The storm returns
Ch 1- I practically caught on fire
I had no idea what was going to happen. I was just walking along with Izzy, and my hair practically caught on fire. Now I am sitting in her room, experiencing weird powers. Puzzled? Let me take you back to the beginning.
The day was bright and sunny. It was the first day of the school year. As I walked to school, I bumped into this strange girl. She was approximately 5 feet tall, had intense blue eyes, had yellowy blond hair, and a calming smile. I asked her name; she said Izzy. She was my neighbor. I also noticed that she had a faint electrical charge around her. I told her my name. “Hello, Izzy! What school do you go to?” I asked her. “Umm… I go to Grovington middle. Hey Abby?” She asked. “What?” I replied. “What grade are you in?” she questioned. “Uhh… seventh?” I replied. Then I asked her a casual question. “Hey Izzy, if you had a superpower what would it be?” She seemed somewhat hesitant. “Uhh, the weather calls for thunderstorms later today.” she changed the subject with a random statement.
Finally, we arrived at school. We picked up our schedules, only to find out we are in the same classes. “Yippee!” exclaimed Izzy. We went to our first class. Advanced Geography. We sat next to each other and waited for the bell to ring. Finally it did. A beefy teacher walked into the classroom. “Hello class! I am Mr. Oztrhaliuh! For today, we will be reviewing the Code of Conduct! Let’s begin with…” Finally, the class ended. The rest of the day was pretty much the same.
School ended. We walked out. As Izzy forecasted, I could see cumulonimbus clouds hanging above us. The sky wasn’t so dark. We started to walk home, talking about our first day. About halfway home, I looked up realizing the sky was darker than before. I started to joke about the intense color difference of the cloud and the sky and occasional jokes about Zeus.
Then, all of a sudden, my hair stood on end. No, I mean it literally stood on end. I didn’t see anything scary, and I noticed Izzy’s hair was on end too. I knew this phenomenon all too well. I like science, so I research a lot. And one thing I learned is that if dark clouds are above you and your hair stands on end, it means that lightning is going to strike nearby and you should take cover. I told Izzy what was happening, and we steered clear of trees and ducked down low. Nothing happened for a minute, so I looked up to see what was happening. Then, right where we were standing a few minutes ago, 7 feet away, there was a bright flash then a LOUD boom, and I felt a sight jolt. I looked up and saw a smoldering patch where the lightning just hit. I turned to Izzy. “That looked so cool, don’t…” I was cut off by a wide eye expression on Izzy’s face. “What?” I asked. Izzy held out a mirror and I looked at my hair. I screamed. My hair was lit on fire- fire that constantly changed colors. It went through the spectrum about 3 times before ending just as quickly and quietly as it started. “Probably St. Elmo’s fire. Quite common when lightning strikes.” Izzy said.
After 5 more minutes of panic and screaming, I finally calmed down and walked home with Izzy. I asked my mom if I could go to Izzy’s house. She said yes, if I tell her about my day. I explained to her my day, but left out the part about the lightning and the fire. I mean if you walked up to you mom and said “Hey mom! I nearly got hit by lightning and got my hair on fire!” that would send her into a panic attack, wouldn’t it?
So I headed to Izzy’s house. I decided to forget all what happened. I thought, “Hey, it happens. Ok, people sometimes nearly are hit by lightning and most of the time, live. I caught my hair on fire. I’m fine now. Nothing will happen due to this incident right?” I was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.
Ch 2- Izzy spills her secret
The weather really got worse and worse. Night fell. At one point there was a torrential downpour and almost continuous lightning. I was sitting on her balcony, looking at the lightning. Izzy came up to me and sat. I guess she likes bad weather too. Then I remembered an unanswered question from the morning. “Hey Izzy? If you had any superpower, what would it be?” I restated. There was that hesitant look again. Finally, she answered, “Umm, I don’t really want any.” Then I told her mine. “If I had a superpower, I’d control the weather. I mean, I could make a snowy, or sunny day any time I wanted. I could create bad weather like this!”
We heard a loud boom. I suspected lightning hit the roof and that was just thunder. I realized now the weather became even worse. I checked the weather on my cell phone. Without even the weatherman saying anything, one look on the Doppler radar, and I knew instantly, from my knowledge of meteorology, that when there is a “hook” in the radar, that means tornadoes will form. So I looked up to the sky one more time. Instead of what I expected to see- rear flank downdraft, rotating wall clouds, hail, et cetera, wait. I didn’t mean to say no rotating clouds. I looked and I immediately froze at what I saw. It was like something out of the beginning of the War of the Worlds movie. The clouds were violently spinning, and I could see lightning flashing within the clouds. Then, like the Day After Tomorrow movie, a huge tornado dropped down about ten miles in front of us, what looked like an EF5, probably more powerful. Then, about a dozen satellite tornadoes formed around it. Izzy told me to get inside the house. I refused and exclaimed “Izzy, this looks so cool! I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
Then I heard Izzy whisper something. “This looks familiar. All too familiar.” Then, finally I said, “Izzy? What’s going on? Tell me, please. I’m your friend. I can keep any secret.” Izzy hesitated, but finally said, “Abby, if I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell ANYONE? You have to ankle swear not to tell. But you are not going to believe me and think I am crazy.” So I did the ankle swear.
“How crazy can it be? It’s not like you are going to tell me that you have an amazing superpower and you went off to another planet to save it! Go ahead tell me.” I said. Izzy bit her lip. “Ummmmm…” she quietly said. Then she let out a sheepish smile. I decided to play along. “That is a wild imagination Izzy! So what is the ‘superpower’ you have?” I asked Izzy, doing air quotations with my fingers when I said the word superpower.
“I swear, Abby. I control electricity. I am not kidding. I knew that you would think I was crazy.” she said in a complaining voice. I stared at her for a few seconds. Then I said, “Prove it.”
Izzy stared at me. She grabbed my arm, and held her hand about 6 inches above my hand. I saw a tiny arc of electricity jump from her hand to mine. “OW!” I yelled. “Ok, ok, I believe you.”
