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Chapter 1: School

School is not a happy place for happy children. It is a hamster cage for kids who can't learn anything else from their parents. Frankly, it'sassumed that once a child has been brought up by their parents or guardians for six years, the teaching is over on their part. Granted, noone could blame them. It was a kid's job to be able to completely disregard what their mum or dad wanted, and that meant that there was

hardly ever a way to further the child's education by leaving them at home. Michael was pretty sure that his parents would actually murderhim if he had to stay at the house for an extra seven hours every day. Then again, they'd pretty much find any excuse to hurt him if theycould. It wasn't as though his parents were abusive, they just didn't have any concept of what the boy was capable of. All they knew wasthat he was strange. He had things that happened around him that shouldn't happen, he wandered off in the middle of the night, then came

back without an explanation, and his teachers always said that he got the class average grade on every single test or quiz he took. Shedidn't know if he was extremely smart...or maybe just extremely average. All she knew was that he was the most average in the class, and

that hardly was anything a therapist wanted to hear.

So, he was content with just being himself on his own time. He wanted to be mediocre. When he was, the teacher couldn't pressure himinto challenging himself. When he was mediocre, there weren't therapists, and there weren't people who wanted to make him do things.

Even his parents figured out how average he was. He'd start liking the same things other kids liked just to have his parents leave himalone as a normal kid. The one thing he wouldn't stop was his midnight jaunts outside. If he stopped those, he might just go insane. Whilethe average school was indeed a hamster cage, he'd found one that wasn't. It was a school of his own creation. One where he taughthimself and learned more than he could have hoped in his life. The trek there taught him that the woods were better than the halls at a

school, and probably a lot cleaner. He figured out that trees were better friends than teachers, and he didn't even like trees. He also learnedthat without a flashlight, trees were really great walls too.

It was in these woods that the boy found his own home. He had a clearing that used to be surrounded by trees, but that he'd secretly

cleared out himself. Now, this might seem strange if the boy was indeed as mediocre as he'd like people to believe. He was only in thesixth grade, and an eleven year old should not be able to clear a section of the woods, but the boy was special. Such kids like him had

been known to exist. In fact, there were quite a few of them. Kids with talents that separated them from human feats. Some of the earliestkids like him were kids like Albert Einstein, who's rather large capacity for thought overshadowed anyone else. He couldn't go through

school and was labled as a dunce because as a child, who would want to draw attention to a brain that appeared to be akin to that of awitches? Perhaps that view was old fashioned, but it was rightful. The large issues of the world, not properly documented then, beganwith a simple child not understanding what they could do. Soon enough, they were carted off to an insane asylum or something of thelike. Michael had a very strong talent, and while others were as simple as being able to bake extremely well or being able to run super

fast, the kid was able to move things with his mind.

This should seem like a simple talent, but there were different scales for talent. For instance, the child who can run very fast. He could besimply good at athletics...or he could run fast enough that water was no issue to him, and he could create tornado like weather patterns

with his movement. A talent like moving objects was rather all-encompassing. If he ever fully learned how much power the boyhad...obstacles would no longer be obstacles to someone like him. In his little school here, without any facilities or anything but nature

surrounding him, he did try a little bit, capturing a fraction of his potential. He started being able to move grass by making something like

wind...and now? He was lifting trees up, just by looking towards them and focusing his energy on spots. It took a lot of energy to pick upthings, but it took a lot less if he figured out where to pick things up. He learned how to carry heavy things from the lessons that thistaught him. He grabbed the trees by their base with that invisible force of his, and soon it was uprooted. He'd then supported the top so it

wouldn't waver and lay the tree down. His next job was creating planks.

It had been a few years now that he had been doing this, and the boy had many planks of straight wood, each looking better than the last.His first ones were really rough, and they got better and better. Frankly, this helped ease a lot of tension with him. With great power came

great responsibility, and, frankly, a horrible immunity to sickness. The amount of pressure he felt he had in his body was enormous. If hedidn't let it out like this at night, he found himself sluggish and tired, almost sick feeling. His head felt like it was pounding, and his bodyfelt as though it would be crushed under the weight of itself. This frankly meant that he would have to find some way to release the

pressure, and that often meant skipping school. He'd found that was not a good thing to do...so every night, he simply came out here to his

own school. Of course, that meant he was tired during regular school...but this risk was a risk he had to take, just because not taking itcould mean letting out this energy surrounded by people he cared about.

