This was written by Christopher "Wani" K and may only be used on my site. SKI, Super Kids Initiation and all other names are trademark of Waniou. If SKI or SCI, or any event in this series take place, or are used somewhere else, it is entirely by coincidence.
Story #1
Mike
Dedicated to all my loyal readers, all my new readers, and all the people who hinted at maybe wanting to read whatever the hell it is I actually write.
And to all the people who have stuck beside me and given me support during some of the rough patches I've had.
Prologue
"Okay, class, since you've all finished your work on time, how about a game of higher-lower?" Mrs Mills asked us. It was a fairly simple game. She thought of a number, and the class had to guess what it was. If we were wrong, she told us if it was higher or lower than what we'd guessed. The class rushed around the teacher excited, and she motioned for quiet. Everyone hushed and sat down.
"Okay, I'm thinking of a number between one and one hundred," she said.
"Twenty!"
"Ninety!"
"Eighty two!"
"Now now, one at a time. Aaron?" Mrs Mills motioned for quiet again.
"Twenty!"
"Higher. Jennifer?"
"Seventy five?"
"Lower. Mike?"
"Fifty seven?" I asked.
"Right! Good guess, Mike!" the teacher smiled at me. It hadn't quite been a guess. The number fifty seven just... felt right. "Okay, now I'm thinking of a number between one and two hundred."
"One hundred and thirty seven?" I asked. The teacher looked at me puzzled.
"Umm... yes, that's right again!" She had a look on her face that asked "Are you cheating?" but she remained quiet. Of course I wasn't. How could I cheat? But then... how did I know the numbers were right?
Psychic Powers
My name is Mike. And I am psychic. Telepathic to be exact, I don't do any of that reading the future stuff, that's just impossible. Two of my friends explained it to me once, but I didn't get it. When they talk, people tend to get confused.
But I am telepathic. I can feel people's minds, pick up hints of what they're feeling and, with a little concentration, I can completely read their thoughts. With a bit more, I can begin to access people's memories. I don't like doing that though. It's just rude and makes me feel like a pervert.
I first realised this when I was about nine, after a few months of being the best in the school at any form of guessing game. It was great at first, I could show off to people. They'd ask me numbers or think of things, and I'd try to guess it. They were amazed at how I always got the questions right. It was great fun.
Then came junior high school. Where I soon learned people didn't trust my ability to read minds. They liked their secrets, the things I swore to never pry into, and as a result, kept their distance from me. Nobody wanted to risk me learning their secrets, so nobody wanted to be my friend. I was left as a loner for three or four years.
So, that's when this story begins. One lunch time, as I sat alone eating some yoghurt. I'd just come out of science class where some poor boy, Brian, had been made to work with me. People don't like being in my group, which I always understood, but on the other hand, you don't need to explain what you're thinking to me, right? Isn't that a good thing? Apparently not, which left me to very subtly use my telepathy. Only if I'm not quite sure what they're trying to understand.
I noticed Brian slowly wandering in front of me. He glanced in my direction, then suddenly his path swerved away from me as he stared stone-faced ahead, trying to pretend he hadn't seen me.
"Brian! Come sit with me!" I called out on a whim. I didn't think he would. He looked around nervously, looking for some sort of distraction, sighed and walked over to me.
"Hi Mike," he said, sitting down as far away from me on the seat as he could. "'Sup?"
"Nothing, just wanted to say hi," I said, finishing my yoghurt.
"So... hi?" he said, still looking like he wanted to leave.
"You have anywhere else to be?"
"Well... um... no," he sighed and opened his bag to find his lunch.
"So stay and talk. I won't bite," I said with a nervous smile. He muttered something under his breath about the bite not being what worried him. "Hey, is that the newspaper in your bag? Mind if I have a look?"
"Sure, go ahead," he passed it to me. As I flicked to the only part worth reading, the comics, something caught my eye. An advertisement, for the "Special Children's Institute". They claimed to be an after-school institution for any school aged child with a "special gift of any kind". Well... I could read minds. I think that counts as a gift, right? I grabbed a pen out of my pencil case, jotted the number down on the back of my hand and made a mental note to ask my mum about it later.
"Welcome, Michael," A man of about forty walked down the steps in front of the institute to greet my mother and myself. When she'd called after I'd gotten home from school that day, they'd said I could come immediately so they could see me, show me around, see if I liked it there. "I hear you can read minds," he smiled. "Mind showing me? How about you tell me what my name is."
