CHAPTER 3 (Fuyu): WHO AM I ?

SWISH! WHOOM!

I channeled my rage and everything I had in a single attack. The air knocked Agent Cyclops out of balance and pushed him  towards the exposed ledge.

"Agh! What the hell?! NO!!!" cried Cyclops.

Macmillan , who was laying lifeless on the floor , was also driven back by the wind. He was barely conscious before he found himself about to fall and held onto the ledge for dear life.

I didn't know what to do next. I was not going to lose another person's life because of MY reckless actions!

The ceiling cracked. A stone slab ALMOST fell on the Cyclops until, to my surprise AND wariness, he reacted fast enough to blast it with his laser visors. But his real eyes were bleeding underneath. He screeched in pain from the shard of glass stuck nose-deep in his broken visor. He hurt himself the MORE he continued to shoot his beams.

I looked around me. I couldn't believe that I actually manipulated the winds. But the situation was far more complicated. I could only do it subconsciously, not deliberately. Even though the wind was moving in only one direction (forward) , my hands were swaying right and left uncontrollably. I heard my own heartbeat. It grew more erratic as each second passed. And every breath I took felt like an eternity. I could feel as if something was squeezing my own soul out of my lungs. I was panting so hard I was suffocating. I looked at my hands and realized that I was going to faint.

Macmillan yelled,

"FUYU! You have to STOP! Damn it!"

Cyclops planted his right foot and took one step forward, trying to resist the force of the wind.

"I will not be denied my victory today, Macmillan. I WILL TAKE THE GIRL, WHATEVER IT TAKES!"

Behind me, I heard a lot of pounding at the door. Someone was trying to force their way in.

A police officer then barged through the door screaming,

"POLICE! What the?"

I glanced at him before he quickly pulled me from behind towards the door. I lost my balance and fell, automatically letting go of the wind.

Cyclops retained his balance. As for Macmillan, he was nowhere to be found.

"He couldn't have possibly fell off, right?" I told myself.

"He definitely must have went invisible again," I thought.

The cop then took out his pistol and pointed it at Cyclops, "FREEZE !DO NOT MOVE! OR ELSE I'll..."

He needed a few seconds to process what was going on. You can probably imagine his reaction. Though he flinched, the cop readjusted his composure and did his best to manage the situation.

He looked at me and said,

"You! Why are you sitting there?! GO! Your Aunt is waiting outside! It's too dangerous for you to remain here! RUN!"

So I did run, right as the officer shouted,

"And you! Don't you dare move or I will fire a phasma bullet right through your chest! Reinforcements are on their way!"

Finally outside my room, I hugged my Auntie and Harper. I could hear the harrowing cries of distressed patients and police car sirens.

"Fuyu, are you okay? Are you hurt? Did that monster touch you?" said Aunt Akiya.

"Doctor Macmillan....he protected me." I responded.

I was more concerned about what happened to the doctor.Not just because I knew the police would detain him since he is a phaser,  but also because I don't know whether he fell of the ledge or not. Though I knew I had to keep his powers a secret. But  that also meant I had to lie to Auntie and Harper, my only family.

"The doctor?" Harper asked.

Aunt Akiya shook her head.

"Never mind, Harper, it doesn't matter now. C'mon, Fuyu. We will leave now! Let the police handle this."

More cops rushed in.

For a minute , nothing seemed to happen inside the room. So I ran with my Aunt and Harper to the emergency exit.

But I was well-aware, deep down, that something bad was gonna happen. These officers couldn't possibly stand up to him. If Macmillan , an invisible phasing Doctor (I never imagined I would say something as silly as before) , can't defeat him, then certainly the police can't. Not without powers.

My fears came true.

As we reached the emergency staircase, we heard a loud BANG!

All three of us rebounded.

I heard consecutive gunfire shots in the background.

Then, all hell broke loose.

Agent Cyclops yelled, "YOU MOTHERF***ERS! I will TEAR you apart !"