I just stared at Izzy for at least 10 minutes. Then I looked at her as if she were an alien. Then I quietly stuttered, “H-how-w d-did t-that h-happen-n?” “Long story. Really long story.” she said. Then she started going on about how she found a blue ball that resembled ball lightning but it wasn’t, how she took it home, how she dreamed of a few characters, how the characters from her dream came to life, how the ball gave her powers, how she went off to save this planet named Anika, and how she fought an enemy simply named X. How a storm also helped X and flew off into space, went into the solar system, and she thinks X will target Earth. By the time she was finished, I couldn’t believe what I just heard.
Then she said, “Still don’t believe me? Let me show you then.” She pulled out a thing that looked like a metal stick with a webcam and two buttons on one end. One read ‘send’ and the other ‘receive’. Izzy was about to press the send button, when a tune played from the stick. Izzy pressed the receive button instead. Then a hologram image screen popped out of the long side of the stick. Izzy turned her back toward the storm.
“Izzy! We’ve just… oh… my… gosh.” said a now frozen-faced image of a tall girl in a yellow suit. She just stared at the Storm. “Is that… did it… could it be…?” said yellow-suit. “It sure is, EG, it sure is.” exclaimed Izzy. Then the girl named EG (Elastic Girl) turned to me. “Who is that?” questioned EG. “That… is Abby. She is a normal human,” answered Izzy. I stared at her, and whispered, “As if you weren’t.”
“EG, I have figured out that the storm is back. Wow, it looks stronger than before. If only we could slow it down for a while. I wonder what it wants from this planet. It seems angry. It’s as if it wants something,” said Izzy. “Izzy, we’ve just got recent news that X was separated from the storm during an asteroid collision few days back. X flew into a new, hot, burning star. Moreover, I have no idea how to stop the Storm from continuing! It’s like we have to have a weather controller to stop it now,” said EG. The conversation stopped briefly when lightning hit a tree nearby, sending burning wood shrapnel toward us. It missed us by an inch. “I just now got word from the oldest Anikan around that a thousand years before she was born, there used to be a bunch of weather controllers. One specific one was chosen to fight this storm, a similar one to this one. She couldn’t stop it, but she slowed it down.” suddenly said EG. “Did she?” asked Izzy. “SHE didn’t. Unfortunately she died.” replied EG. “How?” asked Izzy. “She was fighting something similar to X, who had the same powers. As she was summoning a tornado, X got so annoyed and wanted to kill her quick. So X zapped her with a bolt of lightning. She died instantly, but a legend says that her spirit lives in every thunderstorm, as a colorful fire thing, looking for a host to transfer her power too. It says that if lightning hits nearby, and your hair is on colorful fire, then her power transfers to you and she goes to her afterlife. The other weather controllers were so moved by her attempt that they and other Anikans went to fight X.” explained EG. “What happened?” asked Izzy. “X got totally PAWNED! OWNED! However you want to say it.” replied EG.
“Wait. Did you say something about colorful fire?” I said shaking too much. “Yes. However, it was just a myth. But there are at least 6 planets in your solar system that has lightning and so many other planets in the universe have it too. It’s not like… wait. Did you see it?” said EG.
“Dude, her hair caught on fire! Colorful fire! I think she is the one! Hey Abby, try it. Concentrate to make the storm stop!” exclaimed Izzy. So I did. I felt a warm fuzzy feeling inside, as I heard the storm die down. Then, silence. I opened my eyes to see a starry sky, as well as a fainted Izzy and a wide-eyed EG. Ten minutes later, when at least one of us were able to speak, EG finally said “You are now part Anikan. Just like Izzy.”
Ch 3- I meet Kurt
“The storm didn’t disappear forever. It’ll keep returning until we destroy its core power source. We don’t know what it is, but we know it’s there. Right now, it is water vapor in the air. Who knows when it will reform? A day? A week? A month? A year? A century? I don’t know exactly when it will reform. All I can say is what you warded off was a very weak standard of the cloud. It doesn’t know there are super-beings on the planet. So it let itself very weak. Now it will come back stronger than ever, trying to reach something. If I am not wrong, it wants to reach Orlando, Florida. Electricity seems to make it grow stronger. Orlando has the greatest showcase of that in the world. What is it? It wants to use Florida’s almost continuous summer lightning source to power itself up. I’m guessing it has a nasty plan too.,” said EG over the communicator, now out of breath. “Possibly.” said Izzy.
After a quick check of the news, we found out that school would be back in, since the tornadoes and lightning only damaged a small building far away. When we entered first period the next day, we saw a strange character in the class. He had dark blonde-brown hair, had a calm cute kind of face. And when I say cute, I mean puppy-cute, not boy-cute. He was about as tall as me, with jeans and a black T-shirt. He had his hands in his pocket, and he smiled at us. He sat next to Izzy and me. “Hey Izzy! Long time, no see!” he said. “Kurt...” said Izzy. “Yeah. I heard about the storm and how it stopped so suddenly. Who or what could’ve done that?” said Kurt. “Actually this is the person who did it.” said Izzy, pointing to me. Then we both explained what happened.
“So Abby is a weather controller who supposedly got her power that according to a myth that if lightning strikes near her and her hair catches on colorful fire will transfer the spirit of the first weather-girl who went to fight X but was fried by a bolt of lightning and her spirit searched the skies for a host worthy enough to transfer her power to?” questioned a now gasping Kurt.
“Yes.” said Izzy and I in unison. I made a tiny cumulus cloud to prove it. Now a fainted Kurt lied down in front of us. Mr. Oztrhaliuh said “Class turn to page VII in the textbook. This is an informative page about latitude and longitude. After that, read pages 1-16 and answer the ‘Reading Check’ questions at the end of the section.”, and then helped Kurt to the nurse.
