The Lost Incredible

CHAPTER FIVE: NEW FOES

Author Note: Hi everyone! Apologies for the super late update. I've been occupied with academic-related work. As I still have coursework to do for school, I can't promise frequent/routine updates until the summertime. A quick recap: The previous chapter was a flashback of Jack-Jack's youth. This chapter will now resume to the present, in which Syndrome leaves Jack-Jack alone for a few days and trouble ensues…In the meantime, since I don't know when the next update will be, I highly recommend checking out the Boku no Hero Academia manga series, it's a Japanese anime and manga series about a world in which people have powers and being a superhero is considered a professional job. Enjoy the chapter and please stay safe/healthy!

Jack woke to the sound of a screaming robot.

"MOTION DETECTED ON PREMISES, ACTION NEEDED," it shrieked as it spun in circles by the foot of his bed. He checked the clock next to his bed stand. 11:20 pm. Stupid trespassers, he grumbled as he swung out of bed to shut off the distress call. "Pull up live feeds of the affected areas," he directed at the machine. It chirped in response before projecting a display on the wall of his room. His eyes immediately flew to the center of the footage. Bright glows of light emitted from none other than the palms of a girl his age. She wasn't alone, though. Five more boys flanked around her, lounging on fallen tree branches. They were in an animated argument by the looks of it. His fingers hesitated from the button. One push and a fleet of his uncle's robots would be sent to deal discretely with the intruders. Why was he hesitating?

While sensor disruptions weren't unusual due to the island's wildlife, Uncle S had tinkered the sensor thresholds only to alert them in the presence of humans from the mainland. They'll kill you the minute they get their hands on you, his uncle's warning ringing in his head. You can't place your faith in people who can't comprehend what you are.

This was a first for him. Intruders from the mainland. High schoolers, kids his age. Uncle S had forbidden him to go to the mainland. Not that there was anything appealing about socializing with scummy Metroville citizens anyway. Still, the questions flooded his mind. What did they talk about? What did they do for fun? What powers did they have, if they had any?

But where was the fun in that? Making friends was out of the question. Making foes, on the other hand, was something his uncle excelled in it. These were no ordinary trespassers and Jack was no ordinary boy. He could scare them off the island just as easily as his uncle's fleet of robot minions.

A grin deepened on his face, tossing the remote away. What an interesting Friday night this was about to be.

"This was a dumb idea. There's nothing here." Damien and his crew rolled their eyes at the sudden outburst. It came from none other than Samuel Park, one of the lesser-known students from their high school. The poor kid looked like he hadn't slept in years and grass was still stuck to his hair after one of Damien's friends "accidentally" bumped into him while navigating the terrain, nearly shoving Samuel off the side of a cliff.

Samuel heaved, shoulders drooping. He wanted to be in bed, preferably not wandering around in a dark forest at night with a group of dangerous individuals who didn't even bat an eyelash at him in the hallways at school. Damien called his invitation a gesture of kindness; Samuel called it a threat. His ability was not one he liked to show so openly; not that it wasn't flashy, per se, but it was one that he preferred no one knew at all for his own personal safety. But Damien was Damien, and what he wanted, he got.

The leader of the group scoffed and flicked a pinecone at the whiner in his entourage. "Quitting so soon, Sammy? We just got here." Pissing off Damien Coldwell was the equivalent of pissing off his old money father, the current mayor of Metroville. To his father's knowledge, Damien was studiously doing homework in his room on a Friday night. On top of his telekinetic abilities, Damien's golden spoon was a power in itself, deployed charitably whenever someone had managed to unhinge the boy's credibility.

Samuel gestured at the sloping terrain and dense vegetation crawling up and around the forest. "We've been canvassing this island for hours. If there was something here, we would have found it by now."

"Well duh," the girl with icy blonde hair piped up, "if someone's hiding a powerful weapon it's not going to be in plain sight." Samuel blinked away from her palms. They ongoingly emitted pulsing glows of light, illuminating the surrounding perimeters of their resting spot. Much like Samuel, she wasn't exactly a permanent member of Damien's crew. She was recruited a few days prior to the outing, scavenged out specifically for the mission to discern if there was, in fact, a powerful weapon stashed away somewhere on the island. A weapon so powerful, not even members of the government or law enforcement knew about it. Whether it was hero or villain that hid it…well, no one really knew the validity of an urban legend that had circulated around campfires for years.

"Maybe if you both stopped yapping, we might have found it by now. Hell, we should have forced that freshman with the x-ray vision to come with us," one of his lackeys grunted.

Returning home empty-handed wasn't an option. Samuel just needed a little push, Damien reasoned. If they did find it, hell, they would figure it out from there. What mattered was that the punk knew who he was talking to. He should feel lucky, lucky that Damien was in a good enough of a mood to "invite" him. Kidnapping was too strong of a word, Damien preferred coercion by force.

Damien tilted his chin at Samuel. "Break time's over, use your ability again."

Samuel stifled a groan. His body ached with the weight of cinder blocks. "For how much longer?"

Damien shrugged in response. "Until you don't want a broken finger I guess." Not that he would do it, that was what the lackeys were for. Incentive went a long way.

Samuel gulped. A threat was a threat, even on an empty stomach with a mild headache. "Alright, man, just give me a sec." He sucked in a breath, letting the sharp cool air enter his lungs. His sweaty hands wobbled as he pressed his fingertips to the dirt, closing his eyes to concentrate and ignoring the bile that seemed to inch higher up his throat. His ability was not too far from the echolocation sonar used by bats and dolphins. Samuel's power seemed to be suited for locating items underground, making him the envy of treasure hunters and archaeologists everywhere. Unlike typical metal detectors, Samuel's detection abilities enabled him to find items of all materials and depths.

