O.M.G: Oh My Gravity

As we walked through the painfully bright lobby of Super Human Headquarters, I realised that there was no ceiling. Every single floor that reached up into the sky had a balcony that looked over the main lobby. Heads popped over it and looked down at me. I smiled and waved at them and the girls who’s long, blonde hair had spilled over the railing blushed and quickly pulled themselves back. I frowned at myself and turned to Shadow. But she wasn’t there. She was a few paces ahead of me, my bag still on her back.

Oh gosh. I blushed and ran after Tory and Shadow. I could hear giggling coming from the floors above. Dallas ran along side me

We walked out of the lobby and into a wide corridor with a long red carpet with the letters “S.H.H” sewn in white.

Wall sockets with candles lined the white wall, and long black tables were placed along the same wall with white cement vases full of red roses on top of them. The wall opposite was complete glass with no curtains whatsoever, looking out across the sand. The sun poured into the hallway and I squinted my eyes. I could feel my stomach taking little leaps as I walked along behind Shadow and Tory.

It seemed like it stretched on forever. But it ended as soon as that thought came into my mind.

We stopped at a small orange elevator.

“Level two hundred and fifty-five, please” came Tory’s thick liquid voice.

“Yes, Tory,” came a high pitched woman’s voice in return.

The doors to the orange elevator slowly slid open revealing a diamond chandelier and shiny, black, tiled flooring. Mirrors covered the walls and a sparkling hand rail snaked all the way around the elevator. That too was covered in diamonds just like the chandelier. There were no buttons for different floors. As I noticed before it was voice activated.

As we made our way into the elevator I whispered to Shadow, “What’s on that level?”

Shadow looked at me amusingly and placed my bag onto the floor.

“Tory’s office,” she said. Then a cheeky smile appeared on her face. “Your’s as well.”

I looked at my feet. Wow, I thought, hiding a smile. I have an office? Awesome!

The elevator began to ascend into the upper floors and my stomach made a little jump when the elevator stopped. But the ride was smoother than any other elevator I had been on.

The doors of the elevator opened and the four of us stepped out. Dallas bolted down the hall and into a far away room, nearly knocking over two girls who’s skin I thought looked violet.

“Dallas!” Shadow screamed. “Watch the twins!”

They scoffed and kept on walking with their noses pointed up to the ceiling.

At that instant I knew never to mess with them unless you wanted to get thrown over the balcony.

One of the girls looked back and I could see her piercing grey eyes through her long black fringe. Had she heard what I was thinking? I smiled politely at her, trying to think nothing of it, but she just curled her lip over her teeth and whipped her head back around. I frowned and looked over to Shadow.

She shook her head and her eyes were full of sympathy.

“I’ll explain soon,” she whispered.

“Okay,” I whispered back.

We walked along the plush carpet hallway, people stepping aside to let us through. It was a rather long hallway and took us around five minutes before we turned into a large room. It was a very bright room with floor to ceiling windows and a large light bulb hanging in the centre of the room. In front of the wall of windows sat a big, antique, wooden desk with a bright red chair tucked in behind it. On the desk sat a Mac Desktop computer and a ginormous, extremely thick book. Next to the desk leaning against the window was a long thin arm chair which Dallas was laying on.

“Behold,” Tory announced. “Your very own office!”

She held out her hand and gestured toward the table.

“Take a seat,” She said.

She smiled and waved her hand at the empty space in front of the desk. Two clear, glass chairs appeared from thin air and floated to the floor.

Tory slid into her chair, as did Shadow, dropping my bag at her feet while I took a seat behind the desk. I intertwined my fingers, rested my joined hands on the soft wood of the desk and looked up expectantly at the girls across from me for explanations.

“Oh, right!” Shadow said and sat up straighter. “We’ll start with an explanation of our surroundings.”

She pointed to the thick book resting beside the small white keyboard.

“This is your library,” she revealed. “It saves you from physically going to the actual library.”

“You mean this has, like, every book?” I asked.

“Every book in the world,” she proudly stated. “It has every language you can imagine. Each book is done to the finest detail.”

She dragged the book towards her with some effort and opened it. She dragged her finger along the first blank page.

Symbols appeared where her finger touched at they floated along the page. The symbols then morphed into the alphabet.

“ J please,” Shadow said clearly. The letter J became more prominent and the smallest writing in the universe made strange patterns on the paper. Shadow cleared her throat and said, “Jack and the Bean Stalk.”

The large book then flipped to an empty page somewhere in the middle. I thought it was empty and was about to say something when Tory held up a finger and pointed to Shadow and the book. Just then, strange smoke drifted up from the pages and I began to panic. What if the book was on fire? What if my brand new office was on fire? What if the gigantic sun was burning holes in our Earth and slowly incinerating us one by one? Okay that was over-thinking things. I tended to do that a lot.

But then, from out of the smoke emerged a book with the title “Jack in the Bean Stalk.”

I must admit I was super impressed. I was also amazed at the absolute detail put into the intricate cover of the small book.

“That’s amazing,” I whispered.

Shadow smiled and said, “I know, right?”

Tory cleared her throat and pointed to the Mac Desktop.

“Oh!” Shadow jumped up and ran around to my side. Tory pushed the book back into its place and watched at Shadow leaned over me.