In the next class, Advanced Science, Kurt was back. He still seemed a little confused about last period. “We are going to have a fun project in class. Each of you are going to grab 2 partners and I am going to assign you each a different topic. You can do a diorama, a poster board, or a Power Point on your topic. Its due two weeks from now. You can turn it in when you’re done if you are done early. Demonstrations will be done. Each one of you should choose three different topics to show what is going on in the scene. When I finish talking, you can get up and get your partners. Go.” said a thin, short, female teacher. She preferred to be called by her first name- Mrs. Kriptun. I immediately grabbed Kurt and Izzy. They wanted us to be partners anyway.
“Ok, class, settle down. I am going to choose a random topic for each group by pulling the category out of this hat. Gregory’s group- physics, Thomas’s group- Biology, Kelly’s group- Technology, Anna’s group- Astronomy, Gabby’s group- Etymology, Manuel’s group- Geology, and Abby’s group- Meteorology.” called out Mrs. Kriptun.
One look, and we had the same crazy idea. We went to our other classes together for the rest of the day. For those who care, our schedules were like this-
P1- Adv. Geog. - Mr. Oztrhaliuh
P2- Adv. Sci. – Mrs. Kriptun
P3- Adv. LA. – Mrs. Buks (pronounced “books”)
P4- PE- Mr. Driller
P5- Adv. Math- Mrs. Adder
P6- Band- Mrs. Hornblower (Izzy plays trumpet, Kurt the clarinet and I play piano)
P7- Gifted math and science. – Mrs. Tuff.
We asked our parents if we could go to Izzy’s house. Why? Remember our crazy idea? Yeah. Since I’m a weather controller, Kurt a water controller and Izzy an electric controller, we had decided on making a thunderstorm scene. We took a cardboard box with a round hole in the bottom, and placed a glass plate of a similar size on top of it. We trimmed the box so it was one inch tall. We slid a pipe to attach to the hole. We decorated it, complete with a small lake, house mini tree, and person. The house even came with its own car, chimney and lightning rod. Our plan was for me to make a cumulonimbus cloud, while Kurt supplies the rain putting his hand in the cloud, and Izzy supplies the lightning by the same technique as Kurt. We tried it out, but the first time was a disaster. Kurt had accidentally let out a gush of water at the same time Izzy made a spark, which caused Kurt to get zapped. Kurt got up ten minutes later from his unconscious state, and redid the test. Kurt let out a mist this time, which looked exactly like rain on the small scale. We needed a slight change of design because Izzy’s lightning had made a near fire on the house. It also vaporized the person, which rather looked wrong to me. Therefore, we made everything out of plastic, except the tree, which was a mini real tree. We tested it again, and it worked. I was to say about the formation of clouds, Kurt was to say about rain, and Izzy was to spill her knowledge of lightning. I left the cumulonimbus cloud, because it might look weird to the other kids to see me making a cloud out of thin air.
The next day, we demonstrated our projects in class. We made the rain flood the lake, and the lightning to hit the tree, car, lightning rod and person (The people in the classroom stared at that.) “That might happen in real life,” said Izzy. Then we explained the processes in real life situations. Mrs. Kriptun was so amazed by the realism, accurateness, and speed of our projects. “How did you create the cloud and lightning, and make the rain so misty?” she asked. “That… remains a secret.” we said. “A+ for you guys! Class, they’ve shown that they can create a nice example. You can create as nice work as they can, if you try. Let this be a motivation.” said Mrs. Kriptun.
The weather started getting too ominous above. We heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. “Just a thunderstorm, there is no need to worry. You did a project on it so you should know what is going on” said Mrs. Kriptun.
Izzy and I didn’t think so. “You guys are just being pessimistic. We get thunderstorms very often. It is most probably not the Storm.,” said Kurt. “You’re right. We can’t go around thinking every storm is the Storm.” I said. Izzy agreed. Once again, we were wrong.
That night, we spent the night at my house. The storm got worse and worse. “Are you sure that isn’t the storm?” I asked Kurt. He seemed to begin to think he was wrong. “I’m only human… sort of. We make mistakes.,” he said. “Abby, go outside and try to cease the storm.” said Izzy.
So I went outside to try to stop it. I put my palms together, held my hands up to the cloud, and concentrated to calm it down. However, nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a loud rumble. Was it thunder? No, it was a rocket ship. On the side of it were the words: Planet Anika. Izzy and Kurt came out of the house screaming, “Are you OK?”
When the ship landed, eight weirdly dressed people came out. One of them was on all fours. I then noticed that there were seven people- the ones that Izzy told about, and a strange animal of some sort. I will describe it. The animal was about as tall as a four year old. It was yellow, and fuzzy, with uneven black vertical stripes, like a tabby. The markings on one of his sides and forehead were slightly different from a tabby’s’ too. On one of its sides, was a typical “lightning bolt” marking. On its fore head, its stripes seemed to arrange itself into the symbol for ‘high-voltage’. Its tail was long, and split into two ends, with no hair on the ends, which showed a sickly shade of blue. Its face was somewhat cute: big brown eyes, a funny little smile with tiny fangs, a black lion-like nose, and long whiskers. It had horns, about 4 inches in length. Its paws were humongous. EG, who was taller in real life, said, “It is called a Milotar. His name is Sparky. Not very common for a pet, but it is one of the animals inhabiting Anika. Say hello Sparky.” Sparky came up to me and started to purr. He rubbed his head against me, affectionately. When he did that, I heard a crackling noise. I am guessing he is charged with a bit of static electricity.
“Izzy, Abby, Kurt, we have to stop this storm. We don’t know what it will do with Florida’s lightning supply, but it has to be a nefarious plan. Orlando is just 30 miles away. And it is still the thunderstorm season. We have to stop it, before it destroys us all! Oh, and the rest of the world, too.” spoke the person named Bat Boy (how original), BB for short.
Ch 4- We start to fight the storm
EG and the others slept in their ship, putting a cloaking device on it, so no one would see it. My mom was still asleep, which I do not know how she did with all the noise. In the morning, the storm was not any better. Although the system moved a bit more down south, it still hovered over us.
