Nathaniel:

That little bugger. Ruining my perfect wedding, with my perfect bride. How come somebody has to send something after me, just to keep me from being happy? Each opportunity is destroyed every time I get to discover what it feels like to be happy and not a miserable potato.

I am slow to anger, but this bug has kept me from being with the one I love. If someone has something to say, name a time and place. The duel will commence. I haven't had to shoot a dueling gun in my life, but I fight with bow and arrow, so I recon that I won't be a terrible shot.

The Snitch launches at me, biting my hand, I slap it away, it comes back to snap at my leg. I feel the poison bleeding through me, it sucks my power, everything I have. I slap it away.

The bug kicks its legs, its upside down in the grass. My vision blurs in and out. It's tiny wings flutter to turn it right side up. I slam my foot down onto that bugger. I twist my shoe, feeling the squishy insides of the creature, disgusting.

My vision spikes up, words dance across my vision. Kidneys are failing, heart is barely beating, my powers are shutting down. I see the list of my twelve powers, the only ones remaining are: Flight, Healing, Light, Telekinesis and Teleportation. I can see Teleportation starting to disappear on the list.

"Heal, seal, maintain." I mutter, making sure my powers are stable. "Heal, seal, maintain." I wave my hand over my heart and kidneys. My breath is rapid. I collapse in the grass, I need a moment to catch my breath as everything goes dark, but I don't black out.

I crack open my eyes to see a figure clicking out the sunlight. My arm stings, a spark of fire has landed onto my arm, I hit it away, patting out the fire that formed. The spark hits the dry grass, fire is building all around me.

The person grabs me by the arm, I feel the heat of her hand. It isn't until my vision can finally focus that I can tell it's my sister, Arielle. She has green eyes, full of passion and emotions of every kind. Her hair red hot with fire, her power. She has been deaf since she was born, I don't know a lot in sign language, just enough to communicate.

Arielle. I finger spell her name slowly. What are you doing here?

She opens her hand, inside is one portal, glittering with the swirling galaxy.

Oh good! I have one too. I show her mine, hoping I am signing the right words.

Arielle is silent. Her eyes filled with a fiery of determination. She grabs the portal from my hand, holding it to her chest.

You can have it. I sign. My friends want to come with us. Let's go together.

She grabs my arm, tucking it behind my back. She has me in a death hold, impossible to move from. She throws me down into the rocky dirt. The fire leaping up at my face from the dry grass, its spreading across the meadow.

"Tu-tu-tu." A cold dead voice clicks his tongue. "Arielle you were correct to come to me before leaving."

I try my best to look up and see who it was, but I could already tell based off the foul smell gathering. It was my traitor brother, Luke.

"Good work Arielle." He was signing while speaking. "Let's get him back home, don't tell Ames any of this. Bring Nathaniel directly to my room, I have an operation to perform."

Arielle nodded, pulling me up, almost snapping my neck with the whip lash. I blink the tears from my eyes, the smoke is building in the air. Through the misty darkness I hear a scream.

"Nathaniel!" Stinger's voice leaps up from the flames.

The walls are turning to dust, the barn door is stuck behind a fallen burned down tree. That tree started a fire to the old barn that held my friends.

"Luke! Arielle!" I scream. "They are burning, they will die!"

"So?" Luke shrugged, placing a portal on the ground. "They are your friends."

"Please Luke!" I try and break Arielle's grip. "Please just save them! Let me save Stinger!"

"Your new wife." Luke signs, so my sister can understand. "Arielle, let my brother watch them burn."

Arielle grabs my chin, making me watch and hear the screams as they die. I can see stingers hands as she tries to escape through a hole that is barely big enough for her fingers. I hear the pleads of my friends to help them and all I can do is watch, letting the tears fall as my best friends and wife die in that fire. The roof falls on the barn. Then I hear nothing but silence and the crack of fire against wood.

Uriah, Glow, Skadi, Vector, Magistrate, Alvin, and Stinger. These are the things I lost in that fire. My breath is wimpy and shaky and my brain begins to process what is going on.

Luke was cruel, when he conquered his first planet he put everyone who lives there into slavery to build the building we have in Malison today. He even cut off their butts so they couldn't sit down, he performed a brain surgery so they couldn't comprehend what pain was as he made them carry hundreds of pounds, he literally broke their backs building skyscrapers out of a farm planet. Throughout all that, I never imagined him being this cruel, making watch everyone I cared for die.

Arielle stepped on the portal, and we all teleported back into Luke's bedroom. The tears had dried on my face, there was a pile of truth against what just happened, but I tried to deny it.

My body was lifeless, my brain still hearing their screams as Mike tied me down to the bed. I could still feel Stinger calling out for me to save her as Arielle injected a numbing serum into my body. I could still see their faces as Luke turned on his tools.

I thought I could see Azun in the back of my mind as I went black and Luke began the brain surgery on my mind.