MidwayLives
"What's your favorite scary movie...?"
For as long as men walked the Earth, its ambitions have soared higher and higher. But for however much may have been desired, there were always limitations. Boundaries that simply couldn't be crossed by a normal human being. The thoughts of firing laser beams from one's hands, to swim through concrete as though it were water, or to be born looking like a horror show. Mere fiction thought of just to entertain the feeble masses. If someone actually thought, they could spread their arms and fly through the air with the birds and planes? They'd either play it off as a joke, be a small child engaging in make believe, or having lost their mind altogether.
Or at least that's what the world at large wanted humanity to think.
For centuries, since the primordial man drew his first breaths, humans have been subjected to a still currently unexplained phenomena known as 'Gifts.' Abilities ranging from physical mutations to being able to bend the elements to one will be at an Indvidual's fingertips or claws depending on what their 'blessing' gave them at birth. Such a discovery would have changed the world as it's perceived today. Sending a man to the moon? Why go through the hassle of building a shuttle when he could fly to the moon and be back in time for dinner? Why not have him visit every inch of the Solar System while he was at it? Cold War tensions getting hot in a proxy country? Send in one of your Gifted behind the scenes and wreak havoc on the enemy forces, completely demolish them and leave not even the slightest shred of hope of staging a successful counterattack. Such things may have been obvious and for many in high positions in some of the Great Powers both in Europe and abroad surely considered them.
But it could never come to pass. The mere existence of Gifted beings was locked away. In certain countries even potentially hinting that you may have some kind of strange ability, even if it was something as mundane and relatively 'useless' as being able to shoot your eyeballs out of your head and manuever them like a snail using it's eyestalks would have you hauled away to a 'special clinic' where you were disappeared to a hazardous party of the state where you'd surely die either from starvation or the elements. Or you were just killed altogether, perhaps your family as well. However dangerous things may have gotten during the Cold War between the captailist USA and the communist USSR, there was an unspoken agreement between the two and their respective allies.
The general public learning of the existence of Gifts and the majority who possessed them would be an unmitigated disaster. A man or woman with the strength to demolish fortresses with a mere punch, to throw tanks as though they were matchbox cars, could simply walk right into the White House or the Kremlin and murder everyone present and take control of the country with a cabal of fellow Gifted. So, society as a whole clamped down on the secret. Those not in the know or Gifted themselves, a minority given that most Gifted knew as such at the moment of their birth would not be made aware of them and those who were Gifted? They'd be pressured to keep their abilities to themselves and ONLY themselves, lest they meet with an accident and when you had not just your government but every government against you? Many Gifted were reluctant to ever speak up or stand out from the crowd and for the most part that's remained true into the 21st century.
Though while both countries agreed not to use Gifted against eachother, that didn't stop them from trying to pluck Gifted from the other's territory whenever it suited them. Such was the case with Camp Hopeful, a secret military base posing as a traditional American summer camp, where Gifted of many ages from the oldest being 17 and the youngest ranging from 12 and possibly even lower than that depending on whatever may have been kept hush-hush from prying eyes. Taken from their countries or in some cases even from cities in the United States proper, the children were raised in an environment that the government, at least at the time of the base's conception in the late 1940s, would have felt placating. Who didn't enjoy the wild outdoors after all??? Teenagers from all walks of life roamed through the campgrounds, some debating escape even if they knew it'd probably be futile, others debating how much sex they'd get that night, and so on.
Something different was on the mind of one 'camper.' Having been dumped by a fellow camper that he'd taken a relative shine to upon her 'arrival' in camp, he'd gone out of his way to procure himself a rather torn up looking bouquet. Made up of roses that he'd taken from another camper who's Gift allowed her to manipulate/control plant life. Instead of being properly held or maintained, they'd been thrown into what looked like a simple bag from the camp's convenience store with the straps of said plastic bag tied around the roses to both hold them in place and to keep the bag shut. Walking along the trail with the soles of his worn-out red sneakers plodding against the searingly hot blacktop, the teen was decked out in a style that looked like it'd been plucked out of a 1990s boy magazine and, truthfully, it probably was. Black jeans with tears at the knees, a loose fitting plaid jacket with dark fingerless gloves, a plain white t-shirt, and a red baseball cap sitting atop his hair, flipped backwards for extra coolness. Typical looking attire for a teenage boy behind on the decade by just a wee bit. Only this wasn't a run of the mill teenage boy with thoughts of trying to rekindle a shattered relationship on his mind.
