Disclaimer:  The following story has all sorts of sexual activity
as well as violence of an extreme nature and death.  If you don't
like it.  Don't read it.  You have to be over 18 to continue. 
The story is completely fictional.  Any characters, places or
events that are similar to any real people, locations or
situations, is purely coincidental.


Author's Preface:

I'll make this short and sweet.  I suffer from clinical
depression and I crashed and attempted to take my life.  I am
however a little better now and back to writing, which is good. 
I apologize for the delay.  I also thank everyone who wrote in
with feedback about Chapter 6 and 7.  It helps me a great deal to
know people read and care about my work.  Also, thanks to those
that are currently continuing various other aspects of AG and
contacting me about it.  I enjoyed working through the ideas with
you.  Also note that Trent's backstory summary in this chapter
has been taken from a more detailed story of Trent's beginnings
currently being written by another author.  Anyways, enjoy,

Ardin


The Alien's Gift (MF, MFF, FF, inc, v, rp, nc, mc, death)

Chapter 8: Inferno

by Ardin Resolute


~ There's no fate worse than being burnt alive But if it's my
body or my soul that I'll offer to the flames My body will go
every time ~


Prologue.

The old man stared at the chess board in front of him.  Chess was
his game.  It was all about strategy, all about placing his
pieces where he wanted them and luring his opponent into making
moves of benefit to him.  This was what he found so fascinating
about chess.  Not just what he could do, but what he could make
his adversary do.  And he found he could make them do many
things.  He had won whole games on forcing his opponent to
self-destruct, forcing them to make bad moves.  It was all very
interesting, and all very envigorating.  And envigoration was a
good thing for one as old as himself.  He got up from his seat in
front of the old board and walked over to the edge of his
enormous penthouse's deck.  The old man looked out upon the sea
of humanity below him.  He saw people as the ants they were,
bustling about their menial little tasks, engrossed in their puny
little worlds.  He saw them as his puppets, as his tools, as but
pawns in his greater game of chess.
  He smiled.  This was all going according to plan, according to
his plan, which of course was the perfect plan.  Everything he
did was perfect, perfectly organized, perfectly set up and always
without any flaw.  That was the way he lived his life, and that
was why he was where he was now, on the brink of perfection, on
the brink of having it all.  That was his life, and it was a good
life.
  A knock on the door behind him jarred him out of his reverie. 
"Yes?"  He didn't bother to turn around, the old man knew who was
there.
  A soft, feminine voice came from the doorway.  "He's here."
  The old man smiled briefly, a gesture unappreciated by the one
behind him who could not see it.  "See that he is briefed then
send him in."  He folded his arms and continued looking out.
  The woman behind him nodded once.  "Yes sir."  And the door
closed behind her with a soft thud.
  The old man looked upon the people beneath him once again. 
This was the beginning of the end.  Not the end of everything,
but the end of another beginning.  It was the beginning of the
end of the beginning of his plan.  He was finishing his first set
of moves, his first gambit in the greater game of chess that he
had always played, and always loved playing.
  The old man took one last look at the scene below him, then
turned and started inside.
  It was beginning.


I.

Sherri Winters opened her eyes, her head desperately trying to
focus the image of the room around her, trying to stop the
spinning.  It had been a few days since Rick had taken over the
GJL, a few days since she had been able to get any decent amount
of sleep.  She groaned, and now, as if things couldn't get any
worse, she had been knocked out and taken to another room in the
mansion more than likely because Rick had something to say to
her.  She groaned in frustration.  It would have helped immensely
if she wasn't so damned horny.  Her fault of course, her fault
for wanting to be part of that lesbian orgy so much that she had
carelessly prepped her body for it before time.  Carelessly,
because when ick strolled into the room and locked her mind down,
she was left without the ability to turn her need to be fucked
off.  And damn, did she need to be fucked.  Damn damn damn.  She
had managed to keep herself sane and in fairly good control of
herself so far due to her constant masturbating, but her arms
were getting very sore because of her shackles and she knew
eventually she'd just be left screaming for release, begging for
it, a thought that chilled her to the bone.  There had to be a
way out, had to be something Rick missed.  Had to be something,
anything she could do to free herself.  Goddamit, this wasn't
fair!  She was the good guy wasn't she?  There had to be
something to do!
  She kept struggling but there didn't seem to be much use.  Her
strength, already sapped from hours of non-stop masturbation, was
fading fast and the shackles that imprisoned her were far too
durable for her to break even if she was at full strength.  God
damn it!  God fucking damn it!  She took a deep breath, and while
her mind was still somewhat clear in between fingering sessions,
she turned her attentions inward, probing and feeling out the
barrier which Rick had put up to keep her from accessing the
gift.  Slowly she ran her psychic fingers across it, "feeling" it
out, trying to find a hole, a defect, anything she could use to
break it down.  C'mon, there had to be some flaw, nothing was
perfect.  She kept testing, trying out each section of the
barrier like tapping a wall to find a weak spot.  It was slow and
excrutiatingly repetitive work, but the hope of escape was more
than enough to keep her focussed.  The wall seemed too well made
though.  That was what had impressed her right off the bat.  Rick
had obviously grown greatly in strength and skill since the last
time her brother had dealt with him.  It had been two days since
she had been captured and during all that time she still had not
been able to find any way to break through.  Even the most
powerful Gifted she knew had problems making such a perfect mind
shield.  Still, nothing was impossible to circumvent, she just
had to find the... wait... there it was... a flaw... a very tiny,
very minute, but very very significant flaw!  She smiled.  This
was what she had been looking for all along.  Now all she had to
do was...
  No.  She felt it.  The urge was coming back, stronger than last
time for that was how the urge worked.  Each time she fought it
off, it returned, stronger, more powerful, more dominating than
before.  No.  Not now.  Not when she had just... ohhh... god... 
Focus.  She had to focus.  Focus on breaking down the shield,
focus on coming up with a way to... focus on... coming... yes...
she had to focus on cumming.  She needed to cum.  God did she
need to cum.  Sherri's hand was a blur beneath her as her fingers
rifled quickly across her clit, over and over and over again. 
Fuck... what.. what did she... need to do?  Wha.. what was it? 
God, she couldn't think straight.  She needed to cum.  She needed
to cum.  A glazed look came over her as the rampant desires raged
across her body, setting off every nerve ending and making her
scream in pleasure with every touch and caress her tired fingers
managed to give her.  Nothing mattered anymore.  Escape, revenge,
desperation, none of that was any of her concern anymore.  The
only thing Sherri Winters, second in command of the now-defunct
GJL and sister of the strongest gifted on Earth, cared about
anymore was cumming as many times as she could.
  It didn't matter that she was only a hairsbreadth away from
freeing herself from Rick's devious mind shield.  It didn't
matter that if she had just 1 more second of un-interrupted
thought she would now be free instead of in chains and
desperately rubbing her clit raw.  Because ultimately, all the
second-guessing and what ifs in the world wouldn't have changed
the truth and that truth was Sherri Winters wasn't a prisoner of
Rick Evans, she was a prisoner of her own desires, a metaphysical
cage, fashioned by herself for her own pleasure and ultimately
doing nothing more than preventing her from escaping her pain.

