The Honda passed by a few memorable buildings before reaching the destination—if you could call them memorable, that is. The rest of the neighborhood, a small apartment complex, a movie theatre, a shopping plaza, a library, by far nothing fancy. Who knew a weird place like this would also be this boring?
By now, it went without saying to the new neighbor that this was not a big town at all. They had reached Pearl’s business in less than fifteen minutes, which was… a family restaurant. An establishment Mason would consider a hole-in-the-wall if not for its large size compared to the other buildings on the block. He couldn’t bother deciphering the Asian characters on the neon sign in front of the restaurant.
“I thought it was closed today,” Saki told Pearl, “it’s Monday, right?”
“Yeah, but sometimes one of my parents forgets to turn the light off. And then they wonder why the electric bill is so high,” the girl giggled, whipping out her phone. “I’ll have to give them a text.”
“Your parents work for a Chinese place?” Mason said.
Pearl whipped around, glaring at the boy with furrowed eyebrows. “It’s Korean, Mason… and we own the restaurant.”
“Yeah dude, you can tell the difference between Korean and Chinese, right?” Saki interjected.
Mason averted his eyes. “Yeah, man, of course. I’m not stupid.”
“What does ‘Annyeonghaseyo,’ mean?” Pearl raised an eyebrow.
“… ‘Where’s the bathroom’?”
The couple facepalmed. The car sat parked on the red space of the curb.
“My parents would never invite you to my house,” Pearl frowned.
“Not until he knows where to point Korea out on a map,” Saki said.
“Okay, so I don’t know my Asian languages, big deal,” Mason crossed his arms. “We made it to your parents’ business. Is the tour over yet?”
Saki blinked. “Hey man, chill. We were just messing around. I get you’re not used to the new place and everything, but maybe you should take it down a notch.”
“Yeah, I think you’re working yourself up a little too much,” Pearl added. “What do you have against this town anyway?”
Mason looked to both of them individually, and sighed. “It’s none of your business. I had it so great in Santa Barbara, I just… look, moving here was never my idea. I didn’t even know this all existed until I got the memo, and now I can’t leave. You’d hate it too if you were in my shoes.”
After a long moment in silence, Pearl spoke once more. “It wasn’t my choice to move here either, Mason… We had to to start our business. I never understood why until much later, and I was just a kid at the time.” She turned her head back to the restaurant. “But one day, you start to think about all the things you gained along the way, or all the things you still have, instead of what you lost…”
Mason didn’t say anything after that. He couldn’t understand much of what she had said, but he kept his mouth shut. Saki returned his focus to the dashboard.
“Getting kinda depressing in this car, huh?” He plugged the AUX cord into his phone and set it aside after tapping a few times on one of his apps. Some indie rock song played over the speakers.
“Ooh, I love this song!” His girlfriend perked up at the first few chords, the song taking their tension out of the air. She hummed along to the lyrics as the car started up again, pulling out into the lamplit street.
“Hey, wanna see something cool, Mace?”
“Define ‘cool’,” the boy replied.
“You’ll see. It’ll be worth it, trust me,” Saki said with a grin. Pearl couldn’t help but giggle, knowing exactly where they were going next.
There was a light fog where the car was heading towards. In the clouded night sky, the trio could barely see the battered road through the headlights. All they relied on for preventing the Honda from slipping and tumbling down the hill was Saki’s vision, and lots of composure.
The AC wasn’t even on, yet Mason felt the cold from the outside through his bones. He fitted into his mom’s jacket, squirming around with the sleeves in the dark. He had his eyes on the road the whole time. Even though he wasn’t even the one driving, he felt like he’d crash it if he didn’t keep focused.
“So, neither of you two are gonna tell me where the fuck we’re going?”
“You’ll thank us when we get there,” Pearl giggled once more.
“You know, this is just the start to every found-footage horror story that makes the headlines on the midnight news. Deranged Couple Murders New Neighbor in City Outskirts.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll bring your remains back to your mom’s before midnight,” she joked.