The boy's eyes glowed yellow like a flashlight on full blast. No pupils or irises to be seen. Just those glowers staring straight ahead. The tufts of hair that poked out on the sides and back of his hat looked like they'd been smothered and patted down with the greasiest of hair gel, a sticky black residue slathered all over his head. The same residue seemed to cover the youth from head to toe, hiding away his ears, and drawing more than a little attention to his face. Which at some point his former flame had liked. He couldn't say the same for his folks.
Fuckers. Wished he'd killed them himself.
But, no, the camp's 'chief' had that honor.
"Grr...." His lower jaw shifted as a low growl rumbled out. He'd had something of an underbite, some of the other kids called it like an angler fish. Never to his face though. They didn't want to know what he'd do if he ever heard them. Teeth sharp enough to make a great white jealous poked out even when he attempted to close his mouth. The saliva glistened on them like morning dew on the leaves and grass. He was what higher educated people who were 'in the know' called an 'Elemental-type Gifted.' He'd been born looking like a tar monster. Fangs, glowing eyes, oily composition, all of it. Right from the word go. Or in his own words 'the universe decided to have him be born hideous.' Coming to a stop outside the designated shower hall for the girls from Cabin #0002, he shifted in place while holding the roses behind his back. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a Walkman. He'd been told by some of the staff that they were 'like Ipods before Ipods.' Whatever an iPod was anyway. He'd been able to take it off another kid he'd assaulted and had managed to get a hold of some songs from the camp's marketplace. As long as you worked your ass off/did what was asked of you, getting your hands on certain things wasn't too difficult. He opened up the Walkman, slipped in a cassette and started it up. Without the headphones plugged in, the music played aloud. Hopefully at such a volume that the girls inside the shower could hear it.
Obviously, the girls inside the shower were, well, showering. As was the purpose of the building they were currently in. Well, that and a little bit of friendly gossping/giving eachother a little bit of grief. Friendly, mean-spirited, or otherwise. One of the girls looked as though she walked off the set of 'The Mummy' as she leaned against one of the walls, unwrapping the bandages around her gangly limbs, each spot the bandages left revealing disgustingly infected looking blisters and gashes. "C...Can someone help me shampoo my hair when I get the rest of the bandages off? When I activate my Gift, I'm gonna be too doped up on adrenaline to feel if I'm getting all my hair covered or not. I...I don't wanna end up with dandruff..."
"Dandruff??? You look like one big fucking zit and you're worried about dead skin in your hair, Tessa?? You LOOK like dead skin! Warmed over!" Another girl mocked as she stood under one of the showerheads, running her hands through her long flowing redhair. It stretched down to the small of her back and truth be told, she was kinda proud of it. Even if it was all just how she liked to imagine how she'd look if she'd gotten a different Gift. The reality was that like the erstwhile Romeo outside, she was an elemental, a fire one at that. Which meant that normally the idea of taking showers fucking made her want to gag. But if she didn't do it then whenever she put her 'glamour' on as the staff bigwigs liked to call it, she'd smell like a shithouse. Whatever those smelled like, she didn't know half the time lacking a nose and all in her natural state. Mouth too for that matter. Thus, one of the brightsides, in going about her day to day routine meant being able to actually talk shit USING a mouth and not telepathy! "Oh leave her alone, Christine..." A girl with horn like protrusions jutting out from all over the sides and tops of her head scolded to which Christine promptly flipped her off.
"You're fine, Tessa. I'll help you in a second, ok? Just..." Closing her eyes, the horned girl closed her insectoid like eyes and two of the smaller horns on the top of her head began to rattle like windchimes in a heavy storm. "TESSA, WAIT!!" The girl screamed to which the mummyfied girl nearly jumped out of the shower. "W-What??? What did you see, El??"
"You were gonna grab the AXE conditoner instead of your usual one...."
"Hey! One of your predictions ended up being worth a damn, El!" Christine claimed, reaching over and grabbing the red bottle from where it stood on a small shelf next to Tessa. "Saved mummy girl's ass. Don't anybody touch this stuff. I had to do all kinds of fuckin chores to get my hands on this from the market." El crossed her arms and huffed. "Isn't that stuff usually for guys, Christine? Something you wanna tell us?"
