We Are

“Oh boy…” I thought, as Diago’s words made me both feel flattered and a bit worried for him. I knew that he liked me, but hadn’t realized that he was so lovestruck that he’d start getting into murder-anyone-who-might-be-a-threat mode. Not good…

“Look, Diago,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulder in a companionship sort of way, “I’m real glad that you care about my well-being, just never forget that (as the founders said) we’re all equal. I’m not intrinsically worse or better than anyone else.”

“They said “that all MEN are created equal,”” he joked, playfully, “but I get the point; and, regardless of my disagreements with the founders, I do agree with them that we’re all equal. It’s just hard to think of people who’re willing to hurt you in order to steal your power as being somehow equal to you in a sense.”

“Remembering that we’re all equal is exactly the sort of thing that could walk dip$#!+s like Manisha and Pallas back from their horrible paths.” Shoma noted, and added, “This whole mess wouldn’t be unfolding if they just had enough humility to see themselves as equal to others instead of better than them. Sadly, they seem to be far enough down that path that idk how likely them coming to their senses might be.”

“And, the desire to protect people from them isn’t a bad one.” Aleeza added, “We just want to capture and contain them, if possible; not kill them.”

“Is there like a prison that dangerous power holders are kept in?” I asked, to which Diago added, “And how exactly would they be prevented from just transporting out?”

“Ahhhhh,” Shoma said, “Very good, very good. Time to tell you two about how out-of-control power holders are contained.

So, when a power holder gets to the point where they’re too dangerous to have out and about, we have to send them to a group who always has power holders sustaining a no-power zone. In these zones, power holders are unable to use their powers, which thus means that they can’t transport away and so normal containment methods work just fine.

It takes 10 power holders to sustain a no-power zone, which means that there’re always about 50 power holders who have the job of sustaining the no-power zone so that they can all only have to work about 40 hours a week in order to keep the no-power zone going 24/7.

The people at the containment center who do jobs other than sustaining the no-power zone are often retired power holders, but’re also sometimes just people who found out about power holders and want to help us keep things from getting out of hand. Since the no-power zone strips all power holders in the zone of the ability to use their powers, it’s unnecessary to have power holders do any of the jobs besides sustaining the no-power zone.

We try to contain as few people as possible, and the goal is always to try to help them improve to a point where they can get back to living regularly again. We keep the containment center full of books, art supplies, etc.; and we have various jobs that they can do if they want to, room for them to exercise, we offer counseling, etc.

Frankly, though, the most common way that we feel comfortable letting them leave is if they agree to transfer their power to two people of our choosing; because, once they don’t have the power, then there’s almost always really no need for us to be containing them. The containment facility is meant for power holders, and if someone is no longer a power holder then it doesn’t make any sense for them to be in the containment center.

I know where the containment center is, and do some work with them from time to time, but its location is top secret and is kind of like this one is in that if you don’t already know where it is then you won’t be able to sense that there’re power holders there.

But, yeah; if we can capture Manisha and Pallas, then that’s the place where we’re gonna be sending ‘em to. I just hope that we can catch them before they do much more damage than they’ve already done.

I mean, we’ve been trying to catch them ever since we first discovered that they’d killed a prisoner. Sure, many would agree with them that the prisoner deserved to die, but that’s not the point. Power holders using their power to kill in cold blood is a no-no. The prisoner was already contained and was not going to be breaking out of prison or anything. It was purely punitive killing, totally unnecessary, and an extreme abuse of power by them.”

“I am curious, though,” I mused, “about why they moved on from robbing those who they felt justified in robbing and killing prisoners who they thought deserved to die to trying to gain more power. Sounds like in their minds they might be trying to fight for justice. So, they wanted to get more power from Diago and I in order to what?, be able to rob more and kill off people who’re on their hit list faster?”

“They’re probably having their strings pulled by someone who’s convinced them that their cause is just.” Aleeza ventured, “It’d make sense that whoever our unknown foe might be chose them because of the robbing and killing, and figured that they’d be easy to manipulate into getting involved in whatever goals that they might be trying to accomplish.”

“You think that your containment center is gonna be able to keep that whack job in one place for long?” Diago asked, dubiously, to which Shoma responded, “There’s too much that’s unknown right now for me to be able to speculate with much confidence, but if our string-pulling foe is a power holder then I can assure you that we’ve never had anyone be able to use their powers in a no-power zone before. But I have to concede that we seem to be in uncharted territory with whoever this might be.”

We all grew silent for a little while, as we pondered our unknown powerful opponent. It was kinda frustrating, because even if we did manage to capture Pallas and Manisha, whoever was behind what they were doing would still be out there. We had to bring whoever it was down. Failure wouldn’t be acceptable. Everything felt unsafe and wrong with them out there. But what if they were too powerful? What if we weren’t strong enough to stop whatever wickedness that might be planned?

Diago seemed to see that I was feeling a bit spooked, and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I love you, Khin. And we’re gonna do whatever we can to stop this madness so that the world will be safer. But, no matter what, just always remember that I love you and that nobody can ever take that away from us, no matter how much of a powerful $#!+head they are.”

I leaned into Diago’s arms and said, “I love you too, Diago; so don’t you ever forget that either. We have to always hold on to what’s good.” and with that, we were suddenly in another location. Only, this time I hadn’t accidentally transported to Manisha and Pallas. Nope. This time we’d accidentally transported to whoever it was that was pulling their strings.

“Diago and Khin! So good to see you.” a merry-sounding voice said, “Do pardon me for keeping you both in paralysis mode right now. Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.

Oh, and don’t worry about Manisha and Pallas stealing your power. We’ve scrapped that plan. Nope. We have a better idea instead. They are going to give you their power, which’ll be much better than the original plan was. Oh, how I do love when plans get upended only to be replaced by better ones. Pallas!! Manisha!!! Come here.”

Suddenly, there were weapons being hurled at the cloaked figure who’d been speaking, which apparently meant that Manisha and Pallas weren’t as down to transfer their power to us as the voice had made it sound like they were. This made more sense to me. THEM giving their power to US? Why would two people who were so power hungry do that?

“Oh, so it’s going to be like this, then.” the voice said, as the weapons fell to the ground, “And all of this after you two assured me that you’d be willing to give up your power if I told you it was necessary. Some people just don’t know how to stick to their word, do they?”

And, suddenly, we heard thumps on the ground, and I felt a sensation of loss as if a distant part of me had somehow been ripped away. Had Pallas and Manisha just been killed?!?

“Don’t worry, you two. You’ll still get their power; just not directly from them. Their power just went to me when they tragically died, and now I’ll transfer it to you.”

Suddenly, I felt something like a big energy wave inside of me (which was weird, because I hadn’t even felt anything at all when Arelis had transferred half of her power to me), and I figured that the transfer must’ve happened.

“I’m going to reverse you two’s transport now, since you’ve got the power boost that I wanted to give you. Don’t worry, though; we’ll be seeing each other again soon, and I really do look forward to it. Oh! And one benefit of getting those two’s power is that there won’t be any more of those accidental uses of power that you two have been having to worry about. Nope, you’ll find that our little party here has given you much more control over your power; though there’s still quite a lot in general that’ll be quite out of your control. But, hey, you can’t have everything in life, right?” and, with that, the two of us were suddenly transported away from our murderous talk-a-lot host, and back to our group’s base at the North Pole…