My heart skipped a beat as a robust laser beam perforated, leaving a giant hole where the door to my room was once located. Blood was splattered on the floor and walls.

The officers, all 5 of them, perished simultaneously. They were gone. In an instant. I was left astounded. I was on the verge of breaking down again.

Harper cried, "Fuyu! We have to keep moving before they—"

"Fuyu! Grab my hand! Wait, no! FUYUUU!" shouted Aunt Akiya.

I made a split-second decision to leave them to find Macmillan and began to run back towards my room.

The dust left behind the impact caused by the laser blast didn't settle yet. But I didn't care. I ran towards the danger. I was quickly reminded of what happened at the warehouse. My mother's dying corpse. This past week, I was thinking about alternate scenarios where I could have avoided ending up like this. Everything that happened then was going through my mind again. My heart felt heavier . My body was getting stiffer each step.

There was nothing I could do about what happened at the warehouse. But now, I had a choice. A choice to be better. No one has to die because of me. I am not a burden , and I will not BE a burden.

Nurses, doctors, staff members , and patients were swarming around like ants. Hoards of people were running through the halls. I was pushing through with everything I had while everyone was losing their mind. Panic spread like wildfire. Horrific ghastly screams filled the corridors.

My adrenaline was spiking.

Auntie and Harper were shouting my name. I couldn't look back at them anymore. I already made up my mind. A crowd of patients formed. They were desperately trying to escape.

One of them , whose head and eyes were covered with bandages, ran into me on accident and I fell.

I got up again and kept running towards my room when I tripped again. But this time, it was a police officer who held me by my leg. His body was completely drenched in blood. He was also missing both an arm and a leg. I thought that all 5 police officers were dead, but somehow, this one , despite his grave injuries, still made it far enough to pass on his last words to me, which would also haunt me like mother's did:

"Please, tell my son, I'm sorry." he said, before closing his eyes.

By then, I had already experienced enough trauma and pain that I didn't feel the urge to cry anymore. So I moved on. But in all honesty, that sentence pulled my heartstrings. It was too painful to bear.

As I approached my room, tears welling in my eyes,

I heard Cyclops say maliciously,

"Where are you , Fuyu? I know you are still out there. My scanner tells me you are still in this room. Now, come to me like the good girl you are, and we can all leave and go about like nothing happened."

I hid around the corner. However, Cyclops saying that we can "go about like nothing happened." grazed my soul as if a tiger bit off my arm. I was incensed.

So I fired back at him yelling,

"You killed those officers! You are far worse than the DEVIL himself! You're a MONSTER!"

"Oh, so I am the monster now?! What about you, Fuyu? Folks like you , Macmillan , and I got no place in this world, and you know it! They call us nature's freaks. But they don't know how much we struggled! Yet you and Macmillan don't understand that?! We are pawns, Fuyu! Pawns in a game that's way bigger than any of us! But phasers like you aren't willing to understand that! Just LOOK at me!" Cyclops said.

Unexpectedly, Macmillan reappeared from behind Cyclops's back, and injected him with an anesthetic needle, inciting a vigorous response from Cyclops who proceeded to kick Macmillan in the gut and remove the syringe.

"UUGGHH! Why won't you just STAY DOWN!" cried Cyclops as he winced in pain.

"Sorry, Cipher." Macmillan said, while still invisible,

"this is the end of the road for you. You had the choice to join us in this fight or fight against us. And you chose to become our enemy. So spare us the sympathy you want us to feel for you, traitor."

"I did not BETRAY YOU! Are you BLIND?! They did this to ME! LOOK AT ME!" Cyclops said, pointing to his visor.

"You didn't betray us , Cipher. You betrayed YOURSELF." said Macmillan, sounding like an apparition.

Realizing that trying to talk himself out of the fight was too late, Cyclops charged his visor for what would be his last time. He glared at me. He clenched his fists ready to break my bones.