***

Rick got out of bed in a rather mixed mood.  On one hand, having
wonderful sex with Colt Winter's lovely subordinates every night
was great.  On the other hand, Colt was going to be back very
soon, and Rick hadn't yet figured out what to do about it.  He
knew Colt would know instantly that his base had been breached
and knew also that Rick was in the area.  There wasn't much
element of surprise here.  Rick had Sherri as bait but not much
else.  The girls were useless.  Colt knew their weaknesses better
than he did, and so using them as weapons would do him absolutely
no good.  Rick needed more cards to play than he had.  Rick
needed a force, and currently he had no idea how he really would
get one.
  Rick was confident he could take Colt one on one now.  He had
trained very hard since their last fateful encounter and he
wasn't worried that he would lose a duel.  But he wasn't sure if
Colt would come alone, or even if Colt wouldn't have a trick up
his sleeve.  Colt was a smart man, a very smart man.  If Rick was
going to take him on, he needed a plan.  He needed something.
  Rick walked to the bathroom and clapped his hands.  Danielle
and Andrea appeared almost out of nowhere.  Though Rick knew that
really they had just broken up their passionate love-making in
the other room to serve him.  Already naked (Rick rarely dressed
in clothes while he was in the GJL headquarters), he strolled
into the shower and stood there.  On cue, Danielle turned on the
shower and Andrea soon joined them with the soap.  Both girls
then began to lather his body with soap and worship it as they
cleaned him.  Of course, one girl was always kneeling down
soaping his bottom half and sucking on his hard cock.
  The strangest thing was, Rick only had half a mind paying
attention to the pleasure he was getting.  Not that it wasn't
great.  It was.  He loved the attention as always and loved the
hot female flesh around him, as always.  But life was more than
sex, for Rick at least, life was also revenge.  Vengeance was
high on Rick Evan's mind, even now, and as the days ticked by and
Colt's return grew more imminent, vengeance was beginning to
consume him.
  He needed an advantage.  He needed some sort of back up,
something he could use.  If Colt brought Jade, or the government,
or hell, even Trent, Rick would find himself outnumbered in a
hurry.  He needed to make sure that didn't happen.  He needed...
  Suddenly, as Rick came in Danielle's mouth, it hit him, he knew
what he needed, and the thought brought him almost as much
pleasure.  It was perfect, it was absolutely perfect.  He had
almost all the parts also, just a couple excursions and he'd be
ready.  He'd be ready for Colt and whatever or whomever Colt
might have brought him.  The bait was already set in Sherri and
now he had the cards to play once Colt joined him at the poker
table.  It was absolutely perfect.
  Rick Evans was about to get himself an army.


II.

