Tempting Fate

Aisha rubbed the white blanket on her lap and used her advanced vision to examine the fabric thoroughly. Each individual thread was finely woven into each other, making a pattern that she had never seen before on any piece of cloth or material. She tried pulling at it and was interested in how everything expanded and reacted, then snapping back to its perfect state the moment she let go. It was an absolute masterpiece. Aisha couldn't even imagine how its inventor could have ever imagined something so genius.

Over the last days spent during the vacation with her grandfather, she continued to visit Koren in the empty wine cellar and assist her grandfather around the farm whenever he needed it, but recently she found interest stolen by the one item left of her past.

The item in her grasp had gone through many experiments. Anything that she thought would test its limits, she did. Extreme temperatures and brunt force—none of it made any impact. It held up incredibly well, so well that she even almost used her laser vision on it in a final attempt to gauge its durability but thought better than to push her luck.

During the trials, her mind whirled with ways of which she could put the fabric to use. Preferably as clothing that she could wear when she wanted to use her powers in order to avoid going through her man-made clothing like they were tissue. Unfortunately, there were many issues with the idea, primarily the fact that she didn't that the technology to cut the fabric without damaging it. The other problem was that there was very little fabric for her to do anything with. Considering the fact that she was very modest with what she wore and would not accept less than covering nearly everything up to her neck, there was little she could do with a 3 by 4 foot blanket.

As amazing the blanket was, there was an issue with how much potential it had but how impossible it would be to make a practical piece of clothing out of it.

By the end, the only positive thing that actually came out of the venture was that she found a new interest in her own powers, but this also resulted an intense desire to go travel far distances to achieve complete seclusion. In her isolation, she would be able push her powers beyond the threshold she maintained her entire life.

The temptation to sneak out at night became overwhelming at times. There were nights when she would just lie in bed, eyes staring at the ceiling or walls of her room and heart pounding with anticipation. The past two nights in particular were difficult for her to restrain herself, but tonight was something else entirely. There was nothing that could catch her attention and her mind kept skipping back to imagining wild scenarios.

Aisha stood up suddenly, flinging the cover off of herself in the process.

She groaned silently when her feet led her to her bedroom window. It was pitch dark outside, but the clear, wide sky and shining stars above her began to crumble her control.

Biting her lip, she glanced back and forth between outside and her grandfather's slumbering form two rooms away.

Stop it, stop it, she snarled to herself as she walked back to her bed. Instead of lying down she lifted white blanket off her mattress and tied it around her, using her incredible strength to tie knots that wouldn't unravel mid-journey.

After taking one last long look at her grandfather using her x-ray vision, she slipped through her window drifted above her home. Unwillingly, she scoffed when she realized that she was enacting the cliché scene where the super-powered adolescent would escape home to discover or practice their powers.

I'm a walking cliché to be honest, she thought to her self. Super strength, super speed, invulnerability, x-ray vision, laser vision—everything about her was straight out of a comic book. Not to mention that she was a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, female alien. So in short, she was a comic artist's dream protagonist. The only thing that was saving her from becoming the All-American super-power trope was how she was raised and her religion.

The young teenager scoffed at herself in bitter amusement as her journey across Spain ended and she floated down from the sky into a wide, grassy field with trees planted sparingly around. It wasn't necessarily quiet, since her acute hearing wouldn't allow her to hear in a volume any less than astronomical, but it felt like for the first time, all man-made noises were lowered to a considerable level. The nearest town was over 60 miles away, which gave her flexibility in the amount of restraint she could let go and make as much noise as she liked.

After quickly checking the area, she decided that it was the best that she would be able to find within distance to her home. She also marked a tree far away from her starting point lightly with her heat vision, although it wasn't needed since she had near photographic memory, but it felt appropriate since she was about to test her powers.

Making sure that the knots were still secured, Aisha tugged on the with a bit of force and was satisfied when they held. She then dug her foot into the earth, toes going through like butter and fabrics of her shoe tearing easily. In this instance, she didn't care because there was no way her clothing was going to come out unscathed as she released the full extent of her abilities.

"Okay, first test. Reach the tree as fast as you can." She told to herself. "Aaaa-nd...go."