To fight the Storm, EG stopped the time in my house and Izzy’s house because we didn’t want any conflict with our mothers. “Abby, try to fly.” said EG. “What?” I said. “Fly. Even a part Anikan can.” said EG, snickering at her own comment. I concentrated on flying, but I couldn’t. I remembered that air flow on airplanes cause it to fly in desired directions (another trivial fact I know). So I lie down onto the floor, and concentrate on the wind to blow me up. Sure enough, it did. I found myself 100 feet in the air. “Isn’t this dangerous?” I yelled. “I mean, there is still a lot of lightning.” “Not to worry. SG, Solar Girl, will shield us,” said EG
At that moment, lightning flashed 3 feet in front of me, which caused me to be a little burnt. I stopped panicking and shouted, “Are you sure?”
So then, we were on our way. “Wait. What about Sparky?” I said. A big paw laid its hand on me. “He can fly?” I said in amazement, looking at the 300-pound Milotar. “Yes. All Anikans fly” said FG, Firegirl. “So then, since Sparky is Anikan, he can fly. It still confused me, as it defied the laws of physics. The higher we got, the windier it was. I tried my best to die the wind down. It was easy for me to fly, since I fly on support of rising air currents, but the others seemed to have a little trouble flying. The lightning shield did work though. Lightning had struck the shield, and like a Faraday cage, the current arced across the shield and discharged harmlessly to the ground.
“Where exactly are we going?” Izzy asked EG. “I don’t know where we are. All I know is that we want to head to Florida. Aren’t you using a GPS? I was following you!” she replied. Then, Izzy’s pager started beeping. A weird girl appeared on the screen. She then said “I just finished researching and studying the storm. Apparently, it wants to use the lightning to destroy Earth and conquer it for a home base. It wants to grow stronger there, take revenge on Anika, destroy our planet too, and set a second base here to destroy and conquer for bases the other planets in the area! You have to…”
A strong gust of wind blew us terribly off course. There was a bright white flash, followed by a deafening boom. This caused an electromagnetic pulse that terminated our signal. The only possibility was a superbolt (for those of you that don’t know about lightning, a superbolt is a streak of lightning with hundreds the times more energy and force than a normal lightning bolt.). We plummeted to the ground. How high up were we? It doesn’t matter how high up we were after falling for fourteen seconds, and we have. We have already reached terminal velocity. Then, I blacked out.
We woke up in a wet marshland, who-knows-where. It was pitch-black, except for the light of an occasional streak of lightning. I don’t know how we weren’t dead. I looked down, and through the light of a streak of lightning, I saw why. Mud. Deep mud. It absorbed the force of our fall. Yuk. Everyone else was covered in mud too. We walked out of the marsh, onto solid land. It was an open- field, with a distant forest. Nowhere near Grovington, I thought. “Yeah great. We are standing in an open-field during a severe electrical storm, with metal tools all over us. SG’s shield is broken, and it won’t reform for a day or so.” Said BB. We weren’t covered in metal, but instead mud. We had Kurt and WB (Waterboy) to blast us clean. FG evaporated the water. “How ‘bout Sparky?” I reminded them. “Yes, we shouldn’t forget him! Sparky! Here boy! Sparky? Where are you?” called EG. Sparky was nowhere to be seen. But in the distant forest, we heard a loud whine. “Sparky!” yelled EG. She started running into the field, so I grabbed her. No use to a friend who is elastic. “EG! Seriously! Wait for us.” I said. And we need to spread twenty feet apart to avoid attracting lightning. “Wait. We can’t just walk into an open field without getting hit by lightning!” said Kurt, who seemed uneasy. “You’re right. How ‘bout RUN!” said WB, who also seemed uneasy.
So there we were, running in an open-field in an electrical storm. This wasn’t smart either, because lightning also tends to hit moving objects more than stationary objects. I looked at Izzy, whose hair stood on end. “Everybody, lightning is about to hit somewhere. Duck down.” I yelled. Too late. I saw a bright white flash above Izzy, and then heard a boom of loud thunder. The lightning had directly hit Izzy. She muttered a word that I am not allowed to say. But she didn’t seem hurt at all. However, she looked a little dazed though. I looked back at Kurt and WB. They seemed a lot more scared than Izzy was. It took ten minutes to get them to speak a word.
“Abby, water avatars will die instantly by even a jolt of .1 amperes. Kurt and I are both water avatars. Izzy and other electric avatars won’t even have a scratch from even lightning. They may seem a bit dazed, but if that had hit either of us, we would have been vaporized. The other avatars will get the same effect of lightning on them as humans. Except for probably you Abby. You would have the effect but you wouldn’t die. That is why we have been uneasy around the Storm. We might not even survive this trip.” Said WB. Kurt was still frozen, so FG gave him a little burn. “OW! You didn’t have to do that!” he said. Izzy got up. I noticed she was sparking. I probably thought that since the ground was positively charged, and she was negatively charged, physics took over. That thought brought up lightning facts. I was about to say a few of them, when lightning hit again a spot ten feet away. I noticed it didn’t only leave a scorch mark, but also 3 figures rose from the spot. I then noticed that they were clouds, about ten feet tall. Saying how my life has been going so far, anything seems possible. I thought to myself.
“Izzy! We have came prepared this time! We will get Florida’s lightning supply! This time, you will not stop us with an elementary force electric arcs!” said a cloud being. Izzy groaned. “Not you guys again.” She said. “C’mon! Zap us! Or are you too chicken? BAWK BUK BUK BUK BRAWK! ” said the cloud being on the right. Then I realized what they were trying to do. Reverse psychology. They wanted the electric current to increase their size, the same way they wanted Florida’s lightning supply. They kept coaxing Izzy to zap them. Finally, Izzy cracked. “You think I cannot generate lightning-force arcs? Oh, I am very capable of that. I’ll show you lightning!”