Michael had woken up in the morning at home, having gone on his adventure the previous night. His mum was there, but she didn't ever

have to worry about getting him ready for school. He got that stuff done on his own. While he trusted his mum and dad, he didn't want totell anyone what he could do. He read stories about kids who might have been like him and what had happened to them, and frankly didn'twant anything like that to happen to him. Plus, every movie ever said that if a kid got superpowers, something bad happened that they hadto deal with, and their families were the first to go. He didn't want to let that happen...so he'd keep them out of the loop, just in case he had

these powers to defend earth or integrate into society, in case he was an alien, though he hardly thought that was possible. How couldaliens be humanoid? Shouldn't he have like green skin or something?

The boy pulled on a pair of jeans, just a crappy beat up pair of blue jeans. He was pretty sure that the unidentified stains on the thighs of

these jeans were syrup stains, but they could be blood. Maybe even tree sap, he'd been doing enough logging that it frankly would makesense. But did those kinds of pants stain? He shrugged that off. It wasn't really any of the kid's business wether or not tree sap stained his

jeans or not. He had to get some food before school, and then it was off towards the hamster cage in his hamster ball. Or the school bus,but they were kind of the same thing. He yawned a bit, looking around. After stripping off his top, he found a relatively decent green

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lantern shirt to shove over his skinny form. The boy was not muscular. Frankly, the only reason his muscles showed was because he was

just so tiny that his muscles had no choice but to bulge out a bit against his thin layer of skin. His baggy clothes hid this from peoplebecause frankly he was not malnourished as an average child might be, he was malnourished because his body required more food thanthe average kid's body did at his age.

Michael took one look at himself in the mirror and frowned. He'd been out too late the night previous, and his eyes were slightly baggy,giving him the illusion of a video-game playing slacker. His video-game console actually had a very fine layer of dust on it. Sighing, hemoved to his closet and rifled through it, finding an old baggy grey sweater with the words I love NY on the back of it. He was prettysure that his dad got it for his mum, then they fought because he got her an XL. A horrible, horrible mistake on his part. Even Michael had

to side with his mum. His dad gave him the sweatshirt and told him to go upstairs and play with his lego. He didn't have any lego, but hetook the sweatshirt and he ran for it. He hardly ever got presents that were baggy enough for his liking, and this one was just perfect. For

the first time in a while, he shoved the shirt on and hugged it to himself. He'd shove the hood up later so the teacher wouldn't see howtired he was. Last thing he needed was for the teacher to call his parents.

Lights off, bed made, the kid trudged his way down the rectangular boxes of death, or stairs in the laymans term, and made his way to the

tiled murder scene he called a kitchen. He only called it a murder scene because it looked so much like a stereotypical suburban housewhere someone was always murdered. It was just that kind of place with the black and white tiled floors, the marbled counters and thevarious arrangements of fruits he was never allowed to eat. He hopped up onto a stool, specifically there for the vertically challenged boy,then managed to rifle around and find a piece of fruit that he was frankly allowed to eat. They were at the back of the cupboard, generally,

where people wouldn't see them. It was just a simple banana, but it would do for his morning food. He was hungrier than that, but the buswas going to be here soon. He looked at the time and then sighed. It was time to go to his actual school, even if he didn't want to go to it.

No, he really didn't want to go to it.

Shoving the banana down in a matter of minutes, the kid head out of the kitchen, throwing on a pair of sneakers. He tied them up prettycarefully, since he didn't want to trip, and then nodded. He was ready for the day. Just before he left the house, he grabbed onto his

backpack and shoved his hood up an over his head. It would be a lot better if he was thought to be just antisocial as opposed tomalnourished and sleep deprived. One of them would be considered normal, but the other two were grounds for social services to come in

and take a look at how the kid's life was. Frankly, they wouldn't find anything but there would always be some kind of suspicion and hismediocrity would be in jeopardy. He frowned at the very idea of that and shook his head.

Mum! I'm heading out! He yelled up towards his mother, who was likely still asleep, and then shouldered his backpack. He was out the

door just as the bus pulled up and it was about a minute before he was sitting down in his assigned seat. This driver was old fashioned,and Michael was always sitting next to the super smart and preppy boy. Yeah, he was really annoying. He turned towards the window as

the chatterbox began to talk, Michael's head leaning against the cool glass of the side of this yellow transport machine.

Hey Michael! Did you do your homework from last night? I thought it was pretty easy. I mean, we've been multiplying things since thefourth grade, we just added a few extra tens places, right? It was totally the easiest homework of the year. He gushed towards Michael,

who he assumed would actually care about the status of his homework. Of course, to be considered average, he had to make friends with

some of the people on here, so he made an effort sometimes to talk to the kid. The chatterbox was named Gabriel, and he really never didshut his face. And yet, everyone else seemed to like him, so Michael would force himself to.