The last letter 'go' was still in the process of vibrating through sound waves as Aisha pushed herself forward and left a few small craters behind. Everything became startlingly clear as she ran, as if her mind had become ten times more sharper and aware of her own body. Time as she knew it also was slower, as if she were in one of the Matrix movies that had been released not long ago. Of course, she wasn't surprised by this since she had used her powers and gotten the same results before, but it was never to the extent where almost everything seemed like it was in a standstill.

Faster, faster, she encouraged herself. It felt like minutes she had experienced minutes passing by before she made it to the tree and when her enhanced mind slowed to its normal rate, she still heard her own words finally ending in the distance.

"I'm faster than the speed of sound!" The superhuman jumped into the air and pumped her fists. "Holy crap, holy crap! YES! YES! YEEEEEESS!!!"

Grinning to herself, she twirled mid-air until she remembered something. Looking up into the night sky, she said aloud, "Alhamdullilah. Thank you, Allah. Thank you for everything. Insha'allah, this power will only be used for you to do good."

After a few more fist pumps and aerial feats in the air, she finally came down to Earth—in a literal sense—and decided to take a look at the scene and review the trial in her mind.

One of the first things she noticed was her clothing, everything including the blanket, was surprisingly intact when she looked down to inspect them.

"Wait, what?" She said aloud in confusion. There were no tears, burns, or signs of erosion—a common after-effect when she used her powers. "Oooohkayyy?" She muttered as she tugged lightly on her sweatshirt under the blanket. Everything looked like is was still in one piece and she was grateful for that, but she didn't hold her hopes up. There was little chance that it would last through a few more rounds, especially when she started to move onto testing her strength.

So her clothing only got destroyed when she went at a lower speed but not when she went at her fullest? Why? It didn't really make sense to her, but she eventually assumed that friction was still affecting to her clothing during her slower speeds but when she was faster, she reached a point that nothing could effect her. Like in a car crash, the person going at a faster speed crashing the other car wouldn't be affected, but the one being crashed would. In this instance, she was the crasher, with everything, including atoms themselves, being bounced from her form and leaving her and her clothing intact.

However, she was no expert in this field of physics and wasn't sure if her assumptions had a grain's worth of possibility, so she tentatively set them as her leading explanation after having no other.

Over and over again, she continued to race across the field—eventually going back home to grab her watch.

When she was once again at the starting point in the field, she waited for the moment the hand struck the next second exactly.

2:45:37

2:45:38

And she was off.

This time, she wasn't planning to get to just stop at the marker. No, she wanted to see how many times she could run back and forth from start to finish before the second was over.

Soon, one lap became 10, then 50, 100, 200, 1000, and eventually passing the 5,000th.

Aisha had to look at her watch countless of times to make sure that she wasn't fooling herself when she ran, but the hand still at 38 seconds encouraged her that it wasn't a mistake.

Soon, around 11,100 lap or so, she realized that the second was't going to be over anytime soon, and halted at the finish point. As soon as time resumed to its natural state, 2:45:38 became 2:45:39, but Aisha knew that within those milliseconds, she could've completed countless of laps and might've made it to thousands more than what she achieved.

As Aisha stood by the tree she marked, one question remained. How fast did she run? Although she did not have an accurate number of times she ran to and forth the beginning and end, she had at least something she could calculate.

After another journey back home to steal her grandfather's measuring tape from his work shed, she excitedly flew back to her spot and began measuring the entire length that she ran.

In the end, she made her calculations in the dirt with a finger and found that she ran nearly 13,400 meters in one second.

Aisha released a slow, shuddering breath. 13,000 meters, she thought numbingly. Just how fast is that? Was it anywhere near light speed?

How fast would I be at full speed? Now that was something she was very interested in finding out.

