Mentally - 17. Kieran Klein

“No!” I gasped. But Damian wasn’t bothered by my disbelief. It was as if he meant to hide this fact all along. However, I was sure that Damian would have told me when we were kids if he was one. “That’s impossible! You never showed any traits of being a Mental.”

“What are you talking about?” He asked. His tone was genuine. Almost like a response of similar disbelief to my own. My heart thumped upward to the back of my throat because of what I was seeing. “I always had powers ever since I was a little kid. It ran in the family. I really think you have mistaken me for some other person.”

“No! I’m sure you’re the Damian Davis I have been looking for all this time!” I argued back at him. “The way you look. The way you speak. Even the way you are so brash with everything. There is no way you are someone else!”

“I’m sorry, Kieran. That may be a different person.” He replied earnestly. Then he slowly lowered his hands. All the objects around us started to fall, too. At the back of my head, I was slightly impressed. An average Mental would not be able to lift that many objects at once. Damian’s psychic prowess was definitely beyond the ordinary. “I hope you find your best friend. I really do.”

“Kieran. Just stop.” Aiden sympathized. His voice was somber, and it just irritated me further. It was as if he pitied me so much because he was also missing an important person. “Let’s just leave.”

“No!” I resisted. Then I looked at Damian straight in the eye. Worry started to fill his pupils, and he hesitantly stepped back. “I waited for a long time for this! There’s no way I’m gonna lose you again!”

“You had already lost Damian a very long time ago. Just deal with it.” A woman’s voice came from behind. Like an antagonist waiting for her grand entrance, she walked from behind Damian towards the middle of the dome with a set of slow claps. Anna Festus obviously loved the theatrics she was demonstrating. Then she paused right beside him. “This is such a dramatic reunion. What a perfect climax for such a friendship. But I’m afraid this is not the Damian you knew.”

“You bitch!” I roared and instinctively unleashed a powerful psychic push towards her. If my anger could fuel my psychic strength, then I had limitless power at that very moment. “How could you do that to a child?!”

But before my psych push had hit Anna, it was countered with the same amount of force from Damian himself. The explosive clash of immense energies caused the dome to shake. Even Aiden was blasted away by a few steps. Then I could see the glass windows from afar crack.

“I think you could be a good friend of mine, Kieran.” Damian said. He had his game face on like a soccer player in his first game. The rush of excitement and anxiety mixed on his childish face. “But I won’t let you lay a single hand on her. She’s practically my mother. You’d have to go through me first!”

“How could you call someone who experimented on you your mother?” I asked him. It left a sour taste in my mouth. “A true mother will protect her children from the horrors of this world. Even if the cost of that is her life! She nothing like that!”

“You don’t know Aunt Anna!” Damian roared with his tiny voice and blasted me with his own version of psychic push. It was spread out compared to mine. There was a lack of technique and finesse in its execution. And with a wave of my hand, I swatted it away. “She was there for me because my father is too busy with his responsibilities!”

That created a crack in my heart. The bitch assumed the role I always had in his life. I was Damian’s escape from his horrible father. And it was a unique role I fulfilled with all my soul. No wonder why he was fiercely protective of her.

“Then think back to your childhood!” I suggested with a raised voice. It was the first thing I could think of. When I asked him about his past, he got easily confused. “You won’t see her there.”

And it took effect almost immediately. His willpower started to crumble. Damian started to grab his head in confusion as he searched for his memories of Anna Festus. I knew that the memories were probably planted or at least repressed. I just had to recalibrate his mind, and he would surely remember me.

“That’s enough!” Anna Festus howled, snapping Damian out of his short trance. I knew it had already started to create some sort of conflict from within. His face contorted a few times in frustration. Even Aiden noticed that for sure. We just had to wake him up from the spell. “Your tricks won’t work, so give it up. Your stay here has expired.”

One by one, soldiers stormed into the dome. Guns were raised and aimed at us with precision. I got worried for Mr. Horikoshi and Delta Team Six. But I was sure that they could take care of themselves. Those guys were the toughest and the meanest. I wouldn’t assume they’ll go down that easily.

“Kill them!” The bitch commanded coldly.

Without warning, shots were fired. But that was pretty much futile for a Mental like me. Bullets were a plaything. I pulled Aiden closer to me with my powers and raised a psychic shield that deflected the bullets. They were deflected without my care in the world. Based on the firearms, they were assault weapons meant to kill. It was definitely not meant for guarding a mere business complex.

My mentor was right. There was something else inside the building because of the military firepower it was housing. I started to look around for an escape route, but I began to hear choppers from above. Their full attention was focused on us. As much as I appreciated the architecture, I had no choice but to pave a new way.