Oh yeah, the homework! Number seven was pretty easy too. Just a review problem, I think. He added, making things up off the top ofhis head. He knew there were ten problems, but he flew through those pretty easily and once again got the average number correct inaccordance to what he knew his teacher would grade like today. Or rather, he'd tried. Sometimes it was a few points off. The kid was

pretty smart...it came with the gift he got. Frankly, he loved his knowledge, he just didn't have any way to show that he did. Gabriel

continued to chatter, and he just kind of feigned interest, nodding his head and giving a half smile, occasionally piping in with Oh yeah.No, I think that we should be challenged more.

This continued for the half an hour long bus ride he had to deal with in the morning until they finally got to the school. Just as he was

picking his bag up off the floor in front of him, Gabriel turned to him. Oh, you brought all that stuff in? Today's state-wide testing. Weonly really need a pencil, I think. That's what the teacher said yesterday. Michael could probably have hit himself. How could he be sostupid? He should have known there was a reason why his bag was by the door still when he got up. Normally he would have brought itinto the living room or something to get it packed up for the next day. God he was an idiot! And the homework must be due the day

after...crap. That meant he'd done it early. He wasn't supposed to do it early. The average kid would wait until the night before.

Trudging off the bus, he shouldered his backpack once more. The bag was a bit too heavy now as he realized it was one of the few bagshe saw today. God he hated standing out. Though there was one person standing out much more than he was. A man was getting out of a

car just near the buses. He was certainly odd. He was a lot taller than any of the male teachers at his school, and he was dressed muchdifferently. He wore what seemed to be a full formal black tuxedo. It stood out from all the kids in their own school outfits, some with

recent comic book favorites and others with funny words or pictures. The graphic tees in comparison looked paltry. He couldn't help butfrown at that guy. Why did he have to dress up so much? It made Michael feel like he should dress up even more than he had, and since

he hadn't, he felt like he was being looked down on. The pale-faced man turned to face Michael with a glare, removing a pair ofsunglasses. He stared at Michael, his long black hair casting a bad shadow across his features. Gabriel moved to his side and whispered.

Hey dude...that guy's creeping me out. Let's go.

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Michael allowed the boy to grab onto his hand and he followed along with Gabriel's wish to head straight into the school. When Michael

looked back, he was pretty sure he could see that the retreat of the male was not without it's glance towards the two of them. What wasthat guy even doing here? It was a public school and he was pretty sure that any kids with parents who dressed as though they were thatsuccessful would not be sending kids here. He shook his head of the thought and turned towards Gabriel. He was looking at me in aweird way. I didn't like it, Gabe. The kid gave Michael a look, as though he knew more than he was letting on.

Trust me, Mike. You do not want to know what that guy was up to. He assured Michael, then continued to drag him to the classroom.Today was just getting more and more confusing, especially since he'd never seen Gabriel act like that. It frankly was a bit of a mystery.They were the last ones off of the bus, as they sat in the back, and so they were at the back of the group. Maybe Gabriel acted a bit

differently whenever he wasn't around people...like Michael. He frowned in thought. That was kind of...cool. He swallowed the thoughtdown, washing it down with his own lies, covering up any idea someone could be like him. He had to remind himself he was different

from all of them. As those thoughts began to swirl around in his head, it seemed that Gabriel's grip either became tighter or felt like it washolding his reality where it should be, in the present.

He hadn't had much time to even look up towards Gabriel, to see if his expression had changed before they arrived at the classroom. Their

lockers were inside the room in the form of cubbies because, frankly, they were a pretty small school. Each grade had their ownclassroom, and this was the sixth graders classroom. The eleven year old shoved his shoes off into one of the cubbies, then put his bag andhis jacket in it. He didn't need anything today it seemed, aside from a pencil. The kid always had one or two in his pocket so he took oneof them out, fiddling with it as he moved back to his desk. Gabriel had let go of his hand at the door, and they went their separate ways for

a moment before the kid sat in the desk next to him. There weren't assigned seats, so it was fine, but everyone was muttering andwondering why the most popular kid in this grade, or rather classroom, would sit next to an idiot like him. Well he wasn't an idiot, but helooked like he could be one, because he hardly seemed as though he paid attention in class.

He was still tired from staying out last night so Michael rested his head on his arms. He had no idea if he could get through thestandardized testing today without collapsing to the side of his desk from exhaustion. The boy was going to close his eyes when thefeminine voice of his teacher piped up. Alright guys! Today we're going to have a few officials come in before we split off for ourtesting. They're just testing for some kind of...medical issue I believe. Michael rolled his eyes. Great. Medical testing. He looked up and

his eyes widened.

Standing in the front of the room was that man in the tuxedo and he was staring straight at Michael.