“Izzy, no!” I yelled. But she had already shot a lightning bolt that made Zeus look like a woolen winter coat. When I looked back at the clouds, they had increased their size twelve times. “FOOLISH GIRL!” the cloud being bellowed. They then did something unexpected. They piled themselves vertically, so now they towered approximately three-hundred-sixty feet in the air. They were trying to form a lightning rod. If a superbolt were to hit them, they would grow so large and squash us. I had to think fast. They are made of water droplets. Water will evaporate at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Since electricity enlarges it, I can’t use that as a heat source. The only other option is… Then I realized what we had to do. “FG! Shoot a column of flame at it!” I yelled. “Why?” she said. “JUST DO IT!” I yelled. So she did The air turned orange and hot for a moment. I shielded my eyes. When I opened them, the clouds were gone.
“We should go now! Sparky is waiting.” Said EG. We ran into the forest. We were searching for about an hour. Then, a fluffy, yellow with black striped object came into view. Sparky’s tail was trapped under a rock. He lifted his head and looked at me. “RRRREOWWRR!” he moaned. “Rockboy(RB), do something!” said EG. So RB blasted through the rock with a single sidekick. Sparky jumped up and bounded towards EG, and tackled her. If she weren’t elastic, she’d have been squashed. Sparky jumped up from her and bounded towards me. I noticed something about him. Between his horns and tail, was a small electric arc. That’s probably his namesake and explain the markings on his forehead and side.
“Sparky, no boy. Bad Milotar. Don’t squash Abby. No. Bad...!” I yelled. If you have been hit by a car that is charged with 5000 volts, you have a pretty good idea of what being tackled by a Milotar is like. “ Yoo-u-cr-aazz-yyyy-Mi-i-l-o-t-aaaa-rrr-get-offa-meee” I yelled as much as I could. He started licking me affectionately. Sparky was pulled off of me by EG. “Bad boy. No zapping or tackling Abby.” She said. When she stroked Sparky, well, he sparked. “Looks like he is all right.” I said. Kurt yawned. “I’m sleepy. Let’s continue in the morning.” He said. So we fell asleep.
Ch- 5 We go off to Florida
The next morning was beautiful. Warm, sunny, wait. Where is the Storm? I woke everyone up. “Oh no. Where is it now?” said Earthboy(EB). Izzy checked the News 13 weather, as it was some minte ending with the number “1”, on her IPhone. The meteorologist had started to speak. “Well, over the Atlantic ocean, there is a very severe electrical storm headed this way. As soon as it hits land, it is supposed to be the strongest, most powerful, most dangerous thunderstorm ever recorded! There will be at least 60 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes a second, and at least 100 cloud-to-cloud strikes a second. This system is moving northwest at a speed of one mile an hour, expected to hit land tomorrow late afternoon. Over land, a crazy supercell has formed, that is producing torrential rain and tornadoes. The supercell will continue southeast towards Florida at 30 miles an hour. The two storms will merge over the I-4 corridor, forming a long band of storms, stretching from Orlando to Gainesville. You need to storm-proof your house. To buy storm windows and surge protectors, call…”
“Oh no. It has almost reached. We need to hurry. If it gets Florida’s lightning supply, it will control the lightning to destroy the residents and buildings, and then continue TO DESTROY THE WORLD!” said EG. “Ok, I got a little overdramatic, didn’t I?”
“The question is, where are we?” I said. Izzy pulled out her pager, and transformed it into a GPS. “There isn’t any signal. But I am guessing we are in Georgia, at Lake Okefenokee. Way north of Grovington.” Said Izzy. Then she transformed it into a compass. “Southeast is that way.” She said.
Everyone took off. But for some reason, I couldn’t. “Silly me! It’s an area of high pressure now! There won’t be any updrafts.” I said. I created a small area of low pressure above me, and then created a cumulus cloud. I needed the cloud to be above me all times, so I just stayed in it. I created another layer of stratus clouds below us, because it would look weird for a bunch of teens and kids and a cat-like thing to be flying 2000 feet above the ground. I wonder what people thought about a cloud appearing out of nowhere but it would look less strange at least.
We continued moving in this lost direction for hours together until we saw a weird wave-like cirrus cloud. We looked ahead and saw the body of what I realized as a cumulonimbus cloud. It wasn’t the storm. It was far too small. It’s a satellite cell (a smaller thunderstorm that forms around a larger one), I thought. “We can go under it, and risk getting caught. We could go over it, and risk choking to death because of lack of oxygen. We could go around it, and risk being delayed. Or we could go through it, and risk high winds, freezing rain, and lightning strikes. Our best bet is through it, if SG’s shield is working. But that only protects us from the lightning.” Said BB.
“I say we take the risk of flying through the thunderstorm. It’s less risky than the other options.” Said EB. “Is your shield working SG?”
“Barely. It’s enough to shield me and two others.” She replied.
“Good. We need it for WB and Kurt. They can’t risk the lightning. We have to bear the freezing rain, wind, hail, and lightning. Poor Izzy and Sparky, although. They will attract a lot of lightning.” He said.
SG let out her shield. Kurt and WB flew into it. As we got closer to the thunderstorm, our hair rose. At a distance of ten miles, an arc of lightning flashed past us, singeing our hair. We increased our speed. Despite the humidity, the air got more and more charged as we flew closer to it. After twenty minutes, we were close to the cloud. Sparky started whimpering. I rubbed his fur, finding it to be wet. “FG, Can you make a small fire near Sparky so that his fur isn’t wet?” I asked. A small flame appeared next to Sparky. It seemed to calm him down.
We got closer and closer to the storm, and then PIFF. We were in the cloud. We stayed twenty feet apart to avoid attracting lightning (lightning will hit an area where people are crowded together because of increased conductivity). We were dodging hail, fighting the wind (although I had no trouble flying), drenched in rain, and evading the lightning. At least everyone but Izzy and Sparky were dodging the lightning. We evaded every lightning bolt, at least thirty so far, in the past ten minutes. Yeah, it’s three strikes a minute, but we managed it. But for every two bolts we dodged, one directly hit Izzy or Sparky. I hope what WB said was true. Outside she might look fine, but I’ve heard from the news of people getting hit by lightning saying they are fine, they look fine, but after a while, they get a heart attack. A huge hailstone smacked my head. “Ow.” I quietly said.
