#3 - Genius

 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 #3

Rita

Prologue

"Well?" 

Oh god, here it came. "Well what?"

"How'd you do?"

"I did... okay," I knew that evasion was never enough though.

"Okay for you, or okay for a normal person?"

I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. I'd learned pretty quickly that there were two types of people when they encountered my sister and myself; those who thought it was some kind of trick, and those who were impressed and scared.

Emily was... a third? One of the few very supportive people but still. We didn't really like the attention, "Okay for me?"

The problem with being several years younger than your classmates meant that you were never as quick or agile as them and she easily snatched the bit of paper out of my hands. "Jesus Christ, Rita, you got 98%? That's amazing!"

Oh there was the blood in my cheeks again. I had to look like a small tomato at this point, damn it. "I know but..."

She wrapped her arms around me. "Don't be so modest. I mean, you'd already graduated anyway but you're twelve years old and you just got almost perfect marks in the last exam for your Bachelors. You and Amy are amazing!"

I mean... she wasn't wrong...

Genius

"What'cha doing?"

Holy crap, where did he come from? James had a good habit of sneaking up behind people like that.

I'm Rita by the way. Genius and all that. Which has its perks, but when you graduate from college before you hit puberty and apparently they don't like letting pre-teens start their doctorate just yet... it leads to a lot of downtime.

"Research?" I replied, trying to not sound suspicious while closing as many browser tabs as possible.

"That's interesting research," he said with a grin. "Sorry, I'm just being nosey."

James was somewhat of an enigma. While Amy, my twin sister, and I had been out of school for years, so spent most of our time at the SCI, James was, as far as I was aware, still school age and yet, he spent his whole day there too. Tom did as well actually, and we'd never been given a decent explanation as to why.

Which led to him sometimes just... lingering around us while we worked.

And, to be fair, perhaps going Wiki surfing does not technically count as research, although surely getting into an argument with people on the internet about the Deathly Hallows counted as sharpening my mental skills? Yeah, let's go with that.

Look, I swear it was relevant.

"But anyway, apparently once Mike and Dharma get here, we're doing a group activity today. I got asked to tell you,"

"Ah, thanks," I said, watching him as he left. Those were always very hit or miss. Supposedly they were supposed to both help us bond as a group whole developing our abilities, but Amy and I never saw the point. There was some amount of overlap in skills between our smarts, and Tom and Mike's psychic abilities but Dharma's ability was just being incredibly strong and James...

Well I still had no idea what he could even do or why he was even here. He'd never shown a hint at any ability, when we'd asked Mr Matthewson, he'd told us he didn't know either and Amy had asked Tom and Tom just said it wasn't any of her business.

So when we could be doing something actually helpful, not that we really were at that point in time, instead we were stuck doing this group activity.

In any case, I felt like I'd been successfully distracted from my work by being confused about James, so I got up and walked out of the room. Amy glanced over in my direction, but she went back to the hopefully actually helpful thing she was doing before speaking up. "Giving up?"

"For now," I said, but I'd decided on a slightly different mission.

Tom spent a lot of his free time in his own room, usually just reading books or on his laptop. Book this time. "No." And that was a pretty typical response for him.

"I-"

"You want me to tell you what James can do. And no, I won't," he was always very to the point but that's what came with him knowing what you were going to say before you did.

"But you do know then," I pointed out.

He grinned at me. "Sharp as always, Rita. But also no, Mike is right when he says he doesn't know." It did always throw one off when he started the next phase of the conversation before you realised you were going to.

"Why not?"

"Mike's a bit of a shit psychic really," He probably could have worded that better, and the swearing sounded a bit wrong from someone as young as him but his point was right. Tom's psychic abilities were incredible and compared to him, Mike was like a baby to a world class sprinter.

So on to the next question. "No, that wasn't me watching you the other night."

