inventor decked them out with some gadgets that helped them out a lot in their crime-fighting!"

"That's all fine and dandy, but can we skip to the feather part?"

"Oh, right. The whole reason I even started telling the story..." Gladys said, turning her attention back towards me. "The nature one had this special red feather, which is what you have right now! She did the exact same thing that you do, and then she grew wings! I believe that she could turn into a bird fully and also just have certain other parts of a bird, but that's something we can work on some other time."

"Cool!" I took out the feather and twirled it around in my fingers.

"So, if we are the descendants, do we have all of their abilities?" Heather asked, joining me on the couch.

"I believe so! You should!"

"How do you know all of this?" I asked, looking right into Gladys' sensor.

"Well, that would be because the inventor made me!"

"REALLY?!" Heather and I say at the same time.

"Yeah!"

"Wait, I thought that you were from the Queen's laboratories? You look exactly like one of their models..."

"That was the scientist's intention. Whenever someone else comes over, I'm programmed to act like the other robots do. However, since you guys have no friends, I haven't had to display that side of me."

"That would hurt if it weren't so true..." I say.

Heather is just staring at Gladys, probably trying to piece together everything we just learned.

I look down at the feather, wondering what kind of trouble I could into with it.

This is going to be fun...

Somewhere in the Queen's laboratory...

I slip away from the person I'm currently testing on. They are knocked out cold from all of the different substances I'd put into them.

I'd feel bad about doing this if I hadn't done it dozens of times before.

I scribble down some notes on the subject. I had gotten the exact same result that I always get.

DNA: Normal

"No magic here..." I mutter to myself.

I then remember what I had seen earlier.

As I was getting my subject on the next train, I happened to turn around and see something that I never thought I'd see again.

She was there. She was still alive.

The Red Bird was back...