It was a wonder what was held for her in the future when her body completely matured. She was sure there was at least a little more that she could she grow into in height department, and that inch or two could have an impact in her speed.As the young Muslim grew, it became obvious that there was a correlation between her limbs becoming longer and more sculpted with muscle and how her abilities grew more powerful at the same time. Even now, she could tell that she was much stronger now than she had been one year before, since it was getting much easier for her to have a lapse of judgement over her strength, which caused many issues in her household over the years. Her parent's heckled her for ruining so many clothes, toys, furniture, dishes, and even the house they lived in—thinking that if she was growing then her maturity should've allowed her to be more careful about her surroundings. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Her powers seemed to be getting more and more out of hand, especially since they were growing at a rate where it was getting hard for her to keep up on learning how to keep them on a leash. On the other hand, she was not unaware that she was currently going through puberty and that her emotions weren't exactly stable in the moment, which also had a play in her less than favorable restraint.

Aisha clenched her fist, watching and listening to her skin and muscles pull over the bones of her hand. Now that she had a little understanding of how fast she was, she was ready to move on to measuring her strength.

Yet, she had concerns about how loud her investigation would end up being. It was only luck that she was fast enough to move without disturbing sound waves much, but it would be impossible to if she tried striking against the earth.

She glanced around anyway, her desire to test her brawn superseded the need to stay covert.

A quick punch against the soft earth was intended to gauge how loud she hit, but it also made her realize how uncomfortable it felt to be hitting downwards. Instead of crouching and hitting below, she floated up and tilted her body so it held parallel over the ground.

After tying her hair back since it kept falling over her shoulders, she backed up a little more into the sky. When she made it a good distance away, she darted forward with her arm slung back.

BOOM.

The earth trembled ferociously as huge clumps of rock and dirt ripped through the air.

Oh.

My.

God.

She flinched from the sheer volume of everything exploding around her––rocks crumbling in the air and then slamming back to earth. When she retreated back into the air and took a good look at the damage, her eyes grew wide and jaw hung from her face. Aisha weakly brought her trembling, smoking fist up to her face, looking back and forth from her limb to the damage in front of her.

Evaluating her strength turned out to be a very, very bad idea.

Like, super bad.

There was a large crater spanning over a dozen meters located in the place her hand had been occupying a few moments before. Around it, huge pieces of dirt had shot up from the dirt and almost five meters into the air—never mind the other boulders and clumps of dirt strewn throughout the field.

It looked like a meteor hit and altered the landscape permanently.

Someone definitely heard that, she thought with a deep sense of dread pulling at the pit of her stomach.

Aisha slapped her hands over her head. "Oh god. Grandpa."

There wasn't a moment to lose, so she rushed at full speed towards home and threw herself under her covers. Her grandfather was already up and rushing to her room right when her blankets settled over her and she closed her eyes.

"Aisha! Aisha! Did you hear that? It sounded like a bomb!"

She leaned up on her arm and pretended to look at him blearily. "Yeah, but it's really far away. I could tell."

Santiago looked momentarily conflicted until his resolve visually strengthened on his face. He rushed to his granddaughter's bedside and coaxed her out of bed. With his arm protectively over her shoulder—a reflexive move that he made even though he was fully aware of how much more fragile he was compared to her—he shoved a pillow under his arm and ripped the covers out of her bed and pulled her out of the room.

"We're going done to the basement to sleep there tonight. I will feel better we're down there for tonight."

At the door of the basement, he pushed the items into her arms. "Take this and set your bed. I'll be back quickly."

Quickly, Aisha pulled an ancient looking mattress from under the towers of boxes. Once she dusted it and covered it with an old, yet clean, blanket from the boxes, she laid her blankets and pillow. As she set to her task, she continued to glance through the walls and watched as the Spanish man went through his drawers and drew a gun. Then he went to his wardrobe and took out a large hunting rifle. Armed and hands full with his own bed sheets and pillows, he hurried his way down to keep company with his nieta.

"Grandpa?" The teen asked worriedly the moment he came through the door.

"Everything will fine, amor. Just a precaution." He set the rifle against the wall where he was planning to keep watch for the majority of the night. After setting his bed, he pulled out boxes of bullets from his jacket and began loading his gun.

Aisha felt conflicted. This huge scare was nothing but a consequence of her own stupid actions. Yet, she was hesitant to say anything anyway, more afraid of facing her grandfather's anger—or even worse, his disappointment. So she just laid awake listening to her grandfather's slightly shallow breathing, unable to sleep from the shame she felt. There she was in comfort and he was awake and panicking over something that didn't exist.

