Metamorphosis: Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Ebony

Mini-Wicked and I soared through the murky sky the day after the last. Our multicolored wings made an impact, slicing the gray clouds in different shapes and sizes. Even after so long with our abilities of angels, I still couldn't grasp the amazingness we were becoming. It seemed like just yesterday I was packing my things for my sophomore year in Magix. I guess that old saying really works here, time flies when you're having fun. And fun wasn't even the beginning to this experience. I did a few front flips and backflips since there was no rush. It had only been one day since we had contact with our good friends, the Secret Society. And, even though I'm usually the partial optimist of the group, I still had insecurities about them finding us. Okay, yeah, Melinda destroyed all of the proof of our existence and information back in Louisiana, then, out of nowhere, they find us about twelve hours later flying over the fields of Mississippi.

So, yes, I'm actually terrified. Lovely has the power, the magic, the money, even the hypnotic allure to get anything she wants. And if she has a facility in Santa Fe and New Orleans, what doesn't say that she has a lab right here in Montgomery, Alabama? For precautions, when she saw small aircrafts, we hid in large clouds and kept close to one another. When we heard gunshots, I looked directly at Stella to see if there were any shooting ranges or training centers in the area. I was paranoid, but I had the evidence to prove it so no one could point fingers at me for being crazy about this whole thing whatsoever.

"Are we going to land soon?" Stella asked, watching the dark sky. "It's going to rain any moment,"

"We'll find a place to hide out when it does," I said, keeping a close on my team. Jade, holding her dearly beloved cat with still no name given to him yet was flying with Riven. Yes, yes, I specifically asked her to ride with him. After his little meltdown that happened, I wanted him to be comfortable. Better yet, I wanted, well, needed to know what he was thinking and what an easier option this turned out to be. It was like killing two birds with one stone. Priceless. I just hope Riv's not thinking about anything inappropriate. He tends to do that every now and again.

"I felt raindrops," Helia said. I peered over my shoulder to look at him for just a second. That second turned to seconds and more and more and more. Something was definitely wrong with him. I could see it a mile away.

"Helia!!" I screamed at him doing a U-turn in the sky and racing to him, holding his face. "Oh, my God!"

He smiled, like when we were first dating. It even made me smirk back then, but not now. Definitely not right now. "What?"

"Your eyes!" I said. "Did you look at them this morning?" I saw Stella and Melinda coming stopping and flying over toward us.

"Uh, yes," he gave me his regular confounded expression. "Why?"

"What color were they this morning?"   

He blinked. "What?"

"Your eyes, Helia," I said, still holding his face. "Were they blue this morning when you got up and took a bath in the river?"

"Is this a trick question?" he tilted his head.

"Helia," I bit my lip. "Your eyes are black. Like, legit. They're black as night,"

"Is that supposed to be a joke or something?"

I face palmed. Then I got the spark of an idea. I quickly flew around for a second, trying to reach my backpack that contained one of Stella's mirrors. Retrieving it, I sprung it into his face without a second wasted. I wanted to prove my point to him, but, looking at this from a different, more important angle, he needed to see this.

"What the heck?" he grabbed the mirror from my hands and gazed at his own reflection.

"I told you so," I half-smiled.

Helia flew around me and put the mirror back in my backpack, without saying a word. And when he zipped the sack back up, he just stopped and stayed there facing my rear. It wasn't like he was checking me out or anything, because I knew he was a better person than that. He was one of the few guys with common sense and respect that I knew. (Jamie was on that list, Riven wasn't, obviously). Just then, he got back in front of me and flapped his wings out, and resumed flying. Surprisingly, he didn't watch me for a second when we got back to flying. He didn't even ask any question on how or why this happened. Was it the angel powers, possibly side effects?

I touched Helia's shoulder, catching up with him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he tapped my hand, still smiling like before but slowing fading away. Things went away for a reason, a cause of some kind.

"When we land I'll see if I can do anything. Maybe I have some of my energy powers back and I can try to heal you. I mean, I've never tried to heal anything before but I can give it a go. So can Stella and Melinda, maybe even Jade? I just–"

"Don't waste your time, Irma," he faced the sky, not me for once.

"What? Why not?"

"This is permanent,"


Two hours passed, leaving me only to wonder how in Earth's name did this happen to Helia. It's not like we wished this upon him. Him of all people too. Helia's never done anything wrong to deserve this...punishment. I guess we can call it that. He's a good person. A really, really good person. He'd do anything for us, and he'd take a bullet for me. I knew that for sure, with all my heart. And my heart's been through a few numbers before to not believe in anything, but this I could. With him changing in the last year or so, I guess you could say he's really opened my mind to distinctive outlooks on, well, anything to tell you the truth.

