Audrie's POV

Lemony Snicket once said "If you have ever lost a loved one, then you know exactly how it feels. And if you have not, then you cannot possibly imagine it". Despite the fact that he and his works in general get me really depressed, this quote is very true. I've lost both of my great-grandmas, I've lost a guy I knew from school, among several others, and they all had quite the normal toll you would expect: shed tears shared with friends, the recalling of happy memories you had with them, and trying to learn how to move on without them in you life, realizing they are gone. But when you are physically watching someone slowly die in front of you that you have been practically conjoined to the hip to since you were a little girl, losing a loved one takes on a whole new, and very real, meaning. Death is something that is inevitable for everybody, and yet we try so hard to ignore it, and it's only until it's shoved straight into our faces that we have to acknowledge it's existence. I was getting the brutal reality of death shoved into my face right about now.

The girl that came over to help shook her head gravely. Jake was going to die. I didn't know what to do. My mind seemed to retreat somewhere deep into myself, thinking about this, trying to comprehend the whole situation. I was about to lose the cousin that I so often chose to call my brother. The brother I never had. The brother that would pester me and annoy me and push me around, but also the brother that would make me laugh, whether it be from his weird silliness or blatant stupidity. The brother whose immense pride I would shoot down repeatedly, though somehow it would find a way to get back up. The brother that on occasion, I would get a pure smile, a pure bit of enjoyment from, that would disappear back into sarcasm in the blink of an eye. The brother that never seemed to let anything go was about to let it all go. And that was tearing my very soul away from my very being.

I felt someone's hand place itself on top of mine. I didn't even know I had placed my hand on Jake's chest, but I didn't care. At the same time I cared so much though, with this emotional blizzard raging through my head. I tried to distance myself even more, delving deeper inside myself if at all possible. I didn't want to feel anymore of what I was feeling. I wanted all that pain that was welling up to disappear. I retreated so deeply inside myself I didn't even know if I could get back out, but the pain was fading away. That was all that mattered at the moment.

I seemed to have found someplace inside of me that was hard to describe, and very hard to find. It seemed to be a place that a truly troubled person or a madman or a demented human could only find. It was a place without color without emotion, without...feeling. It was an odd place, but an odd place that I needed to be in. I could still feel, hear, see, smell, and touch, but those senses were severely numbed. My insides were numbed. I was blank to the world. I was in shock.

I should get out, I should want to get out, but I didn't want to. I had no desire to, no reason to. But something very strange seemed to have other plans.

Somehow I managed to find something inside myself that I had never found before. I didn't know how long it had been there, but I knew that it was waking up. My circumstance seemed to trigger it. And it gave me a reason to get out.

I mentally climbed out of wherever I was inside of me until all the colours, feelings and emotions flooded back into me on overdrive. I felt something new flowing through my body, and it felt good. I focused on this new part of myself, this energy, and channelled it through my body, trying to push it through my fingers, knowing exactly what was going to happen in the back of my mind. A purple glow emanated from my hand, traveling in small snake-like lines across Jake's chest, towards his abdomen. The lines bent around the blood-soaked jacket and dove into his skin, causing him to weakly wince. The purple glow disappeared.

I glanced at Karmen who held a face of shock, and then towards the girl that saved us, who shared the same expression. Looking down at Jake, I lifted the bloody garment off his wound to find the bullet sitting neatly on top of his stomach, and no trace of a bullet hole. His skin was still quite pale, but he wasn't going to die anytime soon, and that was all that mattered. Jake started to try to sit up, and the three of us girls responded by helping him. Once he was upright, he looked at me and said,

"Dude, you've got superpowers,"

Huh. Wow. I guess I did. Looks like the Avengers and Spider-Man and the X-Men and all those supernatural dudes weren't so far out after all. Next thing you know Elvis really didn't die and dinosaurs really exist. That'll be interesting.

I wasn't that overwhelmed by this new stuff, probably because tons of other overwhelming stuffs had happened tonight as well. Speaking of other overwhelming stuffs, where did that gang go?