I hadn't seen it myself, Mike and Dharma had gone into the school by themselves while Amy and I watched the perimeter but Dharma had mentioned afterwards that Mike had sensed someone on the roof watching them. It had been in the back of my mind, but Amy nor I had talked to anyone about it since then. So, I opened my mouth to respond but he cut me off again. "Look, I don't care that much about your little superhero group that much. It's a pretty stupid idea, which is why I don't want any part of it."

I nodded slowly and thanked him, then headed out of the room, before his voice stopped me at the door. "Just... Be careful, okay? Don't let yourselves get in too deep to all this."

And with that ominous word of warning, I moved on to stage two of my mission.

James himself.

I found him in the indoor gymnasium the SCI had handy, practicing basketball. Ahh, I felt a wave of realisation come over me.

"We're doing basketball then?" 

James nodded and missed his shot. "Apparently. I think I need to practice."

"Yeah you're one to talk," I said, taking the ball off him. My throw didn't even make it to the hoop and he failed at suppressing a chuckle. "Look, sports isn't my thing, okay?"

"It's fine," he said, fetching the ball before sitting on the ground under the hoop. "So why are you here?"

"To ask you exactly that same question,"

"Again?" 

I sighed and sat down next to him. "You know me. I don't like not knowing things."

"I can get that, you know, but there's no big mystery. I can't really do anything," he said. 

"Uh huh," I said, looking him up and down. "So why are you here, at an institute for gifted kids?"

He shrugged, then patted me on the knee, stood up and walked off. "Nowhere else to go, I guess."

The guy was irritating sometimes, I swear.

And so, with my mission for answers a complete failure, I returned to our makeshift lab, where Mike had apparently arrived and was talking to Amy. "Oh hey! Amy says we're doing some group activity?"

"Basketball, apparently,"

"Oh? That's a bit weird," he said. "Hey, you know what would be cool? Tug a war with Dharma against the rest of us."

"Nah," she said as she entered the room. "For one thing, I want a challenge, and for another, I suggested it a while ago and Tom was very adamantly against it for some reason."

I nodded. "Came out with a bunch of stuff about how unsafe the game is or something."

"Right," Mike said, clearly not believing that reason any more than the rest of us. "But before we do, can we have a quick catch up?"

It had been a few days since our mission at the school; Mike only came to the SCI twice a week and so while Dharma, Amy and I had talked about it a bit, this was the first time we'd been together as a group to discuss things.

"Okay, so firstly, are we still all good with this?" he asked, pulling up a handy nearby chair and sitting down. I noted he was specifically looking at me when he asked that. Of course, he'd read my mind and Tom's warning earlier was still gently brewing.

Might as well come out with it then. "Tom seems to think we're being stupid and warned me that we shouldn't get in too deep with this."

Dharma stepped forward from her perch, leaning against the wall. "Too deep... with what?"

I shrugged. "Fighting crime, I guess?"

"More importantly, was he the guy on the roof?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No, that was the first thing he said."

"But is he lying?"

"No," Mike said. "I would have been able to tell if it was Tom, but also, I don't think Tom would lie about that."

That was definitely true. Tom didn't seem like the type to lie much at all. I suspected when nobody could ever lie to him, it meant he found the idea of lying to others to be a strange idea.

"So who was it then? Do we just have a fan?"

"Or an enemy?" Amy pointed out.

Not long after that, Mr Matthewson arrived to usher us into the gymnasium to begin the basketball. Oh goody.

He'd decided we'd play boys versus girls. I wasn't entirely sure which team had the upper hand. While men typically had higher than average performances in sports over women and this was certainly also true at our age level, for one thing, they had Tom who was the youngest of the group by far and wasn't exactly large for his age, and also, we had Dharma who was much stronger and faster than any man or woman.

Unfortunately for us, while Dharma was definitely faster than any of them, that ability didn't translate into an ability to make baskets. Turns out basketball is a different skill set to martial arts. Who knew?

There's also a somewhat common misconception that geniuses are good at sports. After all, throwing a ball is a matter of simple physics, and if you ignore friction, the parabola that a ball follows is a simple high school equation that Amy and I had mastered since most people were still struggling with "maths with letters". Unfortunately again, knowing how the equations work does not translate into hand eye coordination. So I made at least one basket! Amy made two. Not that I was being competitive. 