"That I like smelling good? You got an issue with the kind of shampoo I use, take it and ram it up your box. S'not my fault half of you got bad taste. El has it in shampoo and Mei has it in men. Hehehe..." Christine chortled, turning away from the others as she started to lather her hair. Both Tessa and El glared at their cabinmate for that last remark. It was one thing to tease Tessa, she was used to it for better or for worse. But the breakup between Mei and her boyfriend hadn't escaped being turned into gossip and rumors around the place. Some people claimed that he'd broken up with HER, or got her knocked up, or tried to anyway. Whatever the circumstances actually were, neither girl saw it as any of their business. Whatever happened between their fellow Gifted and the guy was her problem. One of the other girls in the shower had been very quiet. Glancing over at Mei while working the conditioner into her snowwhite colored hair, the girl ran a hand over her chest and her skin parted to allow her sternum to poke out as she tapped on it.
("Christine's just being a bitch, don't worry about it. You did the right thing dumping Black Ink. Guy's a waste of space.")
Although the skull-like features on her face may have made the girl look somewhat unapproachable, she flashed one of her only friends in the camp a warm smile before reaching out and patting her on the back. Before everyone could just get back to cleaning themselves, Tessa blinked while in the middle of unwrapping the bandages around her head, revealing bits and pieces of her brightly colored blue hair and scars across her cheek and neck. Deep ones that looked like they'd been dug in like a crevice. "...Does anyone else hear that music?"
"...Yeah, Tessa's right. I can hear it too..."
"Oh for christ's sake, I fuckin hate doin this and some jagoff's gotta stand out there blaring their shitty music?? Sounds like something my gramps would have listened to! SHADDUP OUT THERE!!!" Christine bellowed, her red eyes flashing yellow for a moment before returning to normal.
"Meiiiiiiiii. I know you're in thereeeeeeeee. Come ouuuuuuuut! I got something for you!"
"UUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHH. Can't the guy take a hint???" El asked before closing her eyes and activating her gift once again. "....Nope. Doesn't seem like he can." Christine rolled her eyes. "Great. Well, Mei, you or someone go out there and tell Ink to piss off or I'm gonna take that discman of his and STICK IT UP HIS ASS!!!!"
("I think it's called a Walkman, Christine.")
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just do something about it before I do." Christine warned as she tried to sound out the music as best as she could. The skull-faced girl gently held Mei's hand before taking another look at her friend. "Want us to go out there, Mei? You don't have to if you don't wanna. We'd understand." El offered, imagining that it'd probably be awkward for her cabin mate to wanna go encounter the very same guy that she'd just broken up with. But she was also sure that nobody wanted Christine blowing a gasket and risking burning the whole place down just to get him to piss off.
Or at least that's what the world at large wanted humanity to think.
For centuries, since the primordial man drew his first breaths, humans have been subjected to a still currently unexplained phenomena known as 'Gifts.' Abilities ranging from physical mutations to being able to bend the elements to one will be at an Indvidual's fingertips or claws depending on what their 'blessing' gave them at birth. Such a discovery would have changed the world as it's perceived today. Sending a man to the moon? Why go through the hassle of building a shuttle when he could fly to the moon and be back in time for dinner? Why not have him visit every inch of the Solar System while he was at it? Cold War tensions getting hot in a proxy country? Send in one of your Gifted behind the scenes and wreak havoc on the enemy forces, completely demolish them and leave not even the slightest shred of hope of staging a successful counterattack. Such things may have been obvious and for many in high positions in some of the Great Powers both in Europe and abroad surely considered them.
But it could never come to pass. The mere existence of Gifted beings was locked away. In certain countries even potentially hinting that you may have some kind of strange ability, even if it was something as mundane and relatively 'useless' as being able to shoot your eyeballs out of your head and manuever them like a snail using it's eyestalks would have you hauled away to a 'special clinic' where you were disappeared to a hazardous party of the state where you'd surely die either from starvation or the elements. Or you were just killed altogether, perhaps your family as well. However dangerous things may have gotten during the Cold War between the captailist USA and the communist USSR, there was an unspoken agreement between the two and their respective allies.
The general public learning of the existence of Gifts and the majority who possessed them would be an unmitigated disaster. A man or woman with the strength to demolish fortresses with a mere punch, to throw tanks as though they were matchbox cars, could simply walk right into the White House or the Kremlin and murder everyone present and take control of the country with a cabal of fellow Gifted. So, society as a whole clamped down on the secret. Those not in the know or Gifted themselves, a minority given that most Gifted knew as such at the moment of their birth would not be made aware of them and those who were Gifted? They'd be pressured to keep their abilities to themselves and ONLY themselves, lest they meet with an accident and when you had not just your government but every government against you? Many Gifted were reluctant to ever speak up or stand out from the crowd and for the most part that's remained true into the 21st century.