Macmillan kicked Cyclops' s ankle from behind, twisting it in the process. Cyclops pulled his leg up as Macmillan barrel rolled under him, knocking Cyclops off balance. Macmillan then booted Cyclops in the chest. But to no avail. His chest armor was impenetrable.

"Look around you, MAX! You think that by killing me, this is gonna be over?! OF COURSE NOT! EVEN IF HELL FROZE OVER, nothing will change! You will still be the mouse destined to run forever on his running wheel! Do you HEAR ME?!" taunted Cyclops.

"No. I heard enough." Macmillan said

Both men bolted towards one another for one last fight to the death.

Macmillan cloaked his abdomen as the Cyclops rammed into him , breaking into the adjacent room's wall. The Cyclops's chest armor's durability was insane , but Macmillan endured the hit like he was invincible.

Macmillan didn't have to protect me. He could've ran away, but he chose to not just treat me, but also to save me. I am forever indebted to him with my life.

That's why, I kept running behind them.

Cyclops and Macmillan wrestled and punched each other like they were in a brutal boxing match. Cyclops had size, weight, height, and armor to his advantage, but Macmillan had the wits, skills, acrobatics, tools (even if he lacked them at the moment in time) , and invisibility powers in his arsenal.

Macmillan eventually gotten Cyclops in a choke hold, folding both of his legs around Cyclops' neck.

"GIVE UP, Cipher! If you shoot another beam, you will be permanently blind!"

"If that's my fate, then so be it! But if I will go down, I will take you down with ME!" yelled back Cyclops as he tried to unfold Macmillan's legs.

He charged his visors.

"Fuyu!" Macmillan looked at me, "if I die, I need you to find my sisters—"

"YOU ARE FIGHTING FOR THE WRONG SIDE GIRL! YOUR FATHER WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED!" screamed Cyclops.

The world around me stopped. It was like a pair of eyes were focused on me, me and me only. Everything and everyone in Bracnia paused as my brain regurgitated those words,

"YOUR FATHER WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED IN YOU!" he said.

My father? No, my plate was already full , and I simply had enough. That word enraged me so much, I felt like imploding.

"DON'T LISTEN TO HIM FUYU!" resisted Macmillan.

"JUST RUN! MY SISTERS WILL FIND YOU!" squalled Macmillan.

"DIE!!!!" cried Cyclops.

"My father, " I yelped back. The wind swirled around me, growing unstable. A mini-cyclone formed. My mind went blank.

The last thing I heard was Cyclops's bickering and maniacal laughter: I never anticipated I would be hearing a man laughing while going blind to be something I would hear before losing my consciousness.

I refused to think that Cipher hasn't already gone insane at this point. He was a savage barbarian hungry for blood. I doubted he was human at this point at all.

Finally, I gave him what he wanted. I wasn't a coward. And I was not going to run away anymore. I made my final stand right then and there.

I roared , "You want my powers? THEN TAKE IT!!!!!"

I reminisced about the time I sprained my ankle during a 50 meter running marathon at my school. The words "an ethereal dove" caved in on my soul once more. I imagined myself as a toddler learning to walk and running towards my mother for a hug. I would release my arms in embrace and, as my mother would always say, "Let it go , Fuyu. It's okay to make mistakes , watashi no sutekina musume (my lovely daughter). What matters is that we learn to pick ourselves UP again." So , I ran. I ran and didn't let my fall stop me. I won 2nd place that day, and mother was proud of me. So was I.

Henceforth , erupted a mass of turbulent air, powerful enough to knock the Cyclops off his feet and push him violently with Macmillion off the ledge. The entire room was bombarded with powerful wind currents , blasting debris and dumping whole concrete blocks onto the street.

The mini-tornado's blast radius was so gigantic that the rooms directly above me (4 to 5 floors up) were likely exposed to anyone standing at the entrance. Smoke and fog engulfed the building. I felt my soul leave my own body. Then everything turned dark. My body shut down.