In any case, we figured out a strategy pretty quickly. For one thing, we didn't understand sports enough to come up with any sort of complicated strategy, and for another, that was a pointless exercise when the opposing team had two mind readers and could instantly tell what our plans were. And so, simple strategy it was: try to get the ball to Dharma and try to get her to carry us.

It worked for the most part. The game was only ten minutes a side, but with twenty seconds left, we were ahead by two points and James had the ball. Dharma raced over to intercept the ball and he tried to fake sidestepping around her, but she was too quick to fall for it. 

I was positioned perfectly behind him when it happened though. He took a long shot at the hoop. It went wide and would have missed the hoop by at least half a metre.

And yet, as I watched, the ball curved in the air. Not by enough to notice if you weren't standing where I was, and yet, it clearly did.

The ball made it in.

Mr Matthewson blew the whistle. The game was over and we'd lost but that was the furthest thing from my mind. I glanced over at Amy and she had a furrowed brow that I had seen many times when she was figuring things out.

"Did you see that?" she asked when I walked over to him and I nodded. Apparently it wasn't as unnoticeable as I'd thought.

"No way that was going in," I agreed.

"No way in hell," 

The boys team were exchanging high fives, and I noticed Tom steal a look at me with a knowing look in his eye and that confirmed it for me. Whatever that was, was whatever James's ability was. But how.

Amy and I plopped ourselves down against the wall of the gymnasium, while Tom, James and Dharma retired to do whatever it was they were going to do for the rest of the day. Mike, however, came over to talk.

"So I have a question for you two," he said, sitting down in front of us and wiping the sweat from his forehead. "How do I do what I can do?"

It was a question I'd thought about before, particularly with regards to Tom because all scientific evidence said that mind reading was impossible. And yet, we had clear evidence of it in front of us on many, many occasions and no other rational explanation.

"Biology isn't really our specialty," Amy admitted straight away. "I studied physics and Rita did chemistry."

I nodded. "And there's a decent amount of overlap between chemistry and biology but I haven't studied enough to be sure. Plus, for some reason the SCI doesn't have the budget for us to perform neuroscience. But we have a theory."

"Your brain works," Amy said, "by the neurons that make it up sending electrical signals throughout your brain. We think that yours and Tom's brains are somehow able to pick up on these signals from other people's brains. This shouldn't really be possible, the electrical signal doesn't really go too far outside of your skull but for some reason, you two can do it."

Mike nodded. "And Dharma just has really highly developed muscles and reflexes?"

I nodded. "More or less, yes."

"What about you two? Because there's more than just having good brains, right?"

Amy and I exchanged another look. "We're not sure..."

Mike sighed and crossed his arms. "Okay, so I'd rather actually ask you and not just read your minds because healthy communication and all, so I'm not trying to read your minds right now, but I can still definitely tell you're lying there."

I sighed. "It's dumb, really."

"No, go on," he said. "I know you're embarrassed but it's fine."

"We... weren't originally twins," I said. "When our mother was pregnant with us, she was told we were quadruplets. Four heart beats, four fetuses and everything. There was absolutely zero doubt about it."

"And then, a few months into the pregnancy... two were gone," Amy said.

"Gone?"

"Gone. Not a trace," I confirmed.

"Like... miscarried?"

I shook my head. "No, although that's how mom interpreted it. She was absolutely devastated. But there was no other heartbeat, no other fetuses, just... nothing."

Mike began scratching his chin intently. "And you two think that you... what... absorbed the other two? Stole their brainpower somehow?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, it just seems like a strange thing to happen. And... I don't know, it just feels kinda wrong? Like we somehow cannibalised our siblings or something?"

Mike just laughed at that. "Now you two should know that that makes no sense and besides, you weren't even born yet, it's not like you can be held responsible at all."

"Yeah we know, like I said, it's dumb,"

Mike stood up and rubbed our shoulders. "No, it's fine. I'm glad you two told me."