I looked at him strangely. Nobody had asked me to read their mind in a long time. "Umm... Matthewson. Mr Matthewson?" I guessed after focusing.
He smiled. "Very good. And you must be Mrs Anderson," he nodded to my mother. "Would you two like to come inside?"
We nodded and he led us in the door. Straight away we were in what appeared to be a large gymnasium, with five doors along the back wall. In one half, what appeared to be weights and a boxing ring stood unused, while in the other, there was a basketball court. I recognised a guy from school, Jim Fisher, shooting hoops, missing most of the time. "It's just him?"
Mr Matthewson didn't answer, and I realised he wanted me to answer for him again. "No... Five more people? No, four more people. Right?"
Mr Matthewson nodded again. "Well, I'm impressed. Still, I have to formally test you. It's a simple test. Come with me," he said and led me into the leftmost door. It was just a small office, a computer and telephone sitting on a desk, no posters on the wall, just a small window looking at a small outdoor field. Mr Matthewson sat at the desk, motioned for my mother and myself to sit on two of the remaining chairs, and he pulled a deck of cards out of a drawer. "It's simple, I'll shuffle this deck, draw a few cards and you simply tell me what each card is. Sound fair?"
I nodded and he began shuffling. It was a simple thing I'd done for people for the sake of showing off before. One by one he drew twenty cards, and one by one, I got them correct. He grinned. "Very good, Michael. Michael, or do you prefer Mike? Mike, it is then. Now, I just need you to fill out this form, and I'll take you out to meet the others."
By the time I walked out, there was another person there, a girl who looked a year or so older than me. She looked quite beautiful, shoulder length blonde hair and wearing a school uniform. "Sorry I'm late, Mr Matthewson, got held up in school. Whoa, hey, new guy!"
Mr Matthewson nodded and rung a bell. From one door emerged a pair of identical twins, one with her brown hair in a ponytail, the other wearing glasses, then a boy who looked about eleven from another. "Everybody, we have someone new today. I'd like you to meet Mike Anderson. He's psychic, like you, Tom. Mike, this is Dharma White," he nodded at the blonde girl, "Rita and Amy Henderson," he pointed to the twins. They waved at me, "James Fisher," he pointed to Jim, "And Tom Bain."
Dharma, Rita and Amy came over to say hi, Tom looked me over and went back into his room, while Jim just nodded at me, recognising me from school. "So, you're psychic huh? I suppose you know which of us is which then?" the twin with glasses said.
"You're Rita, right?" I asked and she nodded.
"So, um, I figure Tom is psychic, what do the rest of you do?" I asked.
"You're not gonna read our minds to find out?" Dharma asked, cocking her head.
"Uh, no, did you want me to?"
"We're used to Tom doing that all the time, so it doesn't matter," Rita said. "But Amy and I are super intelligent, Dharma is super strong."
"What about Jim?"
"You know, I've got absolutely no idea. You tell us, Tom won't say a thing," Dharma grinned. I looked over at Jim, who looked like he was reading a book. I focused, trying to read his mind, but all it said was he was "eye candy".
"Um. I don't know either," I said. Was he somehow blocking my psychic powers?
"So what do we do here?" I asked. "Meet up, mostly. Develop our powers. SCI funds our research, so we just do experiments, although some better equipment would be really nice," Rita grumbled.
"Hold on a second, let me get changed, then you can watch me train," Dharma grinned and ran into yet another of the unused door.
"You wanna see this," Amy, the twin with the ponytail spoke up for the first time. "She's really good."
After she emerged, she was wearing a martial arts suit, followed by an older Asian man, perhaps in his 30's, wearing a similar outfit. The two climbed into the ring and stood facing each other. They bowed, and Dharma moved into a defensive stance. The man moved towards her, struck, and in a blur, she ducked underneath him, grabbed his arm and flipped him over her back, the man visibly in pain by it. Dharma bowed again, then grinned over at me, waiting for the man to climb to his feet.
"Mike?" Mr Matthewson suddenly appeared behind me and I started a little. "We'd like you to come and meet Tom."
Tom's room looked something like a living room. There was a sofa along one wall, a coffee table in the middle, a couple of chairs and a computer in one corner. Tom was on the computer, browsing the web. He didn't acknowledge us entering the room, except for closing the web browser.
