Touch: a Survival Story.

Mistakes: 1.5

Mistakes: 1.5

James:

"Soo... You gonna come down or what?" As she spoke, Tasha took a step or two back, before launching herself into the air and neatly vaulting the wire fence once more. She landed in a crouch in the alleyway and rocked back onto her rear, one arm coming to rest on one of her knees as she gazed up at him.

James glanced down at the ground, still dozens of feet below him, and swallowed.

"I uhh... I haven't figured out how yet. I'm... kinda stuck."

"Oh, new power?" Tasha asked with a grin. "I gotcha. Want me to get you down?"

James hesitated, then shook his head with a sigh.

"No thanks. I need to learn this for myself."

The girl nodded, shrugged, and pulled out her phone, her fingers beginning to tap rapidly at the screen.

"If you say so," she murmured. "You have fun with that."

Getting back down to earth was not a particularly challenging endeavor for James now that he seemed to have mastered the power's "On switch," and over the next two minutes or so, he was able to slowly float himself back down to the ground, landing with a soft thud on the hard concrete. Tasha looked up briefly at the noise as his shoes made contact.

"Oh, cool, you're down," she grinned. "About time, our third guy's nearly here."

"Third guy?"

Tasha nodded, her eyes lighting up excitably.

"Yeah! There's someone else I know who has powers too, and he's coming to say hi! So anyway, what's your name?"

James hesitated for a moment, not entirely sure of whether he should trust this strange girl, before eventually giving his response.

"... Ryan. I'm Ryan."

"Cool!" Tasha replied, almost before he'd finished speaking. "So you can fly, huh? That's really cool! How fast can you go? Can you carry things? Do you get cold if you go up too high?"

"I... I really haven't gotten that far yet," James admitted. "I... kinda only started flying last night. I don't even know what's going on."

"Ooohh," Tasha nodded. "Well, I guess that explains why you were practicing in some random school alley. I'd have chosen somewhere indoors, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," James admitted with a small sigh. "But I was kinda worried about hidden cameras. What if someone saw me, you know?"

The girl snorted, prodding him gently in the side with a finger.

"So you'd rather practice out in the open where anyone could walk past? You know some alleyways have cameras too, right?"

James gulped, eyes shifting around rapidly and scanning the walls of the alleyway for anything electronic.

"Don't worry," Tasha cut him off. "This alley's fine. I already checked. Wow, you have no idea about any of this stuff, do you?"

James opened his mouth to respond, only to be cut off by a new voice at the end of the alleyway.

"Tasha, what's going on? What's HE doing here?"

The speaker was a boy; at least, that's what James would have guessed. The boy was around his own height, and dressed in the same black slacks and scratchy polyester blazer that made up the uniform of James' school. His face, however, was obscured by a thick scarf, wrapped tightly around almost the whole of his head. He had an arm raised, a finger pointing directly at James.