Eventually, she flipped over to her side, closed her eyes, and fell to an uneasy sleep.

—

Aisha jolted out of her sleep when she heard the loud rustling of Santiago's clothing when he shifted into a more comfortable position. Wondering the time, she used her x-ray vision to look outside. From the birds flying in the sky and the creatures scurrying around the land scavenging for food, she could deduce that it was sometime early in the morning.

"Hey, Grandpa, what time is it?" Her muffled voice came from under her covers.

Santiago sat at a chair a few feet away with a blanket over his lap and his gun on top. He checked his watch to answer her question. "Almost 6:30."

She had no idea how many hours of sleep she had since she didn't think to check the time when she came back, and felt just as energized from her escapade so her body couldn't give her any sign of recharge.

"How long are we staying here?" She asked suddenly.

"Until I think we're safe." He replied vaguely.

"Shouldn't you call the police? Or even put on the TV or radio for some news?"

"Not now, Aisha. I don't want to go up there until I have to."

She became silent, knowing that pushing would do no good. Santiago was the kind of man where the more he was pressured, the more he clammed up. And she knew this better than anyone because he's where she got the same kind of behavior from. It was best to leave him to his own moods and hope that he would move on, but sooner than later. Not to mention, she also owed him the her cooperation since she was the whole cause behind the mess in the first place.

They stayed there for a few hours more. Aisha occupying herself by going through the contents of some boxes as quietly as she could as her grandfather diligently watched the door with his gun in hand.

After some time, Aisha saw his resolve wear down minute by minute. Slowly, his shoulders slumped and he gave out a resigned sigh. "Okay, chiquita. Tell me if you can hear or see anything suspicious."

"No, there's nothing out there, Pa."

He got up from his place, bones cracking loudly after a long time without movement. Now that he was facing her, Aisha got a good look at his face and grimaced. The bags under his eyes were more swollen that usual and the area around his pupils were bloodshot. His hands were also shaking lightly, but she also chalked that up to the lack of sleep.

"Grandpa, you should have gone to sleep. You now that I would have heard if there was anything going on."

He turned away and ran his hands over his gun with trembling hands. "Mija, when you've seen what I've seen, you take no chances."

Aisha just stared at him uncomprehendingly. She knew that he was paranoid and was even warned by her parents of moments of strange behavior—being told that it was a side effect of war and that she would just have to let him be.

"I'm going to go up now." Aisha said with a hand on the doorknob, a request for permission implied in the statement.

"Go ahead." He replied quietly without looking at her.

Aisha went to her room feeling unsure and a bit hesitant to leave him by himself. Once in her room, she turned on her radio and tuned into the local news channels. Everyone was talking about the loud boom that woke up nearly everyone at 3 in the morning. They went back and forth, speculating about what would have been the cause, but because it was so far from civilization, they thought that it might have been a meteor that crashed.

"I'm telling you. I jumped in my bed when I hear it. It wasn't very loud from where I was, but you could tell that it was a booming sound and that we were only catching the end of its intensity." The commentator on the radio channel the teenager was listening to stated excitedly in Spanish.

"I agree, I got scared myself. I almost thought that it was a bomb went off and waited to see if it happened again. I still think that it could've been one. I mean, it's a bit too loud to be a meteor—not that I'm any expert in how loud a meteor crash would be, but still, I don't think it would be that loud." The second commentator replied with equal vigor.

"Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Meteors get pretty fast when they reach Earth's gravitational pull. Plus, it could be something bigger than usual and that's why it caused a louder noise."

"Well, sure. You might be right… but at this point, I'm just going to wait and see the result of the investigation."

"Inves—how do you there's going to be an investigation?"

"Come on, something this strange isn't going to be dismissed so easily by the authorities. They're definitely scrambling to get there—or are already there. I bet that if it's not a meteor and turns out to be something unusual, then we might not be hearing anything about it for a while. Mark my words, there will be radio silence from the government."

"So you think they'll try to cover it up?"

"If it's not a meteor, yeah."

Aisha slowly reached over and shut the radio off. Collapsing back on her bed, she placed her palms over her face. "I'm never doing that again."