"Flock of birds up ahead," Stella pointed.

"Be careful guys," I commanded.

We got a hundred feet closer. "Those don't look like birds," Riven noticed. They didn't.

"Irma, are those–?" Helia asked.

"Yep," I sighed, not in the mood. "Those are Fly Guys for sure," I slowed down a bit. We settled on my name for the men in black with jetpacks. At times like these, you really can't stop and point a huge, long sentence when you could be on the verge of capture or injury, or, and my least favorite, death. Sure, I have tons of other nicknames for the rest of the crew of the wonderful Secret Society, but I think their original names would work either way. It's not like I'm going to say them in front of the five-year-old.

"What do we do?" Stella hurried toward me, holding my arm and having total fear in her golden eyes.

"It's too late to turn around and hide," I thought only for a second. "We're gonna have to take them. Can you guys handle that?" I asked.

The all nodded simultaneously, while their wings flapped a few dozen times in midair. Stella still had the jitters about this whole fight-to-survive thing, but I knew she could do it. Stella was stronger and braver than she thought she was. Jade said so, Lovely knew so.

"Stay in pairs!" I shouted, seeing them get closer to us. "We're definitely outnumbered–" I counted about fifteen of them, "but we can do this!"

Irma, what do I do? Will I get in the way? Jade thought to me, looking like she was about to cry.

No, sweetie. You aren't going to get in the way. Just read the Fly Guys minds. Look for their next moves and tell them to Riven, so it'll be easier for us to take them down. I thought back. She bobbed her head. I also had confidence in her, but I worried as well. She was like glass, so fragile and easy to break.

They were the arrow, well, arrows. We were the targets. Of course we were shorthanded, but I knew we could do this. We had to. All I had left was faith, the Secret Society took everything else.

"Here, Birdies," the leader of the flock called out to us, laser guns in hand. Oh, boy. It was the same old guy, the one I had smashed his sunglasses into his face with. Well, the patch he was wearing, covering his eyes up, was gone. He didn't look happy to see us, me rather. Once again.

"Nice to you guys again," I dodged his jab, directed for my face. "Hey, I didn't catch your name. Mine's Irm–Rogue! But you already knew that," I stammered. These guys knew our faces most likely not our real names given that they were just the guys to do the dirty work, not the scientists and engineers. I think it'd be best to go under our aliases for now, just in case something ever happened.

"What's it matter to you?" he came back at me, not so graceful in the sky. "You'll be dead when I'm finished with ya!"

"Yeah, about that…?" I did a quick fly up into the air, around twenty feet, and came back rushing down knocking the socks of this guy. I also lean to do that to lads like him. I'm a charmer, or so I've heard.

"Alight, little girl," he controlled the jetpack. "Two out of three," he snickered with a slight chuckle of vice. "And it's Flynn,"

"Okay," I smiled, watching Stella and Jamie take down four of the Fly Guys at once. They weren't stable with these packs of metals on their backs. Unless it was a new, upgraded jetpack making them less agile, these guys could be taken down simply. We just had to do it carefully without getting ourselves killed first. And we've done thing beating-the-bad-guys' thing before. Piece of cake, if you ask me. But this was not turning out to be sweet. Flynn came back for me, but this time having some rule over his jetpack, but, he had a clip-on pair of Wolverine gloves.

Oh, c'mon!! I thought, irritated by their sneaky tricks up their black suits.

"What now?" he asked, his sunglasses being put away and stuffed into his jacket. I was guessing he didn't want a repeat like in Salt Lake City.

"Wanna dance?" I questioned him, putting my hair into a slouchy ponytail. Things were going to get messy, but not for me.

"I'll lead," Flynn raced toward me, claws intended for me. All of me. Anything to hurt me. I dashed to the right, spinning around in a little circle for a second, trying to confuse him. When I stopped, he wasn't dizzy or dazzled like I thought he'd be. They were clearly trained well at the Secret Society. I only wondered if they had an academy or schooling for recruits.

"You're good," I said, impressed. I went for him, pushing his chest and seizing the gearshifts of his jetpack. If I just messed with the panels for only a second I could get him out of the sky and there'd be one less Fly Guy to deal with. And from the looks of it, there were only seven left, the rest were in the large lake below us. It wasn't Flynn's day. It was going to be our–

Things went erratic all of a sudden. Helia got into the middle of our catfight. He pried Flynn's hands off of the controls of the pack and sent him to a hurl of hurt. The distance from up here to down there, in the middle of the lake, this was near a populated city. This was our time to take cover. But before he could drop to the flat surface of refreshing water, Flynn Wolverine claw scratched not me, but Helia shirt, causing it to rip it three perfect shreds. Then plop! He hit the water, making that painful belly flop sound.  