I immediately used my new eye powers and saw the kinetic energy wasted everywhere. The atmosphere was filled with so much of it, so I started to gather them in one spot above. It didn’t take much effort since all of them were aimed at me. I just had to guide it to a specific point in the open space. And with a flick of my finger, I slammed it down the ground, creating a shockwave. The platform quickly broke, and all of us fell down to the lower floors.

I erected a shield around Aiden and me to protect ourselves. Then it acted as a cushion as the central part of the dome broke down. The soldiers started to fall one by one from the huge gaping hole. On the other side, I lost sight of Anna and Damian. But they were too near to get away. I was positive that they went down with us.

However, the plan worked. The firing from the soldiers died down, and we finally stopped them from killing us. For now. It would not really last because they were caught off guard. Dirt was everywhere, and despite the psychic shield, we found ourselves coughing out the dust cloud.

“What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck were you thinking? That’s the most idiot move I could think of!” Aiden groaned beside me. He sounded like he was hurt badly, but he was actually annoyed. It was the only way out anyway. We were surrounded in all directions, including above us. “You could have killed us!”

“Shut up.” I snapped back at him. Then I started to look around and assess the current situation. “It’s called the element of surprise.”

“It’s only a fucking surprise because you don’t know what you were doing!” Aiden commented. He slowly stood up and looked around to see if a hallway didn’t cave in. “You just called their whole army on us!”

“That was the point.” I countered back. Aiden looked like I said something even more stupid. He stared at me like I was a walking bag of unused brain cells. “Our allies need to get away with what they were doing. And only we could defend ourselves. I doubt they have a powerful Mental around that could go toe-to-toe with me!”

Before speaking further, I sensed some faint sign of life from behind me. As soon as I turned, I saw Anna Festus under a massive pile of concrete. It definitely crushed her right leg and was trapped underneath. They were no way she could come after us. It was then I noticed that Damian was unharmed right beside her. Tears were pouring out from his face.

“What did you do?” The boy cried. He looked at me as if I had betrayed him too readily. My heart dwindled from the pain written all over his tiny face. “She tried to protect me! I should have been the one crushed under that rock!”

“No! She was just using you, Damian.” I pleaded. But in that situation, there was no way I could convince him with my argument. To him, I have finally revealed myself as the villain. “These people are just hungry for power, and they wanted to use you for that!”

“Nonsense!” He quipped angrily. Then he wiped them off like a little child. All I wanted at that moment was to hug him and absorb all his pain. “If you only knew what she always talked about, then you would have changed your mind about her.”

“They’re just trying to brainwash you!” I argued further. But that was no way to convince a little child. “Please. Believe me!”

“N-no! She’s a goo-good pe-person!” Damian stammered. “All she wanted was to make everyone’s life better. And this is what you gave her! How dare you!”

“Damian. Please.” I moaned and walked near him. But the tension between us at that point was too thick. It was only an emotional wall, yet it felt like a psychic construct because it was too intense. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s too late for that now.” He replied and slowly stood up straight. All the emotions in his face were washed away. Some sort of weird heat oozed up all around him like a fever. “I really wish I met you in a different circumstance. Then maybe, we could really be the best of friends.”

“We could still be if we tried.” I stated flatly. It was a futile attempt to win him back over. I had hurt the person he looked up to as a mother. If someone tried to harm my mom, hell would also break loose. Although Anna Festus was knocked out by accident, we fell into the palm of her hands. “I just wanted to go back to the way things were.”

“There’s nothing there.” Damian replied. “Just stop it.”

“The last time I saw you was when you confessed you loved me.” I continued. But he no longer had any emotional responses to what I just said. His face and mind were blank and numb. “And I finally told you how much I loved you back. I wanted to go back to that.”

Both of us summoned our psychic energy. As the atmosphere thickened, his was hotter than usual. It was of a different nature. All I could assume was that it was due to his experimentation. Maybe, he was a different kind of Mental. And that would be dangerous because they may have capabilities that I didn’t.

We raised our arms against each other simultaneously and released a strong blast of psychic energy. It clashed between us, and the debris all around us flew away from the center. The ground shook once again, and I quickly sensed how I was slowly losing my footing. My feet wobbled as the platform beneath me gave away.

But before I could react, Damian was sprinting towards me on all fours like a rabid beast. Everything went fast, and he hacked me with his arms. Since everything was happening quickly, I could barely notice the hidden blades he used. It was weird because I could have sensed if he hid some weapons under his sleeves.

I had no choice to dodge his attacks. Yet I couldn’t help but notice the swordplay he used against me. They weren’t movements of a mere child any longer. Each attack was meant to precisely strike blindspots. And whenever I would try to blast him with an omni-directional psychic shockwave, he would neutralize it by applying the same amount of energy that sent out.