“Yeah, too bad our only weapon of choice is a spare tire,” Saki said. “Best we can do is just thwack you enough times ‘til you die.”
“Uh huh, and then what? Bring the local population down from zero to negative-one?”
“I’d say there’s a good three to five thousand in New Era,” Pearl reassured.
“Sure, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Mason scoffed. “This whole day, I’ve only seen, like, five people. Including you guys. Does everyone just hide from each other or something?”
“No, you just came on a slow day,” the blue-haired girl said. “Maybe it’s because of all the new visitors these days…”
“Could be,” Saki agreed. “We’ve been getting a lot of people moving in since the beginning of this year. It’s really bizarre, to be honest. Wonder why they’re coming here, though.”
So the big purple beast-woman wasn’t lying. Great, but it was still just a coincidence. It just meant more people he would have to stay away from was all.
“Hey, you’re about to miss the turn!” Pearl suddenly exclaimed.
“Oh, shit!” Regaining his focus on the road, Saki veered the steering wheel a hard right, practically drifting the car. Mason gasped and held on to the handlebar above the backseat window.
There was no road for where they turned. Just grass. Really tall grass. It seemed like an empty field smack in the middle of nowhere. The whole environment gave Mason the creeps. Just like the rest of New Era.
“So when exactly is the ‘cool’ stuff happening?” he asked.
Putting the car in park, Saki opened the door. “Get out and we’ll show you.”
He helped Pearl out from the passenger seat, who then promptly opened the door for Mason. “Come on, sourpuss! Don’t keep a girl waiting.”
The new kid sighed, unbuckling his seatbelt to enter the grassy abyss.
“Now what?”
“We’re here!” Pearl announced.
“…Where?”
Saki took the liberty to point out the elephant in the room. Or, the field in this case. “Alright, alright, I know what you’re probably thinking. ‘What a bunch of wackjobs driving me to the pitch black middle of nowhere,’ right?”
Mason was kind of impressed how on the money that sentiment was.
Taking a small handheld flashlight out of one of his jacket pockets, he shined a light at a patch of grass. The blades seemed to glow a strange luminescent green.
“Okay, some glow-in-the-dark weeds,” Mason commented. “What of it?”
“We stumbled on this spot when we went out for a drive two months ago,” Pearl explained. “There was nothing but hard dirt out in this field. Couldn’t grow a thing. Then, a month later we found it just like this,” she spread her arms to gesture around themselves.
“And look…” Crouching down, Saki dug into the ground with his free hand, bringing up a small mound of dry earth. “Still the same dirt. You’d think glowing grass this tall could never grow in such dead soil.”
“And this is supposed to impress me because…” Mason had already gotten bored, disappointed at how they came all this way to show him some weird plants.
Pearl and Saki gave each other a knowing smirk. It was about as good a time as any to show him what they came here for.
“Because that’s not the only crazy thing happening in this field.” Pearl’s hands began to glow a faint blue, the girl exerting her focus towards them as the boys stood back to watch, one drastically more shocked than the other. Then, sparks emerged, rapidly zapping and disappearing in quick succession. Soon, the spectacle reached up until her entire arms were covered in electricity.
Mason couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Was she… like him? He had so many questions.
Saki went on with his explanation as Pearl eased up, her sparking arms fading back to normal. “She isn’t that powerful outside this field. If she’d show it off somewhere like in front of your house, you’d probably think it’s just carpet static. But this…” he patted his girlfriend on the shoulder. “This is some wack shit.”
“A…And you think the grass has something to… with…” Mason couldn’t finish his sentence, as he was still in disbelief, but Saki got the idea.
“Not the grass, the grass is just some byproduct, we think. The real power we think comes from over there,” the older boy pointed the light far into the black horizon, casting a faint silhouette on a strange-looking geometric figure that the three could just hardly make out.
“A… building?”