Deanna Jackson had no idea why she was following Tom.  She had no
idea where they were going either, but for some reason that
didn't matter to her.  She had no idea why she was giggling at
every word he said either, the guy was a nerd, or at least was,
or maybe she just thought he was... it was so confusing, she
couldn't make heads or tails of it.  Tom was just some geek at
her school she looked down on, wasn't he?  But... but she loved
him so much, he was so beautiful, so wonderful, so damned sexy. 
But... but she didn't think so yesterday.  Didn't she?  But that
didn't make any sense... because she loved him so much, she had
always loved him, she knew it, she could feel it, she thought
it... but... but she didn't remember it like that.  God, her head
hurt so much from thinking.  Then another thought occurred to
her: she should stop thinking.  Yes!  That was it, if thinking
hurt her so much, she should stop thinking.  Just... stop
thinking.  She smiled and giggled softly as her headache receded
and the world made sense once again.
  The car stopped.  She looked around confused, but wasn't
worried, Tom would take care of her, Tom loved her and she loved
him.  She smiled as the door opened and she saw the object of her
affections staring back at her.
  "C'mon we're here, get out."  Tom took Deanna by the hand and
led her out into the slowly dimming night.  They were in front of
a bar with a big neon sign at the top that read 'The Mind
Bender'.  Of course Tom knew that wasn't what most people saw. 
Only Gifteds could see the truth.  Mundanes would see a closed
old warehouse with boards on the doors.  He smiled and led Deanna
through the etheral "boards" that barred their entrance into a
whole new realm.
  The music inside was loud and festive.  The furniture was very
modern and there were seveeral large screen high definition
television sets scattered around.  Obviously the owner had lots
of cash on him and wasn't afraid to spend it, but Tom knew that
already, it was, after all, not the first time he had been here.
The bar was packed tonight, there were at least 30 or 40 men in
the establishment, several of them newbies he had never seen
before.  They were, of course, all Gifteds, and all looking to
fraternize with their own kind.  Some were at the counter getting
some drinks served to them by a 36D blonde who was so horny she
had to stop to rub her cunt every few drinks she poured.  Others
had their cocks out and were getting blow jobs by one of the many
hot girls that either were "with" the establishment or were
brought in by patrons.  And of course there was the usual crowd
around the Sexual Duel arena where 2 Gifteds would use their
powers on two girls in the centre of the arena to see who could
create the hottest sex scene.  At the moment, the current
challenger had a girl with massive E breasts shoving them up
another girls inhumanly stretched pussy, fucking her as the crowd
watching cheered, both girls were screaming in ecstacy.  Of
course, none of that interested Tom at the moment, it might later
on in the night, but right now he had more important things to
do.
  "Hey Tom boy, who's the chick?"
  Tom smiled at the question and walked to the back of the room
where the owner, Abram was.  He waved a finger to Deanna and like
a puppy she quickly ran up to him.
  Abram, a towering man of middle-eastern decent looked
approvingly at the girl then back at the unassuming boy who had
total control over her.  "Pretty hot man, so who is she?"
  Tom chuckled a bit, a deliberate delay to set up the big
answer, "Deanna Jackson."
  Abram blinked.  "Deanna Jackson?  Yo.. you mean..."  His voice
trailed off, his mind still trying to comprehend the gravity of
what his young, brash friend had just done.
  Another chuckle.  "Oh yeah, Alicia Parker's girlfriend."
  Abram paled.  "You, you know she's going to come here right? 
When I let you in as a member last month, you promised you
weren't gonna start nothin, and you swore, like everyone else
here, that you wouldn't start no gifted war in my joint, or bring
one in here."  He was shaking a little and walked over to the
counter to get himself a drink.
  If the older man's concerns meant anything to Tom, he didn't
show it, if anything his smile just got bigger.  "Hey don't worry
about it Abe, this isn't me bringing in no war, I've barely even
met this Alicia chick, but I found out her girl went to my
school, and I said, why the fuck not?"  He walked over to wear
the owner was now sitting, half-slumped on a bar-stool.  "Look,
Alicia may be the most powerful female gifted out there, but she
isn't invincible and she sure as hell won't be able to stand
walking into a room full of male gifted's with a huge lack of
respect for the weaker sex, so don't worry about it.  In fact,
think of it as a chance to expand the business.  With Alicia as
our main slut, imagine how much business you'd get, hell you
might even be able to get a guy like Rick Evans or Tristian
Tempest to promote your club.  You'd be the man when it comes to
Gifted clubs."  Tom ended it at that and bought himself a drink
from the 36d blonde mindlessly running the bar.  He was obviously
letting his words sink in and judging by the thoughtful look that
had just fallen on his host's face, they were indeed sinking in.
  "Hmm..."  Abram stroked his chin thoughtfully and Tom knew he
had just sold his idea.  Money didn't mean anything to a Gifted,
and for that matter, popularity among mundanes didn't mean
anything either, they lived in their own world after all, but
popularity and reputation among Gifteds meant a lot.  It was a
dog eat dog world for Gifteds sometimes, and in a world with no
law (except for the occasional tussle with the GJL) it was all
about strength or hanging around those with strength, and bagging
a female Gifted would go far for Abe's rep and probably get him
the respect of a real big guy like Rick or Tempest and clearly
Abram was beginning to see it that way too.
  "Hmm... okay, you have a point, but what do you get out of it
huh?"
  Tom laughed.  "Saw right through me did you?"
  Abram returned his smile, albeit not as warmly.  "You never do
anything without an angle boy.  I figure you want a piece of the
bar."
  "For starters, I'd also like to be able to take a couple of
your girls whenever I need them."
  The older man thought about it for a few seconds.  "All right,
you can use my girls one day a week, but only two at a time and I
want them returned in the same condition you got them.  Also,
I'll cut you in as owner, say 20%."
  "Thirty."
  "Twenty five, don't get greedy."
  Tom shrugged.  "Twenty five it is then."  At that, they shook
hands and Tom was having a parade inside.  After all, it wasn't
the bar he wanted as much as the girls.  It wasn't like he
couldn't get his own girls of course, but Abram's girls had been
really worked over by Gifted powers and were very easy to work
with.  It was like using windows instead of DOS, everything was
laid out and set up for you to play with, you just had to click.
Besides, he could examine them more closely in private and find
out how to duplicate the work.  Or better yet, and this was the
real kicker, he could learn more about Abram's techniques and
take the old fart out later on.  Tom smirked inwardly, yes things
were just going to get better for him.
  It was then that he felt it.  Not as much felt as just knew
that something had arrived, that someone had arrived.  And he
wasn't the only one.  All heads whipped to the door as they felt
an enormous burst of Gifted power waft in, a power some knew and
others had only felt in the memories of others.  It was Alicia.
  Tom tried his best not to gape.  He had heard of her, had even
gotten good desciptions of her, but to see her was another thing.
 It wasn't precisely that she was hot, she was a feminist and a
lesbian after all, making herself out to be a man's playmate
wouldn't exactly make any sense, but she definitely caught
people's attention.
  Standing at a few inches under 6 feet, Alicia was a very
imposing woman, not in size (she wasn't all that large) but just
by her manner and dress.  Her hair was black, cut short and
gelled up with streaks of pink in it.  She had 2 bangs of
blondish hair swing down around her face framing it and her hair
had a very loose and full look to it, not flat at all.  Her eyes
were like two green gemstones, her nose and lips were thin and
matched the serious cut to her face.  In terms of body, she was
between a B and C cup (not that such things mattered to a Gifted
as body could be changed as easily as clothes could) and had long
athletic legs.  She was wearing black army boots, black cargo
pants and a dark purple t-shirt that looked deliberately ripped
underneath a long black trenchcoat.  Nose, lip and eyebrow
piercings capped off her menacing yet pro-actively sexy look. 
And right now she didn't look very pleased.
  Tom decided to move first and got up, mentally making Deanna
walk up next to him.  "So you arrived after all."  He said in a
slow, careful manner.  He waved a hand over Deanna making her
shudder in orgasm.  "Too bad you hadn't found me earlier, you
would have caught your little girlfriend getting hooked on cock."
 He smiled evily, knowing he had just hit a nerve.
  Alicia didn't say a word.  She didn't move a muscle, she didn't
grunt, she didn't yell, she didn't scream out or swear.  No, she
did nothing.
  Three of the Gifted sitting at the table nearest her suddenly
coughed up blood in unison and fell over their table.  All three
of them instantly... dead.
  It was then that Tom decided that he wasn't taking any more
chances.  He gave the mental command and everybody in the bar
attacked.
  Amazingly enough, Alicia stood her ground, her mental shield
would not break, her will would not break, she would not give up
when it came to her beloved.  It was almost fourty against one
and she was giving them a run for their money.  Unfortunately,
even those odds would have been steep for 10 Gifteds and she was
just one, and inevitably she made a mistake, she faltered and
soon one attacker snuck in, then another, then another, then...
she hadn't ever realized how much she liked men... not just
liked, fantasized, admired, adored men.  She tried to fight it,
tried to fight them, tried to fight their cocks, their big
throbbing cocks, their huge overpowering, pleasure causing cocks.
 Oh God, she wanted it, she wanted it deep in her pussy, she
wanted...
  It took Tom and the rest of the patrons of the bar about 40
seconds to get their thoughts away from the writhing female on
the floor begging for a hard cock in her hole and to realize that
they were now powerless and nobody in the room seemed to possess
the Gift anymore.  It took about fourty seconds to realize that,
and another twenty to look at the doorway and see why.
  Alan Storm smiled.  "Did I interrupt something?"