Unfortunately, I was not used to close-quarters combat. Since I often use my innate Mental powers, most of my fights were at least mid-range. But Damian was keeping me real close. Every time I would step back, he would quickly close in with a lounge. Aiden attempted to join in the fray but was easily kicked back a few seconds later. Both of us were useless in hand-to-hand combat.

That was when I noticed that Damian never had hidden blades. It took some time to process because he was using something else to slash me — it was actually his very own blood! The crimson fluid had hardened itself as Damian fashioned it like a short blade. No wonder why each strike was well aimed. His weapons could easily extend and retract according to his whim.

As our heat exchange continued, I slowly mimicked his movements. I fashioned my own blades out of sheer psychic energy and started to parry his slashes. It was out of the question that I had the upper hand because drops of blood began to whisk away his blade whenever our weapons would cross in mid-air. Thus, Damian retorted, turning his short blades into long whips to induce a mid-range battle.

But that was my goal. He didn’t know that I was already concocting my attacks from the unseen realm. It was only a matter of time before I could grab ahold of the reils and dhorrs around me and neutralize all of his attacks. Once I have redirected the pathways around me, no attacks would touch my body. The laws of physics would already have been broken at that point.

I was supposed to have the upper hand when Damian turned the table against me. A tail suddenly grew from his back and ripped his elegant suit. It looked like a set of bones as if it was the extension of the spinal cord. At the back of my head, I tried to counter it through mental images because it would have been just an illusion — similar to what Aiden did. But I was wrong. It was a physical tail that lunged towards me.

My reflexes kicked in as I shielded myself with a psychic wall. But Damian must have observed how I coated a thin amount of space at the tip of my fingers with a concentrated amount of psychic energy. Then he repeated the same concept on his ponytail, and it effortlessly ripped through my shield. I barely dodged his attack as the sharpened tip of the tail went through my shoulder.

White, searing pain erupted as I was raised upwards by his tail. Even both my feet left the ground. The pain and discomfort flew up exponentially since all of my body weight was carried through the gaping wound on my shoulder. Whenever I would attempt to summon an ounce of strength to push him away with a psychic blast, Damian would twist his tail inside the wound. That would immediately cause an explosion of hell inside my body as I screamed and cried.

Before I could even make a move, Damian grew another tail beside the first one and aimed the tip on my face. His face was still expressionless, as if all his initial desire to befriend me was a performance. But when I looked at him, his eyes were glassy, and he was on the verge of tears.

“You’re…not a…Mental.” I huffed in between my gasps for air. The ache on my shoulder was enough to paralyze and immobilize my ability to think. “What are you?”

“Not really. I’m something more than that.” Damian replied dryly. Slowly, his hand reached out to choke my neck. The grip was light, but the tail continuously tried to drill through my shoulder plates. “I’m a completely different breed. The next step to our evolution. That’s what Aunt Anna said.”

“Are you not worried if she’s dead?” I asked in an attempt to distract his focus. It was useless, though. His eye never wavered away from me.

“She’s also like me, so her leg would heal faster than usual.” The boy responded like a robot. Even his voice had already turned monotonous. “And to make sure of it, I already pumped some of my blood into her to ensure she’ll come out of this alive. It was just probably a concussion why she’s still unconscious.”

Damian raised his free hand and demonstrated his ability. Blood erupted from his skin and slowly covered the surface. Then it slowly hardened and crystallized like some sort of exoskeleton before its color slowly turned white, similar to his tail. The first thing I observed was that some points didn’t harden to still make movements. It was indeed an exoskeletal armor made by his own blood.

“See? A different breed.” The boy boasted. But I knew that he was not wholly convinced of what he was saying deep down. “This would be our gift to the rest of the world.”

Before I could think what would happen next, his knuckles connected to my face. I was quickly thrown a few meters back and crashed hard to the wall. I felt both the physical and psychic force present in that attack. My cheekbones probably cracked from the impact, too. The strain on my body was more than enough to render me almost unconscious.

The fight was one-sided. There was no way I could win against an enemy who was physically superior to me. I could quickly gain the upper hand if it was a battle of psychic abilities. But Damian had both the bone and muscle for his offensive maneuvers. But I still had to try. At the corner of my eye, Aiden was shuffling to support my next attack.

As soon as I stood up, I summoned all my strength right away and redirected the dhorrs all over my body. I visualized a cast on my broken shoulder to hold it in place and minimize the pain. Every time it would move, it was a potential form of distraction. Then I went for a preemptive attack. Damian was about to force choke me, Darth Vader style. But I countered his abilities first and used Mr. Horikoshi’s lesson to neutralize his psychic movements.

The boy had already picked up what happened immediately and dropped his focus on his mental attacks. He engaged me head-on, but he was stopped in his tracks when Aiden grappled him with his psychic abilities. It took two of us to disable both his mental and physical prowess. And I was not sure how long it would last because our focus dwindled really fast.