“Not just any building,” Pearl said after gaining most of her strength back, “That’s our town’s research facility. ERATech. It’s protected by the government, so nobody really knows what’s going on in there…”
“You can say that again,” Saki backed up. “This field is technically ERATech property. Only reason we got in here is because there’s a big hole in the fencing that we turned into. Honestly really surprised they hadn’t fixed that yet. Then again, it’s a big field.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that we’re trespassing on private government territory?” Mason rationalized. “Are you two fucking insane? We could get prosecuted, or like, executed for sneaking in here! Why would you-”
“Shhh!” Pearl had to cover the now-paranoid prep kid’s mouth, constraining from yelling herself. “We could be caught if you raise your voice like that!”
It took a few seconds for Mason to shut his mouth again without Pearl’s hand over it. She spoke again. “We’ve been watching this place for two months now. If there were people checking on the fields, we’d definitely be caught by now.”
Saki added, “My theory’s that this is just their dumping ground. Why spend effort watching over the area if you’re not even concerned about it? The grass is probably just some experiment their labs gave up on.”
Suddenly, it clicked.
Stay away from the Tech Labs.
Mason’s eyes widened, cold sweat escaping his body. If he cared about anything that crazy purple demon said, it was the one thing he just defied.
“We gotta get out of here.”
“Dude, what’re you talking about?” Saki furrowed his eyebrows.
“No, enough of that shit, you heard me loud and clear. I’ve had it. We’re leaving right now.”
“Hey man, just chill out-”
“Nah, I’ve been way too chill this entire evening, letting you two lovebirds take me on your joyride and not even knowing what you’re getting ourselves into!”
“Mason…” Pearl tried.
“I don’t want to hear whatever bullshit reason there is for us to stay here! It’s cold, it’s dark, there’s no one around for miles, and I’m stuck with two idiots who act just like everyone else in this crazy-ass town! You know what, gimme the keys. I’m driving myself back. It’s like I’m the only sane person you guys have ever met.”
Something emerged from Saki: a mysterious dark figure, composed of some odd shadowy material. It pushed Mason to the cold, hard dirt before retracting back into its source. The boy’s fall was only broken by the glowing grass crippling underneath, dumbfounded at what just happened.
“What is wrong with you, dude?!” The older boy’s temper snapping. “We try to be nice to our new neighbor and this is the thanks we get?” Saki held out his keys from his back jean pocket. “If you wanna leave so bad, we’ll take you. But don’t expect any more favors from us. You don’t want to make any friends here, we’ll stop trying if that’s what you want.”
He looked back to his car, which was farther than he expected from how far they went out.
There was someone inside it.
“What’s wrong, Sak?” Pearl slowly stood up, turning to see the same thing Saki was. Her stomach dropped.
“…The fuck is in there?” Yanking the flashlight out of a distracted Saki’s hand, Mason pointed it at the Honda, grateful the windows weren’t tinted like his. There was definitely a person inside it, though from the dark overcast outside it proved to be difficult to make out what he or she was doing.
“What do we do?” Pearl’s voice wavered frantically. “Should I call the cops?”
“Yeah, let’s just invite the whole town to our location while we’re at it,” Mason sneered.
“Which would’ve been possible if our phones worked without reception,” Saki mentioned the lack of telephone poles or cell towers around. “We’ll never reach a signal in the middle of nowhere.”
Mason wondered how it came to this. It couldn’t have been his fault; he never asked to go on this tour of theirs to begin with. And now their only ride home was being jacked by some nobody that showed up out of nowhere. As he approached the car with the flashlight in hand and two frightened young adults behind them, he heard a male voice echo out in a hushed voice.
“…don’t matter how this thing got ‘ere! If we don’t get these fuckin’ wheels rollin’, it’ll be our heads instead!”
“M-Mason, w-what are you…” Pearl stuttered as he kept moving in.
“Shut up and get ready to taze this son of a bitch,” the kid ordered.
Suddenly, Saki couldn’t handle the sight of someone so easily carjacking his whip any longer. Another shadow-like figure emerged from his body as he ran haphazardly towards Honda. Pearl reached out her hand, to no avail.
“Saki, no!”
The engine roared, the car lights turning on. A second person peaked out from behind the side of the sedan, a gruff, stout man around his middle ages.