III.

Storm strolled in calmly.  He walked casually by the 3 dead men
leaning over their table and even nonchalantly knocked one of
them out of his path.  The teenager walked into the centre of the
room, stood atop the pool table and did a slow 360 turn observing
the scene around him.  Girls were having sex, girls were in the
middle of going down on their men and one girl who looked
remarkably familiar to him was lying on the ground begging for
cock.  Of course none of this really had anything to do with him,
and none of it bothered him in the slightest.  Alan had, after
all, been in Gifted bars before.  And just like before, he wasn't
at all intimidated at the prospect of being outnumbered either. 
However, unlike all those other times, he had one other
advantage, everybody in the room was now on equal footing.  Alan
couldn't be affected by the Gift anyways, but at least now his
adversaries wouldn't be able to change their physical strength
either or communicate to each other mentally, nothing that could
allow them to get the jump on him.  And he knew and he knew that
they knew it.  So it was time to get down to business.
  He took a deep breath.  Starting simple was always preferred. 
He scanned the room, making eye-contact with as many people as he
could.  "I'm looking for Rick Evans.  Anybody seen him, heard
from or of him, or just in general want to tell me anything about
him?"  Alan waited a moment then sighed as he was greeted with
blank and some condescending stares.  He shrugged.  "All right
then.  Let's play a game then.  It works like this, you don't
have any powers right now.  I know you don't have any powers, and
you know you don't have any powers.  So there's no point in 
dancing around that point.  So we both know that you're
powerless.  We also both know that you don't like being
powerless, which brings us to how can we find a solution to this
that is mutually beneficial?  Well, before I go any further, I'll
have to clarify your position first."  Alan reached into his
inner jacket pocket and brought out a small device, it was about
the size of a tennis ball, round and metallic with some buttons
and lights on it.  He held it out for everybody to see.  "This is
a psycho-neural field distabalizer.  Without getting into the
details of how it works, I'll just tell you that it does work,
and the fact that you don't have any powers prove it.  You see as
long as this thing is functioning, none of you will be able to
lord over the mundanes, hell none of you will be able to have any
fun as long as I'm here, and I plan to be here for as long as it
takes to get the information you want.  And if any of you try to
leave..."  In a blur, Alan had spun around with his gun in his
right hand and fired a point blank shot pegging a brown haired
fellow who had just tried to escape through the front door.
  It wasn't luck and it wasn't ESP that Alan had known this, it
was simply another side-effect of the mental overload he got at
the hands of Rick.  Not only was he immune to the Gift but he had
a sixth sense that allowed him to feel the movements of any
Gifteds in the area.  It wasn't very detailed, but he had gotten
the hang of knowing what each minute jolt meant.  He felt another
one and swung his gun to track a thin tall boy who was about to
sneak out the back door.  "I wouldn't try that if I were you. 
See, this is how it is... you have two choices.  Life is all
about choices, so it's only fair that I give you one.  Either you
tell me where Rick is and I'll let you guys go, of course, you'll
lose the bar, the girls and anything else I deem isn't yours, but
at least you'll be alive and have your powers.  Or... and think
long and hard about this.  Or... you try to take this little
doohicky from me."  He tossed the device up and down in his hand.
 "It's really up to you."
  He looked at them, they looked at him.  He pocketed the device
back into his jacket pocket, they began reaching for bottles,
pool cues and chairs.  He smiled, put his gun away and pulled out
a smallish metal tube.  They advanced.  He pressed a button on
the tube and from either end more metal tubes linked together
shot out until he was holding a long metallic bo-staff in his
hand.  They looked wary for a second, but only a second, and
charged.  Alan grinned.  "Wrong choice."