When I woke up , my ears were bleeding badly and I couldn't breathe. I thought my heart was palpitating. It's like every time I used my powers , the air I survived on was literally getting sucked from my lungs WHOLE. I couldn't do a single damn thing. All that I heard were the agonizing , soul-wrenching screams of patients and riotous crowds of civilians alike running for their lives. I tried calling out to Macmillan and to anyone , but to no avail. It was catastrophic.

I struggled to process what had transpired. I fell to my knees , gasping for air.

After what felt like an eternity, Harper emerged from the rubble. She told me later on that she twisted her ankle in the incident. Her knees were scraped. Her nose was bleeding. My aunt ran to me from behind , hugging me in her arms as I wailed like a child.

The valiant police officers's bodies were reduced to nothingness. There was no corpse. Only the smell of iron and cold ceramic covered in blood remained. I could see behind the smoke that 3 to 4 more police officers were injured and paramedics were rushing to the scene. One of the officers had his left arm locked under the debris. Another one couldn't feel his legs. The hospital nurses ran towards the pack to pick them up one by one, their outfits soaked with blood from the injured people's' blood. It was like the warehouse explosion all over again.

Hours later , when the smoke cleared and emergency services arrived , my aunt held my hands and walked me outside , where multitudes of people dispersed like bees in a hive. By then , the SWAT teams put up shields to prevent as many people as possible from entering. Many patients were stationed in the bottom floors , and hospital staff had their equipment and patients' beds relocated to the basement.

Soon enough , I saw Mr.Collins and Mrs.Collins talk to Harper , making sure she was okay. After my aunt and I talked to them, we all comforted one another and everyone went home except for me and Harper. Her eyes met mine. I was wary and I could tell Harper was feeling lost too. Fear and stress washed over me, as I didn't recover from my mother's passing just a week earlier, nor did I have the power to weep anymore. That was it. The hours passed, and it was the dawn of another gloomy day for my vague, dreary future. For all that my Aunt knew, a pro-phaser planted a bomb in my room In an attempt to arouse suspicion and controversy against the government for the recent mysterious kidnappings spread all over the news the weeks before today, all while endangering her best friend's daughter.

However, Harper and I knew what the dark, tasteless truth was. It was arduous and painful to hide that from her. But I knew we couldn't say anything or convince anyone. I didn't want to put Auntie in more danger or make her go through more trauma. It wasn't worth it. I did plan to tell her though I had to get my unresolved questions answered first. Most importantly of them all, who IS my father?

I ended up sleeping with my aunt on the couches at reception in the already crowded hospital. Harper was dismissed after getting a few bandages and went back home with her parents later that night. Two days later, after things started to calm down a bit, Harper came over again to comfort me before my scheduled surgery to relocate my cheekbone. She distracted me with the reminder that our final year of high school was going to start next week. She was particularly excited about the Science Fair this year and already thought about a project that merged basic Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering concepts used in developing new prosthetics for amputees in the near future.

While Harper was speaking about the technicalities of her project, I was buried deep in thought. Who was Cipher and from where did he come from? Why did he become the Cyclops? Who sent him here? And this is the first time I ever heard about a Kinetic Phaser that can shoot lasers. How was that possible? And what did he mean by me fighting for the wrong side? And most importantly, who was Macmillan? Who were his sisters? Why are we all considered pawns in a bigger game like Cyclops said? And why were some of the hospital staff like the nurses acting suspicious? What are their intentions? And what role do I have to play in all of this?

The news report stated that the incident at the hospital was the result of a "pro-phaser terrorist bombing". All the allegations that Kinetic Phasers were involved in the bombing were denied, DESPITE leaked transparent video cam footage showing my hospital room's concrete block burst from Cyclops's lasers (the video was deleted in a record time of under 5 minutes, before it possible would've gone viral)

Instead , the media decided to focus on the damage caused by the shockwave that I summoned in the hospital , which left a lot of collateral damage. But I knew that this was all made to mislead people into believing that pro-phasers were behind all this.