That’s how it went for the next hour (For those that’d want to calculate the amount of times Izzy and Sparky got hit by lightning, I’ll do it for you. That is 30 hits to each [60 total]). We plummeted out of the cloud. By then, Izzy had first-degree burns. “Aww, it’s nothing. It’ll disappear after a while.” She said.
“Well at least we were going the right way. Look! There is Disney! And there is the Storm! Its anvil is so high! Extending way above the stratosphere!” I said. I looked in the direction opposite to the Storm, on the horizon. Sure enough, a storm was brewing, and I could see heat lightning in the clouds. If I have to see one more flash of lightning, I will puke, I thought.
“We need to find the core of the storm to destroy. If we don’t stop the core and completely destroy it, it will reach the lightning storm and use its energy to conquer the universe, one planet at a time. It may take days to get a hold and control of the googolplexes of watts of energy and zap the universe. We can’t fly into wait…” I said. “Why can’t I just stop the lightning storm?” I said. “Oh, I am SO stupid! @&$%!”
“There is no need for cussing. Especially THAT word. But you got a point.” Said Kurt. So I looked at the lightning storm and concentrated it to stop. For some reason, it was resisting. Resisting? A lightning storm? Why not CONDUCT? I made a funny! I thought. “The Storm must be already slightly controlling it. It wants it BAD.” I said.
“I will inform our messenger in Anika to ask a scientists to do some research on the Storms’ core power. Only then, we can destroy it completely.” Said EG. She took Izzy’s pager and did just that. “This’ll take a few hours. Why not kick it in Disney for now? We’ll land in Animal Kingdom, in a more remote area. But Sparky has to hide.” Said Izzy. Sparky whimpered, sad to miss out the fun. We’re only going to be there for an hour or so. What’s the worst that could happen? I thought. Unfortunately, there is no wood to knock on a thousand feet in the air.
Ch-6 We get delayed because of Disney
We had to pretend to skydive into the parks’ wild animal area, behind trees to prevent arousing suspicion. “Get out of your costumes! Put these clothes on!” I said. Don’t ask how or why I had them. Okay, I always like to be prepared. Happy? I had brought along a purse, and there just happened to be eight sets of clothes in them. They were for both genders. I gave them to the rest of the team. The boys changed behind a bush. The girls changed here. We wandered to the edge of the area and got out. “Animal Kingdom is boring. Let’s go to Epcot. It has more rides” Said SG. So we took the shuttle to Epcot. We went to the Epcot ball, where Space Mountain, a superfast indoor rollercoaster, in a pitch-black room. We waited in line. We finally got on the ride. It started to accelerate. “This’ll be fun!” said a little boy next to me. He was the only other full human on the car. We then moved faster and faster to a point I couldn’t move or even blink. “Eeeeeeeeeeeyyyahoooooo!” I yelled. The ride slowed to a stop a little too quickly. I was squashed to the safety bar. I hate inertia and momentum, I thought. It wasn’t the end of the ride either. It was literally stuck, on a track with cars zooming at a hundred miles an hour. I leaned to BB. “We need to get this kid off of the track without him knowing we have powers. I think I have an idea. The rumble of the next car came into range. We had about half-a-minute to fix the car before the other car crashes into this one. “I think its main wire got cut. Check the back Izzy. These normally use a very high-voltage current, so just do your stuff.” I said. I hoped I was right. I was. We hurtled faster than you would think this thing would go. We slowed to a stop at the entry-exit place. “I guess it worked.” I told the little kid, hoping he didn’t understand what Izzy did. We exited Space Mountain. Little had we known how much time had passed and how much Izzy’s pager was ringing. We picked it up. “What took you? I have been waiting for an hour!” said the messenger. “ It’s been that long? Long story.” I replied. “Well, anyways, the scientist said that the core power source is a large, powerful cloud-being. It resides on the top center of the cloud, but you can’t reach it without choking to death because of lack of oxygen. You can’t use pressurized cylinders either. If you were to be hit by lightning or even nearly, it would explode. You have to wait until it comes down to challenge you, or play Zeus and throw lightning. I say, as soon as it gets the supply and drops down, fight it. Fight it with all your might. Dodge the lightning. Other than that, I have no help.”
I looked up. It was bright. Not with sunlight, but lightning. So… much… lightning. You know, even though I saw far too much lightning in the past week, I still like it. Izzy and I looked up. We were mesmerized. “It looks so nice. Ahh. If only everyday was like this.” I told Izzy. WB and Kurt were mesmerized, too. But I guess it was fear. They ran inside the gift shop. Everyone stood close to Izzy (this particular storm emits negative lightning. Since like charges repel, we stayed close to Izzy). Her aura of negative charge acted like a shield against the lightning, as we saw an arc of lightning aimed right at us that twisted wildly at an angle away from us, and hit a nearby lightning rod. “Let’s get Sparky. The other animals probably annoyed him to a point where he hurt them by now. Probably he has even killed some. Hopefully the rangers blame the lightning.” Said EG. She knocked on wood. We found Sparky chewing on a rodent. We let him finish eating it and we took him. We passed by a dead deer too. Sparky did kill a few animals.
They started closing tall rides and roller coasters for safety. “Bah. Who needs lightning safety? Not me!” I thought. I saw that the lightning got more and more intense. “I hope nobody was golfing or fishing or holding a broken umbrella.” I said. The cloud seemed to want to destroy everything everywhere. Lightning hit a tower far away, and blasted it to bits. “Ooh. I hope no one was in the building at the time!” said EG. The same boy we saw earlier in Space Mountain was standing about twenty feet away. Then lightning hit ten feet from him. I never suspected a first grader to cuss every possible dirty word there is. He ran into the gift shop. Then I noticed something. The lightning seemed to try to hit the people, but it miserably failed. Then something weird happened. The lightning paused. Then all of a sudden, a lightning bolt streaked by us and hit Sparky. He shook it off, but he is negatively charged. The only possibility was a positive lightning bolt. Izzy takes a whole hour to convert her charge. We separated from Izzy, and just in time too. She attracted at least one-hundred lightning bolts, in three minutes. By the time the show was done, the hair was singed off our arms, and Izzy’s golden-blonde hair got very black on the edges. “This must be the con of having electric powers.” Said Izzy. We still had a residual electrical charge on us. We started sneezing like crazy, because of the charge irritating our nose hairs.