***

The last thing Tom remembered was charging that mundane who had
just invaded the bar.  Well, actually that was the second last
thing.  The last thing he remembered was seeing a large metal
pole head straight at his face and then everything went black. 
He shook his head to clear the cobwebs out of his brain.  Jeez,
what the hell happened?  He tried to get up and realized that
something in his leg was broken.  Instinctively he tried to use
the Gift to heal himself as was shocked and dismayed to find out
that it was still missing.  Shit.  He found a chair sitting on
it's side near him, put his hand on it and propped himself up a
little to see what the hell had happened.  The sight that greeted
him was shocking.  Gifteds were laying everywhere, some were
bloody, some were more than bloodied.  Many had their limbs bent
at strange angles.  Tom tried to pull himself up again but
failed, his foot slipping on a pool of blood under him, his body
collapsed under it's own weight and the pain he felt caused him
to scream aloud.
  That proved to be a mistake.
  Alan Storm sighed in frustration as he threw another
unconscious Gifted to the floor.  He was not one for patience,
and having to wait for somebody, anybody to wake up, was not his
strong suit.  Dammit.  God fucking dammit.  Why couldn't people
just tell him what he wanted to know instead of trying to fight
him?  There were easier ways to save face.  Easier and safer
ways.  Alan sighed again.  This was utterly moronic.  All he
needed was a small piece of information, all he needed was... a
scream?  Hmm, it looked like somebody was awake after all.
  Storm pulled out his gun and walked over to the noise.  An
average sized brown haired kid with an obvious broken ankle lay
slumped on the ground, struggling to get up.  Alan, being a nice
guy, decided to help him and grabbed the kid by his neck lifting
him up onto the table nearby and slamming him down on it.
  "What do you know about Rick Evans?  Where is he?"  His voice
was low and menacing, not an act at all, but exactly what he was
feeling, all the rage, all the hatred he had for Gifteds and Rick
in particular was beginning to flow out, he had no more time to
waste of this bag of scum anymore, all he needed was a simple
answer and by God he was fucking going to get it!
  Tom, the eternal survivor, stammered out the best reply he
could.  "I.. I don't know... I really.. don't... fuck, that
hurts.. I don't KNOW!!!"
  Alan pointed the gun right at Tom's ribs.  "Not good enough. 
Wanna try again?"
  "Look... look man!  Don't shoot me!  I don't know anything
about Rick!  I was thinking of getting in contact with him but I
had no idea how!  That's why I wanted to lure Alicia here, she
knew, she'd been keeping tabs on him I heard.  But I don't know
anything!!!"  Tom's face was getting really pale and sweaty, his
panic was clearly evident, he had just gotten used to being in
charge and now he didn't have his security blanket to give him
confidence.  He was a man broken.
  The pressure of the gun lessened a little, but only a little. 
"You don't know, but you know somebody who does.  Who's this
Alicia girl?"
  Tom felt a bit of relief, he was going to get out of this alive
after all.  A little more confidence came back to him.  So what
if he didn't have the Gift?  He still had his Gift of talking his
way out of situations.  He was the eternal survivor.  "Alicia's a
gifted chick.  She's over there on the floor, you see her."
  Alan did indeed see her and finally recognized her.  Alicia
Parker, the strongest female Gifted known to exist.  He didn't
know much about her since she had committed no major criminal
acts to his knowledge, but he did know that she was a lesbian and
sometimes had a tendency to go over board in punishing what she
saw as male crimes against women (though he had to agree, she had
a point sometimes, especially when it came to punishing men for
rape).  But she wasn't a lesbian nor a feminist (and he knew of
course that both were not the same thing) right now, in fact she
seemed like a cock-hungry whore.  "She doesn't look like she'd be
any help to me at the moment."  He muttered.
  Tom was growing more confident by the minute.  "That's because
she's undergone a bit of an attitude change.  She's become a real
woman, you know, not a womyn like she used to be."  He said it in
such a mocking tone that the word came out as "womine".  "But
look, I can help you.  You just let me go, you know, forget this
whole thing, I'll fix her up and..."
  Alan had stopped listening to him and was fiddling with a
binocular type device that he had pulled out of his pocket.  He
scanned Alicia and then scanned Tom.  Once satisfied, he pocketed
the device once more and turned to Tom.
  "That won't be neccesary."
  Tom blinked.  "Pardon?"
  Alan looked amused.  "You're stuck."
  Tom wasn't following at all and was wondering what this had to
do with him getting out of here alive.  "I know I'm stuck but
it's just a broken ankle, if you let your dampening field go..."
  "That's not what I meant.  You're mentally stuck.  You didn't
close your connection with Alicia before I walked in.  See,
technology is still trying to get the hang of the Gift.  We can't
say, fix something that's already happened and been closed off,
such as say, those girls over there by the betting table, those
girls are beyond our abilities.  But what technology and the
people who use it, can do, is go into an open connection and
eradicate any Gifted threads left there.  What that means in
short, is that once the change has been fixed, the connection
closed off, we don't know where to start to fix things.  But if
it's open, we can send a burst in and clear it all out.  We can't
choose what to get rid of, but at least we can get rid of it." 
Alan paused as he saw Tom trying to get in a word.
  "What does this have to do with me?"
  Alan smiled, a cold, uncaring smile.  "Well, you didn't finish
off when I walked in, you were still in her mind, still playing
around with her.  You, my friend, still had your connection open,
but not just that, you were still in it.  So you're stuck. 
You're in the way.  The connection is open, but there's something
jammed in it and it's your thread."
  The gravity of what Alan was implying finally began to dawn on
Tom and he wasn't liking it one bit.  "Hey!  Look, we can make a
deal, we can still work this out, I can..."
  Alan's voice was stone cold as he interrupted.  "As I said,
your thread has jammed up the opening, preventing me from fixing
the damage and the only way to clear it..."  Suddenly he swung
his gun up and over, pointing it straight at Tom's head.  "Is to
cut the thread."
  "Hey wait!!! No!! Please!! We ca..."
  And those were the last words that came out of Tom's mouth. 
His dreams of unlimited sex, of rubbing noses with the elite, of
owning a bar, all of it, disappeared at that moment.  Everything
that he was, that he could have been, disappeared in the time it
took to pull the trigger.  Today was supposed to have been his
greatest day, but life had a way of fucking things up sometimes,
and so did Alan Storm.