"So yeah, that's what I am planning to do for my project. There's just one problem, Fuyu. I know Javascript and C++, but I don't know Python. My entire project is based on Python! Darn! Fuyu?" Harper noticed that I wasn't focusing on her, so she snapped her fingers.

"Were you EVEN listening to what I was saying Fuyu? Urgh! Why do you have to always blame yourself for everything! None of what happened is YOUR FAULT! I am trying to help you get over it but you aren't giving me a chance and just pushing me away!" blurted out Harper before storming out.

I knew from Harper's frustrated tone that she was just as irritated by my powers as I was. We both knew however, that we couldn't do anything about it. I was ashamed of myself for it. Now, because of my actions and tendency to refrain myself from acting in front of others due to fearing failure my best friend was starting to feel pressured and bothered herself. The one who was patient with me for so many years. Am I really worth all this trouble? Is this who I am meant to be for the rest of my life? A worthless, dependent introvert who gets bullied around and joked upon left and right like I don't matter? Am I stuck as a nobody forever? Soon enough after our tense conversation, my aunt came back with breakfast.

Afterwards , I headed to another doctor for the final check-up I never got from Macmillan. I was buried deep in thought. What happened to Macmillan ? Did he really die ? The reports did mention some doctors were victims of the incident, but none of whom included Macmillan.

Furthermore, how in the world was Macmillan even able to join the workforce, let alone become a doctor, and avoid the authorities all this time while being a phaser?

As we walked down the hallway to the clinic, one of the nurses who worked with Macmillan shook hands with my Aunt and pulled her aside.

Abruptly, I felt something pull me by the shoulder (while my Aunt was looking) to the corner and whispered in my ear,

"Once you're alone and the path is clear, head to the Ward . ASAP! Do you understand?"

Before I could even process what happened, I looked around me but saw nobody there.

Was it another invisible phaser ? It definitely sounded like a female's voice , so I knew it wasn't Macmillan's.

I turned my back to find the Chief of Police standing in front of me. The way he was towering over me and gazed at me right in the eye made me shudder.

"I presume you are Fuyu Miyazaki, right? Patient Number 107?" asked the Chief of Police, in an intimidating manner. His tone implied that he knew EXACTLY who I was. He just wanted to hear it from me.

I don't know what expression I had on my face , but I was sure bewildered.

Nevertheless, I replied back saying,

"Yes, I am. Nice to meet you, sir!"

Then, I proceeded to do something so awkward that I wanted to facepalm myself. I reached out with my hand to shake hands with him. Who does that?! Let alone to the CHIEF OF POLICE!

"I am sorry to hear about your mother, Fuyu. However, I assure you, our best detectives are working on the case, including Inspector Ray here. And we shall uncover who's behind this terrible tragedy and inform you and your Aunt as soon as possible." spoke the Chief.

I exchanged greetings with the Inspector. He smiled back.

"This week must've been quite the ordeal for you, Fuyu. I truly admire the strength and bravery you have shown. You are already blossoming into a fine lady. I am certain your mother would be so proud." said Inspector Ray. He was very friendly and I felt oddly comfortable in his presence.

I turned my head back to the Chief's. He had his eyes locked on mine. Even the Mona Lisa can't hold a candle to his soul-piercing glare.

I was positive he knew everything about me being a phaser and all. How? Because of what he said next.

"After I speak with my Deputy, I would like to give your Aunt my condolences personally , if you don't mind. However, I anticipate we will meet again in the near future, Miyazaki."

I was even more bewitched than I already was.

My aunt then called, "Fuyu? What's wrong? Come on, sweetie! We gotta go to the clinic before it gets crowded!"

"Ah, it's nothing Auntie," I shook my head, "let's go. If you would excuse me, sir. "

"Of course. May you be granted success in your future endeavors." said the Chief.