Ch 7- We try to fight the Storm
The clouds started twisting downwards. Sparky whimpered and winced. “Is that a tornado?” said a man next to us. “No, it is a swirling ball that is travelling downwards with enough electrical energy to zap everyone in Florida to death.” I said to him. “Huh?” he said. “No really look!” I said. The man saw what I pointed to, and he screamed and scurried to the gift shop. “The gift shop seems to be the refuge for the pussycats.” I told Izzy. I watched the churning, black, ball of cloud and charge, charged with millions of googolplexes of volts, drift slowly to the ground. It was massive! I couldn’t believe it. It probably spanned three miles! “Is that the main cloud being? “How are we going to fight it? It’s monstrous! This won’t be like the teeny ones we saw earlier. This dude will be nearly impossible to defeat! How the heck are we supposed to defeat it?” I said. We were contemplating that idea for about a minute. “I could go up to it with Sparky and drain it of its energy. It’s probably suicide, but I have to do it. Then we could destroy it, after Abby weakening it a little bit.” Said Izzy. “No, it has far too much energy concentrated into a tiny ball. It will fry you.” I said. “Besides, we are down two members of the team. We can’t risk Kurt and WB with the lightning. We can’t risk losing them. We aren’t going to lose you either. We will either win the battle together, or go down fighting it together.”
We looked back at the ball. It grew three times in size! Let me put it this way. It increased its volume eight times. When that Anikan said “large”, I thought she meant “fairly large”, not “so large that it looks as if it will engulf Orlando with a swirling mass of electric charge and H2O vapor”. Then I had an idea. “We could combine our total power and destroy it. I could lower its defenses, Izzy and Sparky be the lightning rods, EB shoots leaves for combustion, and FG shoots fire to combust the leaves, to vaporize some of the water. SG could spotlight it, blinding it, EG parries its direct attacks, BB flaps his wings fast to slow it down, and RB could toss some rocks at it to distract it. WB and Kurt have to cower in the gift shop. I hope this works.” I said.
“Well, there is only one way to find out. Come on.” Said Izzy. She seemed very disturbed when I asked her to be the lightning rod. We flew toward it. I think the people will be a little too delusional from the lightning to understand that we were flying. The cloud being took form. I stared at the cloud. I concentrated on it to stop. BB started flapping his wings. It seemed to annoy him a little. It growled in pain and swatted. EG parried the attack. It started firing lightning at us. Izzy groaned once again at the fact that she and Sparky had to be the lightning rods. She and Sparky went and bared the strikes. The thing growled, angry that it is missing us. It sent a superbolt, which hit Sparky’s horn. He hissed and swatted. That wasn’t a good idea. The cloud being grabbed him. Sparky started to bite it. That only annoyed it, but it didn’t seem to be hurting either of them. “He sure is smart, not zapping it. Quick, RB, toss some rocks at it. You need to make him drop Sparky! He’ll get hurt, otherwise!” Said a frantic EG. She spoke too soon. The cloud squeezed harder. “REROOOWWWRRR!” called Sparky. He was obviously in pain. “RB! NOW! CAN’T YOU SEE HE IS HURT?” she screamed. RB closed his eyes. I heard a rumbling in the ground. Three ten-ton boulders came into view. He tossed the boulders at the cloud being. Instinctively, it dropped Sparky and caught the boulders. EG went rushing after the unconscious, falling Milotar. “SPAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” She yelled, as she hurtled downwards to her beloved pet. She couldn’t keep up with him. She stretched her arms thirty feet and caught him. She struggled to lift him up. I went down to her. “He’s badly hurt. I have to tend to him. You just have to work with the others, without me. I will take him down to the now abandoned gift shop, where Kurt and WB can help me revive him, without touching him.” Said EG. She flew down to the gift shop. I flew back up to concentrate on the cloud. I just had to stop it somehow. The cloud being heaved the rock, with ȕberprecise (extremely accurate) aiming. It slammed into RB, and he tumbled down. He groaned, pointed to the gift shop, and flew in there. “Great. Another one down.” I said. EB tossed leaves into the air and FG lit them. Then EB tossed the fireballs into the cloud. That was supposed to be the plan to destroy it. It seemed to hurt it a little, but not totally. Its rage was building. SG somehow created a beam of sunlight, in an attempt to blind it, to make its aiming off. EB and FG kept doing their process. SG’s attempt to blind it worked for a moment. The cloud being looked away, swatting at us. Then it got angry. It grabbed the three of them. He held them in his ginormus hands. He held them for about a minute, and then let go. He had suffocated them with his intense electric charge. They fell to the ground. I caught them, and flew them over to the gift shop, where EG will tend to them. I flew back up to the cloud. I growled at it, angrier than ever. I also noticed that it wasn’t firing lightning anymore, which was good, since Izzy looked like she was in a bad shape now. BB was getting tired of flapping his wings. The cloud being made it rain on him, making him wet and unable to flap. “Abby and Izzy! It’s up to you now.” He said. He could only glide downwards in his state. He was also exhausted. He went into the gift shop. I got so angry. I stared at the cloud. I had been so angry, that I had forgotten to concentrate on it. So I did. It growled. Now I understood why he wasn’t shooting lightning. He was conserving his charge to destroy me. He looked at me. Izzy looked as if she was ready to collapse. “Even though she can bear a lightning strike, is there a limit to how many she can bear at once” I thought. The cloud being balled his fist, and it began to spark. He was going to discharge all of his charge all at once. “HEH-HEH-HEH. I GOT YOU NOW! THERE IS NO ESCAPE NOW!” It bellowed. It put his fists together. “SAY BYE-BYE!” It bellowed. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” screamed Izzy. The cloud being released the most spectacular bolt of lightning I have ever seen. I couldn’t even begin to imagine its voltage. I braced for impact. But I didn’t feel anything. I looked down and Izzy was falling. I immediately grabbed her and screamed. “Izzy, no!” She was breathing, but severely hurt and unconscious. I flew down to the gift shop and gave her to EG. I was alone, now. I flew back to the cloud. “GRAWR. THAT’S NOT … SHE WASN’T… OH @#$*!” It growled. Anger filled me. I had new-found energy and strength. “YOU! YOU CAN SPLIT US UP, DRIVE US THROUGH TROUBLE, BUT NEVER, WILL I LET YOU HARM MY FRIENDS.” I screamed. I totally lost control of my anger. I used this new-found energy and released it in a form of pure, white light, aimed directly at it. “RAAAAAAAAAARGH!” it yelled, in pain. Then all was quiet. I looked up and around. No cloud being. It was over. Then, I blacked out, and fell.
