The S.T.F. Files, Book 4: DIATON

It's Not Me

"It sure has been a long time..." Riza bowed her head and sighed, holding in what seemed like painful thoughts and feelings. "I guess it's a little overdue with a storytime." Riza took a seat on the couch inside the house with all the other STF.

“Can we play with outside?” Leo asked with large sparkling eyes.

Nada glared at her the entire time, as if he saw something with her. It was the strange fact that no one said anything about the subtle changes about her.

"What's up with your eyes? Bitchy mad purple doesn't satisfy you anymore?" Nada asked.

Riza just laughed, "watch it punk before it comes and kicks you in the ass for all the times I missed while I was gone."

Aly took notice too, "and you kept your hair short. You hate having your hair shorter than your elbows."

Riza just sat and almost cried. She pulled out seven photos. "I guess I have a lot of time to make up."

Riza: Fifteen Years Ago

Gasp!

I bolted upright rapidly; taking deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling until I could slow my rapid heartbeat and remember the past. I was in a bedroom. My bedroom. The one I thought I ditched to leave forever.

It was peaceful not being able to remember how I got here at first, not remembering anything, however the memories were soon to follow to haunt me.

My mind was flooded with memories soon after. Everything that happened—that final tragic battle. All of it. I shivered a bit before I managed to get out of my bed and rapidly and thoroughly search my room for all of these memories. Some proof they weren't just a dream—any proof at all. My rummaging yielded no success, so I ran to my bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. My hair was dramatically shorter. It was like this is who I was. STF was all just a dream. My eyes weren't even lavender anymore. They were this silver and lifeless it seemed. My hands tingled with feeling and warmth, as if they were all I had left of something. I didn't know why or of what.

"Powers, I had powers. I burnt my boyfriend into a burnt, crispy, potato chip." I panted, while I attempted to use my fire powers. The powers easily—way to easily—shot off my hands and enticed the trim of the mirror into a deadly flaming dance. I freaked, then used entirely way too much water to put out such a flame.

"Shower. Maybe a hot shower can save me..." I resorted to methods that would never in a hundred years solve my problems. A shower didn't work. Throwing water in my face didn't work either. It was not until I was so desperate for the control that I was sifting through the bathroom drawers franticly. It was there I that I found them. Three pictures of all of us. Paris, the airplane, and one of me and 'Gretto. Who knows when it was taken. It looks as if someone was snooping in, for I was crying and hugging him. I fell to the floor and cried.

Eventually I noticed my mother at the doorway peering in at me in a bathrobe. She sighed and shook her head, "It's over now. They only hurt you Theresa."

"But my powers!" I cried as darkness rang from my hands and blew out every light in the bathroom, leaving it as dark as the night around. "What happened to me? I can't control myself anymore!" When I screamed wind shattered the bathroom windows and I set my bathrobe on fire. The plumbing shattered into millions of pieces; a shower of water sprinkled the room, more like flooding the floor. The mirror and the remains of any fixture started to shine and collect light. Soon the potted plants in the corners of the room started to grow extremely out of proportion, and a dark broad started to surround my feet in the bathwater that turned my bathroom into a tsunami when my mother broke down my bathroom door to get away from the mess I became.