“Shit, Jeff, we got trouble!” he said as Saki came within range. “Start the fucking car!”
The man almost couldn’t get inside in time before the Honda revved, spun a cloud of dust under each wheel, and trampled over the grass.
“The car!” Pearl gasped as she watched her boyfriend’s car accelerate away. “What are we gonna do?!”
Then, miraculously, the car stopped. It didn’t slow down, nor did it spin out, but it stopped all momentum, dead in its tracks. All but one of the wheels kept spinning and spinning, desperately unable to drive forward.
“What the-” Saki said, interrupted as Mason pushed him aside.
“Those douchebags aren’t taking the car that easy.”
The stout man got out from the backseat door, accompanied by who was presumably the Jeff he mentioned.
The driver was not someone Mason had expected. He wasn’t even human. He was a tall, lanky reptilian, with ash-colored scales that blended into the night sky. An Anthro. Both thugs wore similar dark leather attire.
“Whadda we do, Bill?” the lizard-like man turned to his superior.
“Rotten kids…” Bill muttered under his breath. “And Electi too. Should’ve known. There ain’t gonna be no easy way outta this…”
Mason, Saki, and Pearl faced off against Bill and Jeff. “How did they even get here?” Pearl said quietly.
“Probably the same way we did, just without a car,” Saki guessed.
“Definitely not here for sightseeing,” Mason reasoned. He was sure he’d seen something like this happen before. “God, some crazy shit we got ourselves into.”
“Alright, kids! I’m gonna make this easy for ya,” Bill raised his voice. “Me n’ my pal here are about to do some serious business right about now. The only problem is, we got a little lost on our way and we’re gonna be late, see? Ain’t nobody gotta get hurt, capiche? All we ask is to commandeer your vehicle, and we’ll be in our merry way.”
“Not gonna happen, bro!” Saki rejected. “That’s my car you’re taking! No way in hell I’m just gonna give it to you.”
“Y-yeah! What he said!” Pearl backed her partner up, mostly because much of that car payment came out of her wallet.
“Now, I’m not sure you’re following,” Jeff advanced, “but I’m pretty sure my business partner just said we’re in a hurry. Point being, just get outta our way, and no one gets hurt.”
Despite all three shaking in their shoes, the teens didn’t budge.
“As if you’re gonna make my day any worse,” Mason spat. “Take someone else’s car. Only way you’re taking that Honda is over our dead bodies.”
The moment those words slipped through his lips, he wished he could take them back. Because the moment after, Bill had a switchblade in his hand.
“Alright, kid. Have it your way.” Grasping the blade with the other hand, Bill pulled tight, and suddenly the knife was now a rapier.
Pearl screamed in fear as the boys formulated their own plans. What would you do if you were being mugged by a man with a big knife? Saki’s answer was to defend, summoning his shadowy figure once more in front of him. But Mason’s answer—he already knew the answer. He was certain of it now. This happened to him once before.
He had to free the car tire for this to work. He snapped his fingers behind his back, which unbeknownst to the muggers meant the car was perfectly drivable again. Now for the hard part. Focusing on Bill’s foot, Mason waited until everything else in his sight blurred before snapping his finger one more time. Instantly, he heard the familiar clicking sound in his mind, knowing that he was now locked to the ground, unable to take another step forward.
And try as he might, the mugger could not budge. He yanked and pulled his foot, but just like the car, he was going nowhere fast. Saki took this as an opportunity, though not quite sure what happened, and moved in close to the immobile stranger, his shadow sucker-punching the shoes off him.
But before Saki could dish out another hit, something whizzed straight into his shadow. It reeled back, tanking whatever struck it but shriveling back into its host. What fell to the ground was a deformed bullet.
Saki saw the reptilian pointing a small pistol, the barrel still smoking. If he had night vision, the boy would have figured out it was a two-shot derringer. But what he couldn’t figure out is why it made no noise when it fired. He had no time to think, however. The Anthro pulled his finger again, and all the poor boy could do was feel his heart beat out of his chest, bracing for what would happen.