Ch 8- I discover my true power
I woke up in the gift shop. It was day. “She’s awake,” said BB. “Is everyone ok?” I asked. “Yeah, everyone but Izzy. She is still unconscious. That was one of the bravest things I have ever seen. You guys rock.” Said EG. “What did you do up there? I saw that bright, white light. Pure energy. I thought that was a myth.”
“What myth?” I asked. “A long, long time ago, the oldest Anikan’s grandmother, foretold a part-Anikan that will be the only one for 10,000 years, will receive the power to control his or her prana (life force). This will allow them to have any power of the six elements- water, fire, earth/plants, air, ether/space/time, and electricity, and then including your current one. But it will only come to a person who is the strongest. A second one will come along, who will never die by an outside force. This one will be the bravest.” Said EG. “I think you are the first one, and Izzy is the second. Try, Abby. Try and heal Izzy. Wake her up from her comatose state, and heal her.”
I went up to Izzy. She had burns all over her, and she looked like she was in pain. I held her hand. “Izzy, I know that you can hear me. Please, wake up.” I said. I started crying. She might die by an inside force, like a heart attack or starvation or something.“Izzy, please. Wake up. You’re my best friend. I won’t let you go. Pl-ee-he-hease…” I sobbed. What I wasn’t aware of was that wherever my tears landed on her, her burns faded. I felt warm inside, but I thought it was my own body heat. I continued crying. “Ugh… Abby? Is that you?” said Izzy. I stopped crying and looked up. “IZZY! YOU’RE OK!” I yelled. I hugged her. “That… what you did up there…protecting me from that million gigawatt lightning… that was really brave. Thank you Izzy. You certainly are the bravest Anikan, Izzy. You deserve to be both the first and second one, but you are only the second one.” I said. “Huh?”She said. EG explained to Izzy.
“…and you deserve to be the second one.” EG concluded. “Wow, you really think so? Thank you.” Said Izzy. “And thank you, Abby for reviving me. If it weren’t for you…who knows what could have happened?”
“You’re welcome. I will never let my best friend die when she can be helped. I will NEVER ever allow you to get killed.” I said. I noticed Izzy’s burns were gone too. Izzy was completely healed. “I am pretty sure that the people would have been too delusional from the lightning and thought they imagined the cloud being. They will blame the destruction on the lightning. Knock on wood!” I said, knocking on wood.
Izzy got out of the cot. “C’mere” I said. “Give me a hug!” I ran up to Izzy, and gave a hg of success. “Hopefully school isn’t cancelled due to this. That would mean masses of make-up work.
“Well, I guess this is it, for a while at least. EG, Sparky, and the rest of y’all, I’m really gonna’ miss you guys.” I said. “But who knows? Maybe tomorrow will lead us to another adventure. Maybe we’ll meet again sooner than you think,” said EG. And with that, they boarded the rocket. “Oh, wait! I almost forgot!” said EG. She pulled out something and pressed a button on it. “That’ll keep your mohers and fathers un-frozen!” I thanked them, and Kurt and I waved goodbye. “Bye!”, said Izzy. They then took off and hurtled through the mesosphere. “I’m going to miss them.” I said. “But you may see them very soon. ‘cause who knows what can happen in a nanosecond. Anything, that’s what. So don’t give that long face, and be happy!” said Izzy.
“Well, I guess I’ll be going now. Good bye,” said Kurt. We headed home. Where there used to be a small wooded area, was now a smoldering patch of burnt pine trees, proving the lightning storm. I went into the house. I was about to go up to my room, when my mom called me over. “Honey, did you hear about a lightning storm yesterday? I really do not remember a lightning storm. In fact, I don’t remember anything that happened for a long time. Oh well. I just wanted to ask, that Did you get to see the storm?” “You bet I did.” I replied. I ran up to my room, jumped on my bed and checked News 13. It wasn’t time for Weather on the 1’s yet, but still they talked about yesterday’s lightning-y weather. “I wonder” I said. “What do you call it when lightning is occurring outside? Lightning-ing?”
The reporter was talking about how lightning caused many small areas to be on fire, but no big fires were documented. In these fires, no injuries or deaths were reported. Surprisingly, only one man suffered from the lightning. He is alive and recovering…” I changed the channel to News 9, where they announced the schools that were open, and not. “The schools open are on the screen. Check it, so you won’t send your kids to a school closed on accident.” I checked the list. Grovington was on the closed list, as a bolt of lightning had hit a nearby tree, which evidently fell on the “900 Building” wing. It caused minor structural damage, and school should be in after four days, and since it was Thursday, that would mean Monday, school would restart.
I went to Izzy to tell her. “I actually want school to open now. I want a normal life, for at least a week. Ever since I met them, I didn’t have a full amount of time to rest.” She said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be at least a week-and-a-half.” I said. “ A half more than a week? L-O-L, you crack me up. Anyways, on a random thought, I don’t think I’ll be watching or making lightning for a while. A few days that is!” Izzy said.
“Well, let’s leave that to fate, and let’s go do something.” Asked Izzy. I got a fifty on me. You?” “Seventy. Wanna go get some ice-cream?” “Sure!” she replied, and off we went.
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