I rubbed his hand, then stood up and looked over at the basketball hoop. "I suppose as well, it's not like it would be the strangest thing in the world when we have psychics like you and Tom running around."

Mike was following my gaze, staring at the basketball hoop. "Or someone whose mind says that he has no special abilities at all, and yet, can somehow change the direction of a ball in midair."

--- END ---

#2 - The Founding

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 #2

Dharma

Prologue

"Hey, shorty!" I heard a voice behind me and sighed, but kept walking.

"Oi! You! I'm talking to you!" I still kept walking. A small rock flew over my head and I heard some laughing behind me. I stopped and looked behind me. Four guys, all at least five or six years older than me. "You're that girl who thinks you're tough, aren't you?" one of them grinned. Oh boy. I knew what was coming.

"Probably," I muttered and kept walking.

"Think you're too tough to talk to me?"

"I've gotta get home, idiot,"

Suddenly, the four of them surrounded me, standing nice and close to me to try and intimidate me. I'd seen that before and it never worked. I don't scare easily. "I've heard you think you're tougher than anyone else."

"I don't think that, I know that. Now get out of my way, I need to get home," I said, shaking my head slowly.

"Or what?"

"Or I'll kick your asses and get you out of my way," They all laughed. It made sense. They were fifteen or sixteen, I was only ten. Then, one of them swung at me.

Not smart. I dodged quickly, grabbing his arm and throwing him into the guy opposite him. They both hit the ground hard. Swung my foot at another and he fell face-first into the ground. The last guy looked shocked. Well, he did until my fist hit his face. Then he just looked like his nose was broken.

"I said, I need to get home,"

The Founding

Hello! Dharma here. You know. The cute one. And, well, the strong one. I honestly can't remember any fight I haven't won. Rita and Amy, the two brainiacs, once told me they thought I had overdeveloped muscles or something like that. I could swing harder and faster than anyone my age, or any age for that matter, should be able to.

Which meant idiots liked to try prove themselves against me.

It never ended well.

The most amusing were always the idiots who had no idea what they were dealing with. Like one particular mugger I came across heading to the SCI after school.

I never thought I looked particularly wealthy. My dad has a decent job, so we aren't short on cash much, but I wouldn't say we're rich. Still, rich enough that, while I was casually wandering from school in an alley that was a bit shadier than a sixteen year old girl has any business being in, I suddenly felt someone grab my arm and shove something sharp in my back.

"Empty your pockets," an oldish male voice said behind me.

Just a knife. A gun, and I'd have been more cautious. I'm quick, but not quick enough to dodge bullets.

I slowly reached into my right pocket, then slowly pulled out my cellphone. "Now give it to me," the mugger said, "and your wallet."

"I'm a 10th grader, I don't have one on me, idiot," I said. He pushed the knife in a bit harder and called me a female dog, though not in as nice words.

I quickly dialled 911 and slammed my fist into the hand he was holding me with. He yelped in pain and I jumped out of his reach as the call connected.

"Hello, police? I'm in an alley and someone's trying to mug me. ... Off Forth St... White man, late 30's, I think? Brown hair. Got a knife... Yeah, he's swinging it at me but he hasn't hit me yet. Whoa! That one was close... Yeah, that's him swinging at me in the background. ... No, that's fine. Hey, if I think my life is in danger, I'm allowed to retaliate in self defence, right? ... No, not taking any needless risks, I just need to get him to stop swinging at me. Okay, then, thank you."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So what happened after that?" Mike asked. "You kinda stopped talking for a bit."

"Oh, I punched him in the stomach. Went down like a brick," I grinned at my three SCI friends, Rita, Amy and Mike, a psychic. "But on his way down, he puked all over my top. So, after I gave a statement to the cops, I had to go home and have a shower. Which is why I'm late."

"Uh huh. Is she being serious?"

"You're the psychic one, Mike, why are you asking us?" Amy pointed out

Mike blushed a little. "I try not to read minds if I don't have to. I don't want to be a pervert. But that's not important! We're all sitting around suspiciously because Dharma and I wanted to talk about something."