But the gun would not fire. Jeff pulled and pulled the trigger again, thinking it was jammed. It was Mason’s turn to attack, but without the strength and speed of Saki’s shadow, he was easily pushed away by the mugger. He snarled, putting the gun away and resorting to his sharp claws. As he slinked towards the group under the tall grass, his footsteps made no sound either, his scales blending into the night until he was nowhere to be found.
Pearl, who was watching the dangerous brawl take place, had resolved that this was no time to cower when her boyfriend and their new neighbor were fending off these criminals. “Where did he go…?” She trembled.
Bill was starting to stir from where he lay. Free from his locked state, he began to gain consciousness again, feeling the area for his blade.
“Hey, don’t let that bastard get up!” Mason pointed, taking Saki with him.
And that was when Jeff pounced. He bursted from the bushes, yet even they somehow made no sound as he emerged. Tackling a screaming Pearl to the ground, he dug into her jacket with his claws, he was sure one swipe would do it.
But what he didn’t account for was how much power he would be shocked with when in contact with the panicking girl. Blue electricity surged in and out of his body, which was now erratically convulsing in pain. He collapsed to the floor, letting Pearl catch her breath.
Across the field, the boys were having their own problems. Even with a man laying on his back, approaching while a sword waved haphazardly around the air was not a good idea. They were just meters away from the car; if they got past him, they were home free.
Saki tried to summon his large shadow again, but as he attempted, he felt a sharp pain in his side, about the same place where it was shot. He had to summon another, this one more feminine-looking, and about the same size as him. The ladylike shadow hoisted the armed mugger by the knees, turning him upside-down in the air. It dropped him on his head, making him drop his weapon as well. Taking it for himself, Mason saw that the blade looked to be stretched like gum, yet as hard as any other metal. He assumed this to be the man’s Electi ability, despite his very limited knowledge about how different abilities aside from his own worked.
“I think he’s out now, let’s get Pearl and dip!” Saki said. But as a hand reached out from under him and tripped him to the floor, he knew he just jinxed himself.
“You think I’d knock out that easy?” Bill grumbled, down but not out. As he stood back up, a terrified Mason tried to jab with the switchblade, but grew even more terrified as the man grabbed the blade with his bare hands, bending the point into itself like licorice.
“End of the line, kid.” As the metal-bending mugger reached inside his leather jacket, the boy knew he was doomed.
ZZZAP! The man fell for good this time, blue electricity making his body quiver and shake. Pearl flipped him over on his back, making sure he wasn’t dead. He seemed to be breathing.
“Thanks for the save, P,” Saki said, getting up.
“Don’t mention it,” the girl panted, the amount of energy she spent taking its toll. “You could’ve helped me out, too.”
“What are you talking about? The other guy ran away, didn’t he?” Mason said.
“No, he jumped me when you guys weren’t looking. I thought you could’ve heard me screaming…”
Saki wasn’t sure what to feel. “We couldn’t hear a thing. Actually, I couldn’t hear when that guy’s gun went off either. Or his footsteps.”
“Wait, he had a gun?!” Pearl exclaimed.
“Y-yeah, he shot Eros with it. It’s gonna take a while for him to come out again. Usually he’d be fine after a few hours if he got hit with a rock or something, but this is the worst he’s ever taken.”
“So they were actually gonna kill us…” Pearl realized, horrified at the thought. “What would they possibly want out here?”
“Well I’m not gonna stick around to find out,” Mason said. “This is exactly why I wanted to leave. Unless you two wanna wait for them to wake up and tell you why they were going to steal your car.”
Nobody had a response to his sarcastic quipping. He was right, they needed to leave now, before any more trouble would follow. They soon found themselves back in the car taking the fastest way home.
The air was much tenser now. The AC was left off, since they were all shivering quite enough. The radio was off, too—no song could distract them from their encounter. This is not what any of them were expecting on this trip.
“…I’m sorry, Mason.”
Pearl kept her head down as Mason sat up.