IV.

"Who the hell are you working for!?"
  "I can't tell you!  I can't.."
  "Wrong answer!"  Jerome's sentence was cut off as Trent hurled
the large black teen clear across his spartan apartment slamming
him into the nearest wall.
  Trent advanced on him, angrier and more threatening.  "Look
asshole.  I'm sick of your traps, I'm sick of you messing up a
perfectly good woman's life and I'm getting sick of you!"  Jerome
tried to get back on his feet, tried to focus himself to launch
another mental attack but Trent was ready for both, stuffing his
thread and smashing a fist hard into his temple.  The
darker-skinned Gifted collapsed in a heap, but could only lay in
that heap for a few seconds before Trent hauled him back up and
threw him against the wall.  "Look, you WILL tell me who you're
working for!  And you're going to tell me before I really get
mad."
  Jerome again tried to sputter out an answer.  "Lo..look... I
can't tell you!  I just can't!  Please!!  I'm really sorry!  I'll
help her, but I can't betray my boss, I just..."  And that was it
for his ability to stay conscious for the next ten minutes as
Trent threw him hard the big screen television on the far side of
the room.  The hefty teen lay there in a heap, his head smashed
into the previously very useful appliance.
  Trent sighed and slumped against the couch.  This wasn't going
well at all.  As if having to avoid the trap set for him wasn't
bad enough, now the guy wasn't being very forthcoming about what
he was really involved in and Trent had this nagging feeling that
he was involved in something big.  He had no proof of course, but
there was something about Jerome's demeanor, something that
showed that he was scared of more than just being arrested, or
even being killed.  Whoever his boss was, he was deathly afraid
of him.  Of course, it wasn't like Trent COULD threaten him with
death because that wasn't in Trent's way, he wasn't the killing
type.  Trent was many things, he had harsher ideas of punishment
than say, Colt, and he certainly wasn't a nice guy in a fight,
but killing wasn't in his way, at least not killing in cold
blood, and right now, if he killed Jerome, it would definitely be
in cold blood.  But what could he do now but try again and take
the information out of him?  He sighed, looked at the black kid,
prepared a thread and dived in.
  His brain was insanely cluttered.  Obviously the guy had not
had the Gift for very long.  In fact... and this was starting to
scare Trent a bit, the guy didn't have the Gift at all.  At least
not THE GIFT, not the the Gift that he, Colt, Rick and all the
other Gifteds he knew had.  It wasn't fully formed, in fact, it
was very rudimentary, almost like it was a mere shadow or copy of
the Gift, almost like a man-made thing.  Trent couldn't believe
what he was seeing.  Jerome had his body changed all right, but
not by him, the kid didn't have the ability to change the
physical form, nor did he have the ability to manipulate minds
thoroughly.  He had a more instinctive, primal Gift.  It allowed
him to make women more attracted to him, to make men more scared
of him, to put a latent command into things he said, but he
didn't have full control over it, and he probably had no idea why
he had the powers that he did.  And it wasn't complete.  Trent
got the feeling from the look of it, whatever "it" was, that this
was nothing more than an experiment, but an experiment in what? 
He kept digging, trying to find out what Jerome knew, what
secrets he had tried to conceal but to no avail, something seemed
to be impeding his path, like an invisible wall, something was
keeping him out.
  Trent gaped at it for a minute.  It was certainly a piece of
work.  Layers and layers of traps and pitfalls, barrier after
barrier around it, and the coup de grace, a small program that
prevented whatever secrets were inside from being leaked out even
by the host.  If the secrets were leaked out, if Jerome even
thought it, he would die.  Now Trent began to understand.  It
wasn't that Jerome wouldn't say who he was working for, but that
he COULDN'T.  He just wasn't allowed to.  The program simply
prevented him from saying it on pain of death.  This was
unbelievable!  Trent had never seen anything quite like it, nor
was he particularly pleased that he was seeing it for the first
time now.  Who the hell was behind this?  Who could have...
  And then it dawned on him and a chill ran up his spine.  The
kid.  This was just like the kid.  Well, almost like him, but it
was very similar.  It wasn't the style that was similar exactly,
or the particular weaves, or anything tangible, it was just...
the concept.  The whole all-or-nothing strategy.  The "if you try
to find the secret I will destroy the person who holds it"
approach.  It was very sinister, and very disturbing and at that
moment Trent just felt like he had just stumbled on the tip of a
very large iceberg and he was just beginning to realize how big
it really was.
  But what could he do?  He had to figure out what was going on
somehow.  He had to figure out how to crack that program without
triggering a memory wipe or even worse, instant death.  Trent
took a deep breath, considered his strategy briefly then went in.
  It wasn't easy at all.  Trent was quick, probably the quickest
and most deft of any Gifted, but this was becoming incredibly
taxing.  Every thread he cut seemed to have a backup trap
attached to it.  He kept working, slowly picking it apart, slowly
trying to find a weakness in it, poking and prodding at it, but
nothing was happening.  He couldn't seem to find an opening,
couldn't find a solution to the puzzle.  The strain was
incredible.  Whoever had built this either had spent a good
decade working on it, or... he didn't want to consider the or. 
This was impossible!
  Trent couldn't take it anymore and pulled out, closing his
connection.  This was insane.  What the fuck was he supposed to
do?  He slammed his hands down on a nearby coffee table in
exasperation.  "What the fuck am I supposed to do!?"  He screamed
out in frustration.  It was a purely rhetorical question of
course, he hadn't expected an answer.
  However, he got an answer.
  "Die."
  Trent spun around and had the briefest image of a dark
lumbering, all to familiar silhouette, before nothing but sharp
flashing white teeth consumed his vision.