I eyed him up and down a little. "We do, huh? Well, yes, I do, but I never mentioned that to you."

Mike blinked a little. "Crap. I guess I did read your mind a little. Sorry."

I laughed a bit and patted him on the back as gently as I could. Which, given his reaction, wasn't as gentle as I'd hoped. "Like we've said. We're used to Tom doing it all the time."

He blushed some more and ran his hand through his hair. "But anyway, about Saturday. We did something, well, pretty cool."

"Pretty dangerous too," Amy pointed out dryly.

"Well, yes. But still cool!"

"So? Are you saying want to be some kind of superhero?" Rita asked.

"Some kind. Why not? We're here to learn how to use our abilities and we might as well use them.for something useful, rather than just cheap tricks like we do here," I said. "I mean, I can stay here and keep fighting against trained professionals or I can do something useful and fight people who really deserve it."

"And get badly hurt?" Amy pointed out again.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Mike cut me off. "Well, maybe. It's not like we're going to go after drug lords or serial killers or whatever. But we should do what we can to help. As long as we stay safe, how bad can it go?"

"Famous last words," Rita muttered.

I tried to say something again, but this time it was Amy who cut me off. "I say we go for it."

"Say what now?" I said, while Mike just grinned. Had he seen it coming? Probably had been reading her mind a little as well.

Amy shrugged. "I mean, yeah, it's a terrible idea. But like you said, we can do a bit of good."

Rita looked like she was staring daggers at Amy. Weird, the two usually agreed on just about everything.

"So is that most of us for it then?" Mike asked, although I was pretty sure he knew the answer already. "So what now then?"

"Well we probably need a name first, right?" I suggested. "Like we could use this place's name maybe?"

"I don't think Special Children's Institution is that good a name anyway to be honest," Mike said. "What about like... Super Kids Institution? That sounds a bit more superhero?"

Amy shook her head. "No, Institution makes us sound like we're a bit umm..."

"Initiative!" I suddenly said loudly and everyone stared at me. "What? It sounds cool."

"So what. We're Super Kids Initiative now?" Mike asked. "Sounds good! So what, now we need a plan?"

Rita finally spoke up. "Amy and I can get a police scanner or something to find out what's happening and we can make plans from there." Oh good, I was kinda worrying she wasn't entirely on board and Mike nodded at her suggestion.

"So I think the last thing," I said, "is to pick leader. I vote Mike."

"What?" he seemed kinda caught off guard by my suggestion. Actually, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure where I'd gotten the idea from but it made sense for some reason.

Rita and Amy exchanged a quick look. "Works for us too. Mike's in charge!"

"Well... Okay, I guess. Feels a bit wrong since I'm the new guy but if that's what you guys want."

I had a look around the room. Jim was in the far corner, engrossed in his phone while Tom looked bit like he was trying not to look at us and I swear he just turned bright red.

"Right though, we should do what we're supposed to do though, meet back this time tomorrow," Mike said and we all went our own separate ways.

The rest of the day for me consisted of reflex training, they called it. Generally my training was on a bit of a rotation, some amount of working out, like running and push ups and such, some sparring, which Mike had seen me doing the first day he'd arrived, some boring meditation type stuff, some general martial arts work and this reflex training. The latter two was what they always told me was most important, I was already naturally extremely strong and tough but that didn't mean much if I didn't know how to fight or if I couldn't dodge and took too strong of a hit. I was strong, not invincible.

Reflex training involved two main key points. Part of it was a bit like those baseball shooty machine things, where I had to dodge the balls firing at me. But as my instructors always liked to say, just dodging wasn't just good enough, being able to use those chances to counter-attack was vital too.

Really, why didn't we come up with this superhero idea sooner? It made a lot of sense and half my training was pushing towards that.

I headed towards the training room and apparently in that time, Jim had started wandering around the room and was now by the door, still looking at his phone. As I walked past, he glanced up and me and smiled.