“Huh?” He was zoned out, thinking about how much he used his ability in one night.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m so, so sorry. I just wanted to make you feel more welcome… now you probably want to leave even more…”
“None of this would’ve happened if I didn’t try to show off,” Saki took the blame. “Going to the field was my idea. I should be the one apologizing.”
Mason kept quiet.
“If you wanna tell your mom what happened, that’s fine,” Pearl shed a tear. “We won’t stop you if you plan to move back to Santa Barbara.”
He remained quiet.
“You good, man?” Saki said.
“Are you good?” Just like that, he was back. “You keep shaking the steering wheel, pretty soon we’ll be spinning out again.”
“Geez, sorry dude. It’s not like all of us were traumatized or anything.”
“And to answer your question, Pearl, my mom sold our house before we left, so I couldn’t move back if I tried.”
“Oh…” Pearl’s head hung lower.
“Jesus, don’t take it so personally. I never had a say in this move to begin with. My mom just makes the stupidest decisions sometimes, and I have to roll with it. That’s how it goes. I have to roll with what life throws at me, whether I like it or not. That’s what my dad used to say. Now he’s in prison for tax fraud. Go figure.”
Saki and Pearl took a minute to let Mason compose himself again.
“I didn’t want that life when I came here. The sooner I make friends, the sooner I make enemies. Sooner I make enemies, the more shit life throws at me. Guess that doesn’t change wherever I go, does it? I can talk up Santa Barbara and trash on New Era all I want, but it’s just the same shit, different town.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to leave your house?” Pearl asked. “You were afraid you were gonna run into someone bad, so you shut out everyone. Including us.”
“If you wanna go all Freudian on me, I guess,” Mason answered in a neutral tone. “The only thing I didn’t want to run into was whatever that Skyber person you know called the Tech Labs. And we were right next to them when we got jumped.”
“Wait, Skyber never told us about the Labs,” Saki stated. “What did she say?”
“Just to stay away from them. And some cryptic shit about Electi moving in here for ‘ulterior motives,’ whatever that means. As if I care about the Electi.”
“Aren’t you an Electi, too?” Pearl inquired.
Suddenly, Mason got defensive. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, whatever stopped the car or the carjacker from moving, or what jammed that gun, wasn’t just dumb luck. And people don’t just snap their fingers in the middle of a fight unless they’re some kind of 50’s gangster. Whatever you did, you probably saved our lives, Mason.”
Mason‘s long silence confirmed their accusations.
“Maybe that’s why Skyber warned you about those things,” Pearl guessed. “Because she thought you were one of them. The weird people moving in, that is. She isn’t really taking a liking to them, to be honest…”
“You could say that again. I’ve seen one of them firsthand. This one lady with a squid mask moved into the apartments downtown and started hollering about this book she read. Real bizarre stuff.”
“In fact, the only person I’ve seen welcome the new visitors is Nova. They never seem to run out of energy,” the girl giggled.
“So I’m not alone here,” Mason said under his breath, mostly to him rather than anyone else. He realized there was a lot more to the world than he thought. And was he gonna have a rough ride learning about it.
The car passed by a large body of water to the right of them, ripples of small, quiet waves pushing against the rocky incline below.
“Man, I always forget this is here,” Saki smiled.
“What am I looking at?” Mason deadpanned.
“That’s Aptitude Lake,” Pearl informed. “There’s like a local legend about this and everything!”
“That legend being…?”
“They say the lake holds memories,” the girl stared out her window. “The more times you come here, the closer you’ll get to discovering your true potential, what you’re really good at deep inside—your aptitude, if you will. People usually come here to make a wish. Some people think it helps the lake bond with you more.”
“Sounds like spiritual voodoo garbage some drunk guy came up with,” Mason snarked.
“Just humor her, will ya?” Saki said. “She likes to make wishes on stuff. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish with her.”
Pearl blushed. Then, Mason’s phone blew up with messages and missed calls. All from Mom. He checked the time. Twenty minutes after midnight. He sighed, wishing he hadn’t gotten his reception back.
I wish Mom doesn’t yell at me about this, Mason thought, passing by the lake.