33 Excited

Aaron Cyrus: February 21st,20XX

“One hundred and ten pounds!”

Archer winced at Kaja’s loud voice as she called out his weight and Tillo wrote it down. It embarrassed him since he was small for his age, but he wasn’t a unique case.

All of them were much skinnier and lighter than they should have been.

He was the last to have gotten his weight measured, so he put the scale away and stood in a line with the others. Although he tried to hide it, I could tell he was the most excited.

While the kids had taken and recorded their weight on the old scale, I’d found three helmets in the shed and had sent out Gordon for the last.

Kaja had grabbed the largest one, a dark blue helmet with yellow foam stars attached to it. Tillo had taken the smallest and had simply shrunk down to match the bright yellow helmet with blue foam moons stuck to its side. That left Archer with a bright pink ‘Sparkle girl’ helmet. While he looked somewhat embarrassed, his excitement to go up in the air quickly overshadowed it.

Eva had volunteered to wait until Gordon returned with a new helmet and sat on the floor, playing with a phone and clicking from video to video.

I’d moved her to the couch before, but she had eventually moved back to the floor and laid flat on her stomach while she watched a movie. She used an old relic of the past as an armrest and waited for me to ask her to activate it.

It was an old stop clock I’d found in the shed while I was looking for the helmets.

“Okay, secure the helmets one more time! I’ll keep you up in the air for twenty minutes, then I’ll bring you down. Tell me if you feel especially heavy after or uncomfortable. Okay?”

“Twenty minutes?”

Kaja immediately rejected my offer and prepared to bargain, but I held up a hand and finished my warnings.

“We’ll start with twenty minutes and if nothing goes wrong, I’ll let you guys go up again. No roughhousing while you’re in the air and yell out if you get stuck so I can move you. Say when you’re ready so Eva can start the timer.”

“Ready!”””

Their three voices came out in unison and quickly escalated into shrieks of excitement when they felt themselves become lighter.

Kaja adjusted the fastest and was soon bouncing off the walls and the ceiling. Her thin arms soon revealed muscles as she exerted strength to push herself from wall to wall and chased Tillo around in a sudden game of tag.

“Ahh! One second, I haven’t figured out how to move yet!”

Tillo yelled as he frantically twisted his body in the air and avoided Kaja’s grasping hands. He observed her moving from wall to wall and soon grasped the movements.

Archer watched the twins play around but didn’t join them. He took stock of all his limbs and gently waved them around while floating in the air. He occasionally flipped upside down when he moved one of his limbs too strongly, but otherwise looked at peace.

The basement was a large space, being about twice the size of the average basement and was tall as well, so the kids had room to play around like this. I gently moved the youngest boy around and out of the way from the twin’s chaotic movements, but I got distracted and Kaja nearly crashed into him.

Archer reacted quicker than I did and pulled a pillow from the couch to the space between him and the projectile that Kaja had turned herself into. The pillow wasn’t a very heavy one, but it won the war of weight between itself and Kaja.

She flew across the room and I caught her inches before she slammed into the wall.

Archer used the roof to pull himself toward the older girl with a worried expression but quickly turned around as he saw her put her feet against the wall and prepare to shoot toward him. She didn’t look angry, but she was too excited for anyone’s good.

Before she could push off, I slightly increased her weight and made her a few pounds heavier than the others.

She was still much lighter than her original weight, but the difference was enough to bring her back to her senses.

“Hey!”

“Strike one, Kaja.”

She looked like she wanted to argue with me, but once I made her slightly heavier, the impulse disappeared. She beamed a bright smile at me and loosened her pose to seem less aggressive.

“That’s better. Seven minutes left.”

I made her lighter again and went to take a seat by Eva on the floor. She shifted slightly to the left to make room for me and tilted her screen to let me see what she was watching.

For someone whose powers included forcing her thoughts into other’s heads, she was pleasantly accommodating of others.

The video she watched showcased a familiar woman talking to a set audience and an even more familiar set. She held about five-minutes of banter that I’d already heard before introducing the guest to her co-hosts and audience.

I made to grab the phone out of her hands and ask her to watch something else, but thankfully I regained my senses and kept my hands to myself.

If I was right and this was the episode that I’d recorded a few years back, then there was no way I wanted an eight-year-old watching it.

It wasn’t just that episode, the entire show wasn’t that appropriate for kids to watch.

My face hurt as I pushed it into a wide smile, and I spoke as softly as possible.

“Hey Eva, I don’t think this is too appropriate for your age. Why don’t I get you something else to watch?”

She sent me a baleful look but handed over the phone anyway and turned her head up to watch her older brother in the air. I could tell she would probably go back to watch it later on, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

Maybe I would ask Archer to monitor what his younger sister watched in her free time. But then again, maybe he wouldn’t appreciate me poking my nose into his younger sister’s business. I had only known them for a few hours, so I didn’t want to overstep.

Eva pulled me out of my thoughts by poking me and showing me an impatient expression. It looked like she got bored with watching the others play around.

I pushed my thoughts into overdrive and finally came up with something to show her.

I went into Squire and went to the newly launched video section.

“Here, Joyce told you guys about Squire, right? Archer is going to make a channel soon, so why don’t you look through those that are already here. That way you can help him decide what he’ll do later.”

Her eyes lit up at the sudden assignment and opportunity to help her older brother. She waited for me to give the phone back and quickly scrolled through the videos that were already there.

Right now, it was only the celebrities from the few companies that had been willing to work with Squire, but that was enough content to give Eva some ideas. I turned my attention back to the three kids in the air, who now took part in a game of ‘dodge’ which was just Archer throwing pillows at them and the twins trying their best to dodge.

I felt a pull on my arm and Eva pointed out a text notification from Joyce.

“Thanks.”

She nodded in response and looked back up at her sibling with a wistful expression. I felt bad for interrupting her entertainment, but it probably wasn’t great for kids to spend so much time on the internet, anyway.

‘Change of plans. Bring the kids to the building in about three hours. Also, prepare them to meet the scientists’

The text was brief and went straight to the point, so I knew something must have happened.

The timer rang out and the three kids in the air went still and prepared to be brought down. I took my time in letting them go and tried my best to ignore Eva’s expectant gaze.

The building was at the edge of the city, in the opposite direction of the suburban house Joyce had let me stay in.

If I wanted to make the time Joyce had given me, then I had to disappoint Eva once more.