"Sup," he said as I tried not to make eye contact with him. I mean... He was an alright guy I guess, and a bit cute maybe but also such a weirdo.

"Nothing much," I said still trying to walk past him.

"You guys looked like you were having a fun chat before," Oh I guess he hadn't just been engrossed in his phone.

"Yup," I didn't really want to talk about it with him of all people, but I guess I wasn't dodging him too easily this time. "Mike's pretty cool. So are Rita and Amy."

Jim nodded. "Yeah that's true, I haven't really talked to him yet though."

I mean... Yeah of course, you didn't really talk to anyone though. I felt like this was the longest conversation I'd ever had with him. "Anyway, I better get going," I nodded towards the door.

"Oh yeah, of course. Oh and Dharma?" He called out as I walked into the training room. "Be careful."

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I only got hit by balls during the dodging exercise a few times, and I swear that asshole of an instructor had turned up the speed of them on me. Ugh. Made me want to throw a ball in his face and see how he liked it. Or maybe a brick.

No, calm yourself, Dharma.

But I'd barely left the SCI on my way home when my phone started ringing. Rita?

"Hey girl, what's up?"

"Hey how ready are you for this superhero thing?"

"Uhhh... Why?"

"So I just checked Twitter and apparently some guy's gone a bit mental and is holding a class of kids hostage,"

"Wait what? Why?"

"No idea, Amy's calling Mike now but I thought this was a good thing to start with. It looks pretty serious,"

"Right, text me the details. Bye!"

Sure enough, I checked on my own phone as I waited for Rita's text to come through and it was at a primary school not far from where we were. A class of 23 was being held hostage at gunpoint and while some shots had been fired, there hadn't been any injuries or anything reported yet.

Mike suddenly ran up behind me. "My mum is gonna kill me, she was on her way to pick me up and I had to make up something about having to stay late."

Right so Amy had spoken to him.

"Yeah, Amy filled me in," he said.

Damn it Mike, stop reading my mind.

"Sorry," he blushed. "Anyway, let's go."

It was pretty easy to find the place, we just had to find the mass of police cars surrounding the place. They were definitely taking this seriously, and rightfully so.

Mike and I snuck as close as we could without drawing any attention. Where were Rita and Amy?

This way, a thought appeared in my head in a slightly familiar voice.

That's me, Mike, the voice came back. I sound a bit different because of that whole thing where you sound different out loud to how you think you do. Come on, this way.

Right. Mike led me to a hedge with a small gap in it where the police didn't seem to be watching, and Rita and Amy were waiting on the other side.

"That was a bit dangerous," Mike whispered. "You should have waited for me, I can find people more easily."

"Sorry," Amy said. "We got in though. I think it's that room over there, can you check?"

Mike furrowed his brow in concentration and stared at the room then shook his head. "There's... Something there but it's too far."

The room had windows facing us but all the curtains had been drawn and no lights were on inside. Hard to tell if that was it or not. Rita pulled out her phone though, clipped a big cone or something on to it, plugged in some headphones and listened. She then noticed my confused look. "Parabolic mic. Good for picking up sound from far away. But yes, there's sound from inside that room so hopefully you're right there."

Mike nodded. "Right, Rita, Amy, you two stay here. No offence but you're not terribly useful in a fight. Keep guard or something."

The two of them exchanged a look, then nodded although Amy seemed to look a wee bit disappointed. "Wait, take these," she said and pulled a bundle of zip ties out of her pocket. Why was she carrying those? No matter.

Dharma, come on, he motioned for us to start moving closer, hugging the wall as we went, then suddenly he put a thought for us to stop in my head. There's someone on the roof above us.

Police? I thought at him.

No... I can sense their mind but I can't make anything out, his voice appeared in our minds. I think we can keep moving though.

We reached the building and I tried to look back at the roof where Mike had said the guy was, but I could only see the edge of the roof.

Yup, this is the room, Mike thought at me. I can read his thoughts and the kids' now. No kids killed thankfully, but everyone, including the gunman, are pretty scared.