Though while both countries agreed not to use Gifted against eachother, that didn't stop them from trying to pluck Gifted from the other's territory whenever it suited them. Such was the case with Camp Hopeful, a secret military base posing as a traditional American summer camp, where Gifted of many ages from the oldest being 17 and the youngest ranging from 12 and possibly even lower than that depending on whatever may have been kept hush-hush from prying eyes. Taken from their countries or in some cases even from cities in the United States proper, the children were raised in an environment that the government, at least at the time of the base's conception in the late 1940s, would have felt placating. Who didn't enjoy the wild outdoors after all??? Teenagers from all walks of life roamed through the campgrounds, some debating escape even if they knew it'd probably be futile, others debating how much sex they'd get that night, and so on.
Something different was on the mind of one 'camper.' Having been dumped by a fellow camper that he'd taken a relative shine to upon her 'arrival' in camp, he'd gone out of his way to procure himself a rather torn up looking bouquet. Made up of roses that he'd taken from another camper who's Gift allowed her to manipulate/control plant life. Instead of being properly held or maintained, they'd been thrown into what looked like a simple bag from the camp's convenience store with the straps of said plastic bag tied around the roses to both hold them in place and to keep the bag shut. Walking along the trail with the soles of his worn-out red sneakers plodding against the searingly hot blacktop, the teen was decked out in a style that looked like it'd been plucked out of a 1990s boy magazine and, truthfully, it probably was. Black jeans with tears at the knees, a loose fitting plaid jacket with dark fingerless gloves, a plain white t-shirt, and a red baseball cap sitting atop his hair, flipped backwards for extra coolness. Typical looking attire for a teenage boy behind on the decade by just a wee bit. Only this wasn't a run of the mill teenage boy with thoughts of trying to rekindle a shattered relationship on his mind.
The boy's eyes glowed yellow like a flashlight on full blast. No pupils or irises to be seen. Just those glowers staring straight ahead. The tufts of hair that poked out on the sides and back of his hat looked like they'd been smothered and patted down with the greasiest of hair gel, a sticky black residue slathered all over his head. The same residue seemed to cover the youth from head to toe, hiding away his ears, and drawing more than a little attention to his face. Which at some point his former flame had liked. He couldn't say the same for his folks.
Fuckers. Wished he'd killed them himself.
But, no, the camp's 'chief' had that honor.
"Grr...." His lower jaw shifted as a low growl rumbled out. He'd had something of an underbite, some of the other kids called it like an angler fish. Never to his face though. They didn't want to know what he'd do if he ever heard them. Teeth sharp enough to make a great white jealous poked out even when he attempted to close his mouth. The saliva glistened on them like morning dew on the leaves and grass. He was what higher educated people who were 'in the know' called an 'Elemental-type Gifted.' He'd been born looking like a tar monster. Fangs, glowing eyes, oily composition, all of it. Right from the word go. Or in his own words 'the universe decided to have him be born hideous.' Coming to a stop outside the designated shower hall for the girls from Cabin #0002, he shifted in place while holding the roses behind his back. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a Walkman. He'd been told by some of the staff that they were 'like Ipods before Ipods.' Whatever an iPod was anyway. He'd been able to take it off another kid he'd assaulted and had managed to get a hold of some songs from the camp's marketplace. As long as you worked your ass off/did what was asked of you, getting your hands on certain things wasn't too difficult. He opened up the Walkman, slipped in a cassette and started it up. Without the headphones plugged in, the music played aloud. Hopefully at such a volume that the girls inside the shower could hear it.
Obviously, the girls inside the shower were, well, showering. As was the purpose of the building they were currently in. Well, that and a little bit of friendly gossping/giving eachother a little bit of grief. Friendly, mean-spirited, or otherwise. One of the girls looked as though she walked off the set of 'The Mummy' as she leaned against one of the walls, unwrapping the bandages around her gangly limbs, each spot the bandages left revealing disgustingly infected looking blisters and gashes. "C...Can someone help me shampoo my hair when I get the rest of the bandages off? When I activate my Gift, I'm gonna be too doped up on adrenaline to feel if I'm getting all my hair covered or not. I...I don't wanna end up with dandruff..."
