Defiance.

1

I never considered myself lucky. I never considered myself gifted either. I was smart, sure, but I was just average and normal.

So when my powers or 'Gift' as they liked to call it appeared, I wasn't happy. I didn't want it. The older I got the harder it was to hide from the world. I didn't have a good Gift like healing or even something like flying. My Gift was dark. I made things blow up when I was sad or angry amongst other disastrous things. I had the type of Gift that made normal people fear the Gifted. I was the kind they liked to label as Hazardously Gifted, or a Haz for short.

Those who they could find were rounded up and chipped. Those like me, who hid, were eventually found through incidents or reports.

We weren't allowed to live freely like the others with the Gift, no, we could only be free in society if we allowed them to suppress our powers. Those who chose not to live in special facilities were stationed in the middle of butt fuck nowhere designed to keep them from harming others. Haz's and other Gifted did not agree with this at all, which is very understandable.

A select few were chosen to help military personnel in a special sector called the Haz Rehabilitation Unit, so we wouldn't just be a waste of space I guess. There was no rehab going on in the slightest. This was the only way I could use my powers as a Haz, so when I was reported and chipped that's what I chose. The harder I try to not use my powers the more they build up inside. I'm like a walking bomb. So they started calling me Blitz. I let them because that's all I am. A bomb. A flash attack.

My powers manifested when I was 14. At first I was just making the lights flicker when I got angry. I also just knew how things worked without learning which for a while my parents summed up to me being smarter than your average high school freshman. Then the other powers arrived and my brother, Calian, started getting scared of me. He wouldn't hang out with me like he used to even though we're only two years apart. I started moving things with my mind which was fine until I started exploding things with my mind too. I couldn't control it and one day, when I was 16, I blew up a whole building because I got upset. They found me in the rubble and took me then and there to be chipped and registered as a Haz in the national database. I haven't seen my parents or brother since.

They tried their best to hide my powers from the world but I guess I was just too powerful.

Now here I was, 21, in the middle of nowhere working for the government so they don't kill me, with power dampeners on 24/7. The only reason I'm still alive is because they can use me to fight their enemies.

I kept my head down and mostly obeyed the rules because everything was easier that way. No bracelet electrocution, no dead bodies.

There has been conflict between the normal people and the Gifted for years, and it has just recently reached a point where it was a full on war. Slowly more and more of the Gifted are being considered Hazardous just because of how powerful they can get. Because my Gift is so powerful they send me to do the worst or the worst. My partners die a lot. I still remember my first partner. I actually quite liked him. But now I know not to get attached because no matter how hard I try to keep them alive, they always end up dead. It's easier being closed off from everyone and everything. That just means there's one less way for you to get hurt.

•

A new partner was the last thing I wanted. Yet there he stood in front of me with a wide smile plaster on his face at 8pm on the dot. I could practically feel the excitement radiating off of him.

"Hey, I'm Micah Williams. You must be Takoda Chavez. I'm s——"

"Blitz." I hated being called Takoda. That's not who I was anymore.