How do we get in? I asked. Where is he?

This time, an image, a bit like a tough sketch, appeared in my head, showing a top down view of the classroom with circles showing a bunch of kids huddling in a corner and the gunman pacing in the front of the class. Thanks, Mike! I looked over at him and he was starting to look out of breath. Oh god, how much effort did it take to use his powers?

I'm fine, he thought at me but I didn't need his powers to know he was lying. Not important right now though.

This way, I thought. His crude diagram had shown the door to the class was further around, on the other side of the building. 

What are you planning, Mike thought at me although he had to already know the answer.

Once we'd reached the door, we hid at the bottom of it, trying to listen to what was going on inside. Not a whole lot. A kid sobbed a bit loudly and the gunman shouted at them to shut up. 

Okay, so my plan is to basically charge the door down and him with it, I thought.

That seems like a bit of a terrible plan, Mike answered.

Nah trust me, I can do it, I grinned. Let me know when he's close.

Dharma, no, he replied. Don't be reckless.

Apparently he didn't realise how good I am. Guess I'd just have to do it myself. I stood up and snuck a look through the small window in the top half of the door. The man was probably in his 30s? Messy black hair and hadn't shaved for at least a week. He also looked very twitchy and luckily, was looking at the ground as he paced and not at me.

Dharma... Mike's voice appeared in my head again .

Nah, I could do this. I watched long enough to know when he was close, then crouched down and backed up.

Okay. Three... Two... One... I charged into the door with my full strength which was easily enough to take it off its hinges. Unfortunately, what I hadn't counted was the door pivoting just enough before it did to slightly throw me off balance so while I hit the man, it was a glancing blow, and we both fell to the ground, but he wasn't pinned underneath me like I'd planned.

He still had a hold of his gun too and pointed it at me as I tried to get back up on my feet and I let out a swear word.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked as I struggled to figure out the next part of my plan.

"I'm uhh... here to stop you?" Think Dharma, think. Right! Mike could do his mind control whatever thing he'd done to the robber the other day!

I can't, Mike said, I tried but it's not working. I think I'm too tired.

I glanced at him then back at the man. "You're doing a pretty bad job of that." he growled, his eyes flashing between me and the kids. I just needed something to get his attention for long enough for me to grab him without getting shot. Hmm. Maybe I should have thought this plan out a bit more.

"That's your daughter over there," Mike said walking into the room, leaning on the door and the man froze. "You lost custody of her and panicked."

The man was now staring intently at Mike. "How..."

"You wanted to pick her up from school," Mike continued and I could see the effort on his face as he read the man's mind. "But when you were told no, you got angry and pulled out your gun and well... Here we are. But this isn't helping."

Tears were welling up in the man's eyes. "I just wanna see my little girl, man."

"Look at her!" Mike shouted pointing at the girl, huddling in the corner, her face stained with tears. "Is this how you want her to remember you? As a crazy, high guy wanting to shoot her friends? Because that's how she's seeing you now. A monster."

The man turned to look at her daughter. "Oh god..."

That was my chance. He'd let his arm holding the gun fall and I jumped on him, holding him down and, with little resistance, taking the gun from his hands. I pulled out the zip ties Amy had given me and tightly bound his hands and then his feet together, then grabbed his gun, unloaded it and left it out of his reach. 

"Come on kids, you're safe now. Get out of here." Mike didn't need to tell them twice as he ushered them out the door. "Now we should go before the cops arrive."

"Wait," the guy said as we turned. "How did you know all that?"

Mike just tapped his forehead and we turn and ran back the way we'd come.

"Job well done, I think," I grinned.

"Yeah but you need to watch yourself, Dharma, that was stupid," Mike said. Jeez, he'd make a good dad someday with a voice like that.

"Okay, okay, I'll be a bit more careful next time," I said. I meant it. Serious. Mike, stop reading my mind.

"That guy is still there too," he said as we climbed back through the hedge. Wait really?

Who was that guy? Surely we'd find out soon.

--- END ---