V.

Colt was nowhere and everywhere.  He was at every point in time,
at every possible outcome of every possible decision, and yet, he
wasn't.  He existed, but had no comprehension of how he existed.
He had no idea what was going on, and yet, in the vaguest, most
primal sense, he had every idea what was going on.  Images,
thoughts, words, phrases, ideas, sounds, feelings all flooded
through him, bombarding him, soaking him.  It was a dream and
yet... it wasn't a dream.  A portent, maybe, of things to come,
or things that would never be.  It was all too much, and yet, he
couldn't look away, couldn't shut it out, all he could do, was
watch and listen and feel and smell and taste and learn.
  He saw his sister Sherri, but not as she was now, but as she
used to be, as how she should be, younger, less developed, but
yet, harsher, her face was not hers, it was... different.  He
didn't know how or why it was different, it didn't look
different, yet he sensed it was.  There were two swords fighting,
one was larger than the other.  The smaller one faltered and she
reached for it and it grew and smote the larger one.  Then it
faded to black and before Colt could think about the meaning a
new image appeared.
  Brandy.  It was Brandy.  Colt tried to say something, to ask
her what was going on, but found he had no influence over the
images, he was but the audience.  Colt was suddenly holding a
dildo.  He had no idea where it came from or why he was holding
it only that he was.  Brandy walked up to him and bent over. 
Colt had no idea what was going on, it was like a dream, yet
there was something real about it.  He found he had no control of
his actions as he shoved the dildo deep in her pussy.  Suddenly
blood began to leak out from her hole.  The blood began to flow
and he knew that it was not her blood but the blood of others and
it poured out and soaked Colt.  She then walked up to him and
took the dildo out and gave it to him.  He held the plastic cock
up and broke it.  Brandy then touched Colt and the blood that
soaked him vanished.
  It continued, faster now, more urgent.  It was a baseball game.
 Colt was up.  The bases with loaded with 2 outs in the 3rd
inning, but he struck out.  Suddenly it was the 9th inning, Colt
was on second base, they were down by 1.  A hit was made and Colt
ran and as he rounded third the base coach was waving him home,
but he stopped, the runner behind him was bearing down and
realized that Colt wasn't heading home.  The other runner tried
to get back to second but got thrown out.  Trent was next and he
hit a fly ball deep, Colt saw that it would be caught by the
outfielder.  It was caught, but Colt ran to home plate and made
it.  Trent walked towards the dugout, but it was on fire and
Trent was consumed by it.
  There was a hawk, it flew in the sky proudly.  Around it were
fields full of mice.  It flew towards them and feasted on them. 
Then it laid an egg and from it a hawkling came out.  The smaller
hawk had claws of fire and the mice it touched turned to char. 
It did not eat any of them.  The smaller hawk soon grew and
became larger than it's parent and then destroyed the older hawk
with it's fiery talons.
  Nothing made sense anymore.  It was all so insane.  Colt
clutched his head as one last vision approached him.
  It was Jade, his love, but she wasn't alone.  There were 3
birds attached to her.  One was a robin holding her wrist,
another was a crow holding her ankle, the third was a dove
holding her other ankle.  Colt head flapping next to his ears and
saw that he had wings as well.  He was the fourth bird, an eagle
and he was holding her other wrist.  He tried to pull her away,
towards him, but he could not, the other birds were just as
strong as he, although he was the eagle.  Finally, he stopped and
let go, and all the others let go as well.  Jade, now freed,
gathered all four birds in her arms and held them to her chest. 
Colt felt warm and loved.  He felt his feathers press against her
warm breast....
  And then like a sudden rainstorm, it was over.  Everything
faded to black and Colt was left with nothing but metaphor and
strange images to deal with.  He had no idea what they meant, had
no idea what had happened, only that it meant something.  He had
no idea what, but the five images, the five visions, weren't just
a random collection of happenings, but were something.  Maybe
they were future, or maybe they were the past.  Or maybe they
were warnings of what was to come, or what would never happen, or
perhaps they were events that would happen no matter what. 
Perhaps they were events etched in stone, that would happen, and
would happen no matter what Colt knew or did, for the future was
the future.
  Colt had no answer.  He had no idea of what they meant, or what
their significance in the grand scheme of things were.  He had no
grasp on where to start looking.  At that moment, he knew less
than he ever did, even less than he did at birth.  The universe
was more closed off to him now than it ever had been before and
possibly ever would be again.  For Colt had gotten knowledge he
knew he was not meant to have, and such knowledge was so
powerful, so intense, that it was humbling.  There was no order
to the images.  He knew that for certain.  Colt had no idea how
he knew, he just knew.  Well there was an order and there wasn't.
 The order he saw them in was of no consequence.  He knew that. 
But there was an order to them.  He just had no idea what.
  He had no idea of anything anymore.  He had so much on his mind
already and now he had more.  And he wasn't ready to deal with
it, not yet not now.  He still had no idea where he was.  Or why
he was.  He wasn't even sure that if he was.  The darkness
encompassing him was threatening to engulf him.  It was thick and
murky and almost tangible.  It wasn't an absence of light, it was
just darkness.
  Suddenly there was a bright flash around him.  He had no idea
where it came from.  But it was beginning to grow.  The light was
white, pure white, and was slowly filling the void, filling his
mind and he began to remember.  He remembered the trap, the girl,
the box, the enemy, it all began flooding back and he remembered
much more than that.  He remembered the capture, the bonds that
held him, and he saw them, he saw them not as they looked, but as
they were and he realized that he had a chance now to prepare
himself, to ready himself for reality.  And the darkness around
him vanished.