"Tom, this is -"
"Michael Anderson, I know," Tom said. His voice clearly fitted his age, but there was something more mature about it. "You're bringing him in here because you're hoping I'll be able to interact with him because we both have psychic abilities. You also want us to compete against each other so we'll both improve."
He spun around in his chair, and I came to a stunning realisation; he was a more powerful psychic than me. "So, Mike, you've just realised I'm better than you. Still, you're wanting to have this competition with me. You're wondering how I got to be more powerful than you, wondering if you can reach my level, and now you're realising that you cannot read my mind."
It was true. It was like trying to read a book in the dark, I could barely make it out, but details were beyond me. His mind was impenetrable, and I was amazed.
"So, let's do this competition," he said, giving up his seat to join me on the sofa. Mr Anderson sat opposite us and pulled the deck of cards out of his pocket. The game was basically the same as the test Mr Matthewson had given me before. He drew a card, Tom and I raced each other to guess what it was. Tom won almost every round. Damn, he really was good.
The end of the week rolled by, and I hopped off the bus down town. Tom had basically only talked to me for the sake of the guessing games we played with Mr Matthewson, which he still almost always beat me at; Jim always seemed to keep to himself, although he was like that at school as well, but I'd developed a good friendship with Dharma, Rita and Amy. We'd agreed to meet up at the mall on Saturday to hang out for a while.
"Mike! Finally! You're late!" Dharma called out and ran over to me.
"Uh, yeah, my mum was making me do some chores around home and I wound up missing the bus. Where are Rita and Amy?"
"Oh them? Checking out some computer stuff or something," Dharma pointed at a nearby computer store. Sure enough, Rita and Amy seemed to be in a fierce debate over the virtues of open source software or something, with one of the cashiers who looked like he had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. I had to stop myself once I realised I was reading his mind to see he was also annoyed and being talked down to by people at least five years younger than him.
I sidled up beside them. "Having fun?"
"Oh, hey Mike! Yeah, just trying to explain that shipping new computers with Linux is a good idea," Rita grinned.
"Uh huh," I said, not quite sure what a Linux was, and while they'd said I was free to read their mind for an explanation, I'd tried it earlier in the week and come out scared. Those two are incredibly smart. "So if you two are about done here, I haven't had lunch yet, so let's go get some food."
Rita laughed. "Okay, come on, Amy, let's go."
We began walking down the road to the next block when a man ran out a jewelry store we walked past, grabbing Rita and holding a gun to her head. "Rita!" we shouted as he pulled her towards the road.
"Everyone back off or I shoot her!" he yelled, shaking. It was a robbery gone bad, I found by reading his mind. Someone had activated the silent alarm and an uncooperative store worker had already been shot. I focused, found the injured man, found he was okay, he'd just been hit in the arm, but he was in a lot of pain. But this guy was serious, he'd shoot Rita if he needed to. He had someone coming to pick him up, but needed to make sure nobody tried to stop him until then.
"What do we do?" Dharma asked quietly, under the noise of the scared pedestrians.
"He's probably bluffing," Amy said. "Dharma, do you think you can get him?"
"No," I said. "He's already shot someone, he'll shoot Rita if he needs to. Wait, let me try something."
Then I focused. Tom had shown me a technique that, not only could I read people's minds, I could implant thoughts in their heads. I focused on him, trying to get him to calm down, trying to get him to release Rita. Focused harder. His hand moved to his head. I started to gasp for breath as I focused harder, trying to will him to release Rita. He gripped his head tighter, then lowered his gun, just long enough for Dharma to rush to his side, rip the gun out of his hand and knock him onto his back. Rita ran back to us, Amy holding her for comfort.
The robber looked terrified as Dharma held her foot on his chest, trying not to point the gun at anyone. Within a few minutes, police had arrived to arrest the man, and an ambulance to help the wounded store worker.
"Mike! Are you okay?" my mum ran to me as I came in the door. "I heard there was a robbery down town, did you see it?"
"Um, yeah, we kinda helped stop it," I grinned.
"Oh God, are you alright? You didn't get hurt did you? I heard the man was stopped by a teenage girl, was that that Dharma girl?"
I nodded, and sat down on the couch. I hated to admit it, but it had been a real rush. We'd been in a life-or-death situation, and come out okay, and with one less criminal on the streets.
I felt like a superhero. Like, Rita, Amy, Dharma and I had these powers, we could be like the X-Men. Put them to a good use, or something.
It felt great.