“Now,” she said, her hair falling over her shoulder and onto my cheek. She smelt like rain and strawberries. My stomach made an inaudible grumble and I realised just how hungry I felt. I pushed thoughts of food aside and tried to ignore the sensational smell of Shadow’s hair. “This is your computer. We are up to date on all technology here at Super Human Headquarters.”

“Feel free to call it S.H.H” Tory cut in with a smile. She waved her hand to Shadow; a sign to keep going.

“So on this computer you have your maps,” she continued, clicking on a small, round icon on the desktop. It was exactly the same as Shadow’s small tracking device - black background, dark purple shadows resembling countries and blue dots showing the other bases. “It is the same as my tracking device as you are probably thinking. The only difference is you can zoom and take a closer look at the live actions recorded from around the world using our security cameras.”

“So how do you zoom?” I asked. “Sorry but I’ve never really had a Mac computer before.

Shadow laughed and her hair bounced against my cheek. “It’s fine. You just use this little ball here on the mouse and you push it up or down. Up to zoom in, Down to zoom out. It’s very easy.”

I nodded my head, surprised that I actually grasped all this information.

“You also have the internet,” Shadow began to explain again. “You can browse all sorts of information from around the world. It is a very helpful tool. Along with that you have different programs such as Stellarium which gives you an insight to different constellations and planets. You have iTunes as well, where you can listen to music, watch movies and listen to podcasts which is like the radio. There are a heap of things you can use which don’t really have anything to do with our association. Those things really are pointless, but they do tend to pass time when you’re bored.”

Shadow smiled and took a breath then looked around the room. “Um...”

“You forgot the time table and the S.H.H viewer,” Tory told her.

“That’s right!” Shadow laughed. “I knew I was forgetting something.”

She brought up a grid on the computer which had different colours and was extremely empty

“This is your time table,” Shadow said. “You have your weeks, months and days in different colours here and when you become more familiar with this stuff you can write your duties in the daily boxes.

As she spoke she pointed to the screen, her elbow brushing my shoulder.

“This computer is also voice activated like the elevator,” she began again. “Tory mentioned before the S.H.H viewer. It allows you to see everything that is happening inside this building and outside. It keeps records on every magical encounter and has profiles of each person housed here along with their personal photos, that way it is easier to search for people. Just recall what the person looks like and browse their photos. However this program stretches no further than our protective barrier which you crashed into earlier, meaning you can’t see any actions of the normal people outside S.H.H. This program tracks down threats and reports new tasks. You can communicate these tasks through the talk button at the bottom. Quick and easy.

“In your desk you have the basic needs like papers, pencils, pens and whatnot.”

Shadow opened the drawers, took out a blue pen and held it up and looked at me in the eyes.

“This pen is for emergencies only. If you click it you will evacuate the building and cause a big commotion. Only click this if it is serious.”

I nodded my head the whole time. I realised I hadn’t said anything for a while and cleared my throat.

“What’s an example of something serious?” I asked, my voice frightening me.

“Intruders, Natural Disasters, stuff like that,” Shadow replied. She smiled. “Don’t click it.”

Tory smiled when she saw the worried expression on my face.

“You wont need these things for Monday’s mission,” she said softly reaching across the desk and grabbing my hand. “You’ll only need the map, the S.H.H viewer and the book for easy reading. Don’t worry yourself.”

She put the pen back in the drawer and Tory drew back her hand. Shadow walked over to her seat, taking her sweet scent with her. I watched as her top lip curled over her teeth in a large smile. The movement reminded me of the strange twins we had passed in the hall.

“What about those two girls out there?” I asked. “You said you’d explain them to me.”

“Ah, yes,” breathed Shadow. “Gale and Twista Breeze. They were troubled kids. Their parents left them when they were 9 when the bacteria I told you about started to show in their appearance. They displayed purple skin, grey eyes and when they fought with each other great winds picked up and it was as if a tornado had passed and scrambled up their whole house. Their parents were so afraid of them. They didn’t know what had possessed their children. They were so scared that they jumped on the first plane they could find and that took them to New York City. But they made sure to drop the girls off with their grandmother in the city of London first. The parents always knew that their grandmother was eccentric. She was always on the edge of normal leaning into crazy.

“They had their suspicions. Those suspicions were quite correct actually. Their grandmother trained them. Grew them up into strong warriors like herself. But she passed away. The bacteria grew too strong for her system. The girls were old enough by then to take care of themselves . The reason they are so bitter now is because they don’t want to share any close feelings with anyone. They feel if they did they would just get hurt again like what happened with their parents and their dear Grandmother.”

“What are their powers?” I questioned. I saw the sadness in Shadow’s eyes. I heard Tory sniff and saw a silver tear run down her dark face.

“They channel the wind,” Tory said softly, wiping the tear from her face. “They can also use the wind to read minds. If they create a strong enough breeze it collects the thoughts and allows the girls to read them. The thoughts, once already thought about, linger in the air above ones head.”

I nodded. Once Shadow had explained the twins to me, I felt sorry for them. I realised that there was no point in disliking them. Everyone had problems and everyone showed them in a different way. I finally understood.

But I had a feeling there were more explanations, more problems to be solved. It was only a matter of time before I was clued up and ready to lead these Super Humans on a quest to save the Earth from the ever advancing sun.