Then I heard a deafening explosion, and everything went white.

I felt being dragged upward. My ears rang horrible, and then I knew that we were caught off guard by a flashbang grenade. I was suddenly being carried off my feet, and I almost kicked the person in retaliation. But the mysterious being was expecting it and countered me right away.

“Calm down, it’s me.” My mentor’s voice said. It was a moment of relief for me because they were reinforcements from our side. If it was the enemy, then that would have been the end of my life. Or worse, I would be a guinea pig as well. “We’re getting out now!”

I allowed myself to be carried on his back and held my breath because his erratic movements to get me way sent some spine-chilling twinge on my injuries. My mentor slid a couple of earplugs to each of my ears as he dragged me away from the battlefield. I was not sure where I was at that point because I was still blinded and helpless. It was probably not a wise thing to erect a psychic shield around us because it might cause a disruption to their operation. All I could do was trust that they knew what they were doing.

Another set of flashbangs erupted. But thanks to my earplugs, I was safe. It took a few minutes before my sight slowly came into view. We were already towards the end of the crushed hallway by that time. It was dark and dusty, but there was an opening waiting for us. A few seconds later, we go out. I saw a few choppers lingering for us above as Mr. Horikoshi hastily strapped me for rescue. He made sure my wound wouldn’t be too affected by the lift.

Slowly, I found myself being carried upwards to the helicopter above.

From the view, I saw the enemy’s choppers go down on the ground. We should have heard them, though. But we also had our own fight in the middle of the dome. It was intense and nerve-wracking. My mind probably disregarded those explosion details in the background because I was too fixated on defending myself from Damian.

My mind instantly thought of him. I wanted to go back, but that would have been useless. After what I accidentally did to Anna Festus, he was convinced I was the enemy. By the end of it, the boy was seemingly in a trance, focused on eradicating anyone who had hurt his surrogate mother. There was no way in hell that he would listen to me.

I looked below and saw Aiden being strapped next. He was probably still blind from the flashbang and was helpless like me. But before he could be pulled upward, the sight of Damian came into view. Like before, he was on all fours like a rabid dog and charged for my companions. They opened fire against him, but he easily dodged by jumping from one wall to the next. And any stray bullet ricocheted off of his psychic shield around him.

With my eyesight back, I focused on Aiden and pulled him upwards. But I was a split-second too late. A blood-curdling scream exploded, and I saw a huge chunk of Aiden’s left arm torn off away from his body. It was a bloody mess. Damian got too near and swiped the poor guy’s limb with one of his tails. But the soldier assisting Aiden was quick to the rescue and removed his belt. He wrapped around my friend’s remaining arm to avoid further blood loss.

Thankfully, my mentor was strapped into the other chopper and used his moniker into action — he obliterated Damian’s psychic powers completely. Even the use of his tails was rendered useless, and they drooped sloppily on the ground. That may have also reduced his physical strength significantly because it was amplified further by his psychic powers.

The Obliterator was still better than me in canceling a Mental’s psychic abilities. I knew Damian was a different breed, but his powers still follow the same biological process as ours. That meant that the same concept could be applied. But because of his additional physical upgrades, one Eraser was not enough to disable him.

“Pull us up!” I roared. At the same time, I sent that mentally to everyone around me because they wouldn’t have heard that. “I’ll hold him down!”

With the rest of my strength, I slammed Damian into the ground as I envisioned a giant hand that swatted him like a fly. My tremendous psychic construct held him in place as my mentor ensured he could no longer resist. The remained soldiers strapped themselves to the other choppers, and the pilots didn’t wait for anything else.

One by one, the soldiers with us got pulled up into the choppers. Aiden had to be strapped together with one of the soldiers. They had to make sure that Aiden’s wound wouldn’t have further damage on the way up. It also looked like there was a strong Mental on that chopper because they were telekinetic support lifted by the ropes. The last two people that were raised were Mr. Horikoshi and me. We were pretty high up before releasing our psychic holds on our lone enemy.

I’ll find you, Kieran. I’ll come for you. A telepathic message was sent straight to my mind. I looked down below and saw the boy slowly regaining his composure and glanced at me. It didn’t take a genius to know that he gave me a death stare. And I will end you.

Then come find me. I’ll try to win you back. I replied back mentally but with a calmer tone. Because I still love you.

The choppers we were on were modern and zipped through the air really fast because we had to get away. Everything happened fast after that. A medic that was with us assisted me and quickly injected morphine to reduce the pain of my wounds. Then he injected me another drug that induced drowsiness. I wanted to protest against it, but I had no more energy to resist.

Before I knew it, I was knocked out.

“Sleep tight, Mr. Kieran Klein.”