When vibrations bounced off objects, they sent a visual image including its coordinates to his mind. The coordinates, however, did not make much sense to others and often required Samuel to translate its location in terms that others could comprehend outside of his powers. Being a high schooler with little to no power training, Samuel was amongst the many who rarely used their abilities. The absence of training took great tolls on his stamina, resulting in immediate fatigue after a few uses. Although this annoyed Damien and his crew, they figured it was far better to avoid the more offensive tactics e.g. getting prosecuted for blowing up parts of private property to smithereens.

"Well?" Damien demanded.

Samuel faltered. "I…well…I'm not getting anything…at least not what you're looking for, I swear on it!"

"What if he's lying?" Someone spat. "Who's to say he won't come back to collect it?"

"My detection radius only goes so far…and even if I find it, it's not like I want to profit off of it. Heck, I don't even know what this thing is."

Damien looked irritated. "You're the only one that can find it amongst us."

"Yes," Samuel reasoned, "but not if it never existed in the first place."

"You don't know that."

"The island isn't exactly small. What you're looking for is a needle in a haystack, man."

"Hey Damien," the girl interrupted, "maybe he's right. We can come back another time."

Damien kicked a rock, whizzing a few inches from Samuel's head. "Maybe if you quit talking and actually concentrated, we'd get something."

"Forget it," Samuel snapped, "I'm done looking for this nonexistent thing to satiate your ego. Ask your Daddy to find it for you if you want it so badly." As soon as he finished the last sentence, he bit his tongue in horror at the string of words that left his mouth. He watched the gawking faces of Damien's entourage and knew there was no way Damien wasn't pissed off at his side comment.

To say that Samuel's words bothered him was difficult to locate. Damien's face may have been devoid of any emotion, but he was the kind of person whose emotions could be felt from a distance—it radiated from him like smoldering heat from a fire. The emotion that Samuel could feel was not pleasant, it was seething anger laced with murderous intent. It wasn't until Samuel felt his body lurch upwards that he knew Damien was keen on doing what he did best.

He flailed in the air, loose change fell out of pockets, falling onto the ground like raindrops. Samuel estimated he was about 6 or 7 feet in the air, defying gravity all thanks to Damien's palm now raised upwards.

"Repeat that again," Damien said calmly. His stomach lurched at the sudden use of force to throttle him.

"PUT ME DOWN," Samuel gasped, looking nervously at the hard ground beneath him. One flick and he'd be in the hospital in no time. The worst part was that Damien's father would find some way to cover it up. He'd blame it on Samuel, saying he was responsible for luring his son to participate in illegal activity.

Damien twirled his fingers, sending Samuel spinning in the air. Maybe if he spun him fast enough, he might vomit. A sick laugh shuddered through him. To think that this weakling had such an ability yet harnessed zero control over it. The others around him nervously murmured. Lora, the girl with the light pulsating from her palms, eyed Damien with an unforgiving look.

"Damien," she warned, "we should go before authorities get here." Lora may have been a new recruit, but he disliked how she challenged him when he ran the school's hierarchy.

"Come on L, I'm having so much fun." Samuel was somewhere between nauseated and nearly passed out. Damien watched as the boy he suspended in mid-air was now flopping through the air, a roller-coaster going up and down again. This may have been a waste of time, but at least Samuel learned his lesson. Damien would not let Samuel slander him so easily in front of others like that again.

He was ready to drop him.

Damien's hand clenched into a sudden fist, leaving little regard as to how hard Samuel's body would collide with the earth. As soon as his fist closed, Lora let out a shriek of panic. But nothing happened. There was no collapse, no collision. Samuel remained suspended in the air. It was a ghostly image. A boy passed out from being tossed around like a rag doll, dangling in the middle of the forest under the moonlight. Damien eyed his crew members to see if it was their doing, but none of them had telekinetic abilities.

It wasn't a strange boy emerged from the shadows, his own fist clenched, that Damien realized why Samuel didn't plummet as intended. He sized up the other trespasser, a kid around the age of 15 or 16. He stood out like a sore thumb amongst the green vegetation, with curly auburn hair and striking blue eyes. The boy made eye contact with Damien and smirked, picking out the ringleader with ease. Damien narrowed his eyes at him. Was he a friend or foe? Maybe he was neither.

"You're like me," Damien shouted at him, "aren't you?"

"No," the stranger replied, "not even close."

Damien snorted at the ambiguous reply. His crew watched with unease as the boy gently lowered his hand. Instead of being dropped like Damien intended, Samuel's body returned to the ground with precision. Not a sound was made when his body settled on the foliage of the forest.

"I'm Damien," he said stepping forward to greet him, "my dad is the-"

"Don't care," the boy shrugged, waving off his hand. The nerve!

"He's the mayor's son," one of his lackeys sneered, kicking a rock in his direction. "Show some respect."

Auburn didn't blink twice. He hurled the rock back into the darkness without lifting a finger. The speed of the throw and his reaction time made Damien disgusted and fascinated all at once. Who was this kid? And where did he come from?

It was clear Auburn wasn't going to cooperate with their questions. Instead, he sat down on a log next to where Samuel's unconscious body lay. The embers of the fire danced in the air and the air crackled with the smell of electricity. Damien and his crew watched as he picked up a stick, digging slashes into the unforgiving dirt.

"So," Auburn drawled, stretching his legs, "anyone want to explain you're all illegally trespassing?"

END OF CHAPTER FIVE