"Dandruff??? You look like one big fucking zit and you're worried about dead skin in your hair, Tessa?? You LOOK like dead skin! Warmed over!" Another girl mocked as she stood under one of the showerheads, running her hands through her long flowing redhair. It stretched down to the small of her back and truth be told, she was kinda proud of it. Even if it was all just how she liked to imagine how she'd look if she'd gotten a different Gift. The reality was that like the erstwhile Romeo outside, she was an elemental, a fire one at that. Which meant that normally the idea of taking showers fucking made her want to gag. But if she didn't do it then whenever she put her 'glamour' on as the staff bigwigs liked to call it, she'd smell like a shithouse. Whatever those smelled like, she didn't know half the time lacking a nose and all in her natural state. Mouth too for that matter. Thus, one of the brightsides, in going about her day to day routine meant being able to actually talk shit USING a mouth and not telepathy! "Oh leave her alone, Christine..." A girl with horn like protrusions jutting out from all over the sides and tops of her head scolded to which Christine promptly flipped her off.
"You're fine, Tessa. I'll help you in a second, ok? Just..." Closing her eyes, the horned girl closed her insectoid like eyes and two of the smaller horns on the top of her head began to rattle like windchimes in a heavy storm. "TESSA, WAIT!!" The girl screamed to which the mummyfied girl nearly jumped out of the shower. "W-What??? What did you see, El??"
"You were gonna grab the AXE conditoner instead of your usual one...."
"Hey! One of your predictions ended up being worth a damn, El!" Christine claimed, reaching over and grabbing the red bottle from where it stood on a small shelf next to Tessa. "Saved mummy girl's ass. Don't anybody touch this stuff. I had to do all kinds of fuckin chores to get my hands on this from the market." El crossed her arms and huffed. "Isn't that stuff usually for guys, Christine? Something you wanna tell us?"
"That I like smelling good? You got an issue with the kind of shampoo I use, take it and ram it up your box. S'not my fault half of you got bad taste. El has it in shampoo and Mei has it in men. Hehehe..." Christine chortled, turning away from the others as she started to lather her hair. Both Tessa and El glared at their cabinmate for that last remark. It was one thing to tease Tessa, she was used to it for better or for worse. But the breakup between Mei and her boyfriend hadn't escaped being turned into gossip and rumors around the place. Some people claimed that he'd broken up with HER, or got her knocked up, or tried to anyway. Whatever the circumstances actually were, neither girl saw it as any of their business. Whatever happened between their fellow Gifted and the guy was her problem. One of the other girls in the shower had been very quiet. Glancing over at Mei while working the conditioner into her snowwhite colored hair, the girl ran a hand over her chest and her skin parted to allow her sternum to poke out as she tapped on it.
("Christine's just being a bitch, don't worry about it. You did the right thing dumping Black Ink. Guy's a waste of space.")
Although the skull-like features on her face may have made the girl look somewhat unapproachable, she flashed one of her only friends in the camp a warm smile before reaching out and patting her on the back. Before everyone could just get back to cleaning themselves, Tessa blinked while in the middle of unwrapping the bandages around her head, revealing bits and pieces of her brightly colored blue hair and scars across her cheek and neck. Deep ones that looked like they'd been dug in like a crevice. "...Does anyone else hear that music?"
"...Yeah, Tessa's right. I can hear it too..."
"Oh for christ's sake, I fuckin hate doin this and some jagoff's gotta stand out there blaring their shitty music?? Sounds like something my gramps would have listened to! SHADDUP OUT THERE!!!" Christine bellowed, her red eyes flashing yellow for a moment before returning to normal.
"Meiiiiiiiii. I know you're in thereeeeeeeee. Come ouuuuuuuut! I got something for you!"
"UUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHH. Can't the guy take a hint???" El asked before closing her eyes and activating her gift once again. "....Nope. Doesn't seem like he can." Christine rolled her eyes. "Great. Well, Mei, you or someone go out there and tell Ink to piss off or I'm gonna take that discman of his and STICK IT UP HIS ASS!!!!"
("I think it's called a Walkman, Christine.")
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just do something about it before I do." Christine warned as she tried to sound out the music as best as she could. The skull-faced girl gently held Mei's hand before taking another look at her friend. "Want us to go out there, Mei? You don't have to if you don't wanna. We'd understand." El offered, imagining that it'd probably be awkward for her cabin mate to wanna go encounter the very same guy that she'd just broken up with. But she was also sure that nobody wanted Christine blowing a gasket and risking burning the whole place down just to get him to piss off.