"Thanks," I huffed out to him. "But I had everything under control,"

"He was the only one left, I was just helping you out," his dark, dark eyes shined at me.

"Okay," I said. "Are you okay, though? Flynn got you real good,"

"Flynn?" he asked. "What, you getting cozy with the Secret Society now or something?" he folded his arms, acting all blasé.

I snored. "You've been spending too much time with Riven," I said. "Seriously, are you okay? He sliced you good,"

"Just my shirt," he distinguished. "I'm fine," he waved his hand down.  

"Everyone okay?" I called out.

"I'm good," Stella smiled, having a small scratch on her leg. It wasn't bleeding, just red.

"Me too," Melinda said, rejoining with Helia and I.

"I'm telling you guys," Jamie sighed. "It's the cat,"

Jade pouted, grasping onto the feline. I did what you said, Irma, she pondered.

I'm proud of you, honey, I winked. Extending my wings and heading straight, away from the turmoil.     

"So I hear you made a friend?" Riven asked me, dropping down with Jade and the cat.

"Yeah, yeah," I rolled my eyes. "Might as well make some friends since we're going to see them again,"

"That's reassuring,"

"What do you expect? Them giving up so soon?" I looked around at my team, eyeing each and every one of them to see if they were really 'okay.'

"Irma, I came up with a name for him," Jade spoke up.

"Really? What is it?" I grinned, seeing the cat not thrilled about having bows and clips in its hair.

She squeezed onto Riv, smiling back. "I was thinking about naming it after–?"

"Naming after me? Oh, I'm touched," he said. I gave them my Seriously? face.

"No," she messed with his hair. "I'm naming after Michigan, since it's shaped like a mitten, I was thinking–"

"Helia?" I looked at him, plummeting lower and lower than what we were all staying at. "Are you okay? Why are you going down so low?"

"Huh?" he slurred and his eyes half open. "Oh, I'm f-fine,"

"Helia," I said with my worried voice. "Helia, you don't look so good," he was pale and from the looks of it, sweating too.

"I'm fine," he said again. "Let's keep–!"

He stopped flying and aimed right to his sandy death. I went for him, wrapping my arms around his entire body and using my wings as a shield to cover us when we made impact to the small, small shore. Helia, who was barely conscious, tried to get up from my hold and tried to fly away. I laid him down back onto the ground and touched his face softly. Slowly, he grabbed my hand back and pressed it against his face and had an expression of pure pain and agony. He was crying now.

I unbuttoned his dark shirt and saw the damage. It was like a dam, bursting out red water. I almost heaved, but kept calm. If Helia saw me freaking out, he was going to freak out. I quickly grabbed the backpack and took out a jacket and put pressure it on his wound, consisting of three deep slashes looking like they came from a huge, treacherous animal. Flynn was, no questions asked after taking a look at this. I pushed harder, but there was no use. I kept going at it, even if this meant Helia was going to die from blood loss.

"You should have told me you were hurt," I said, trying to focus.

"You have enough to worry about," he said, his voice becoming faint.

"This is a little over the top, don't you think?!" I screamed through my waterworks.

"Hey!!" Stella yelled with Mini-Wicked following her down the beach line. "What–?" she saw him.

"Oh, my God," Riven commented.

"We have to get you to a hospital," I said.

"Wha'? N-no," Helia said, moaning. "We can't risk being–"

"You're going to die if you don't go!" I pointed a finger in his face.

Jade tugged on my jacket. "Irma, people are coming this way,"

"What, now? Dammit," I sighed. "Who is it?"

"Just…people," she seemed confused.

Then I we saw them, a group of joggers. Five of them. "Are you kids okay?" one of them shouted.  

"Huh?" I said, still stunned that this was all happening so fast. "We, um,"

"Jesus! Is he alright?" another one steered out.

I was a wallflower. I was seen but not heard from these normal, mediocre people. I couldn't imagine what they were thinking at this exact moment. Did they think of us as just mundane kids? Or some type of juvenile delinquents on the run? I would never know. I've never been able to in the first place. That was my place, to just infer and act. Never to think, just to get the job done one way or another.

"Please! You have to call an ambulance!" I was still crying, but I made it look, well, professional. I guess. "My…brother needs help!"

I saw their cellphones taken out and heard sirens not even three minutes later. Helia was going to be okay. At least I hoped he'd be.