VI.

"I see you're finally awake."
  Colt blinked his eyes as he began to regain consciousness.  The
room was bright, and he had no idea how long he'd been out, but
his eyes needed much adjustment.
  "I hope you're all right, it seemed like you were dreaming."
  That voice.  Colt knew that voice.  Knew it not by experience,
not by tangible, first-person hearing, but by hearing the voice
in other people's minds.  He knew who was holding him even
without being able to see him.  "Steve."
  The voice sounded slightly surprised but tried to mask it with
confidence.  "Yes, that's right.  I'm glad you recognize me.  I
didn't know I was so famous, but maybe I should have."  The voice
began to get closer, and Colt started to make out a shape from
all the light.  "It's too bad that you had to show up in such
unfortunate circumstances.  You know, if you hadn't come to
arrest me, we could have been friends."
  Colt blinked some more to clear his vision.  "Friends?  You
don't have friends Steve.  You only have tools and toys."  He was
seeing better now.  The man in front of him was becoming more
clear.  "Those you use and those you can get pleasure out of.  We
could never have been friends."
  Steve chuckled, it was not a pleasent sound.  "You're right of
course."  He walked closer and Colt now finally saw his opponent.
 Steve was tallish, with short brown hair and piercing blue eyes.
 He wore a silver vest over a black t-shirt and dark black jeans.
 There wasn't the slightest bit of sensitivity in his eyes.  "But
I don't need friends do I?  I have all the power in the world,
and I can have anything I want."
  Colt focussed his mind.  There was a mind shield around him,
but he had expected that.  However, the shield wasn't the issue.
What Steve didn't know was that right before the blast, Colt had
sent a small piece of his consciousness, of his Gift out, far out
to beyond the usable part of his mind, to beyond his
conciousness, to beyond even his instincts, to as far as he could
reach.  And he placed it there, on the teetering edge of his
mind, as a piece of salvation.  Mind shields tended to be rather
thick, especially, Colt knew, one that would be needed to contain
him.  In order to contain Colt, the shield would have to
encompass his entire mind and consciousness, but it's thickness
would mean that it would be larger than it and that was where his
small shard of himself would come into play.  Where it sat was
right in the middle of the shield and it was programmed to
destroy any Gifted thread that surrounded it.  All Colt needed to
do was wait a little bit and the shield would be gone.
  No, the shield wasn't the problem.  The bigger problem was the
shackles that currently kept Colt in place.  The Gift allowed him
jurisprudence over the biological and mental world, but the
physical was another problem.  He couldn't very well increase his
muscular strength to break out unfortunately, because Steve would
sense it before he was finished and no doubt would kill him on
the spot.  There had to be another way.  All he had to do was
find it.  But in the meantime, he still had a conversation to
carry on.  "Everybody needs friends Steve."
  His opponent looked bored.  "No they don't.  They just think
they do.  Mundanes, regular people, hell even you, lead such
boring, inadequate lives.  You don't try new things, you don't
take risks.  You don't try to push the limits of our existance,
of our world.  Hell, even now, even with the Gift, even with this
ability to manipulate existance, you still don't explore, still
don't delve into the possiblities.  And that's why you and
everybody else like you, feels the need to have friends.  You
want to hear gossip, you want to listen to other people's
experiences, you want to have somebody hold you down while you go
looking for new things.  You're cowards.  You're cowards at heart
and you don't want to admit it.  You want to hear about something
so you don't have to risk trying it.  You don't have any sense of
exploration, or adventure!"  He pulled out a chair and sat down
on it backwards, legs spread on either side of the back, his
hands resting on it.
  Colt looked angry.  "So we should be more like you right?  More
open to new ideas?  Steve the explorer, Steve the pilgrim, Steve
the discoverer of new worlds, is that it?  We haven't mutilated
enough women?  Haven't tried enough disgusting acts?  Is that
what you're telling me?"  His eyes scanned around him, hoping to
find something, anything he could use to make his escape when the
time came.
  "You make it sound so sordid."  Steve sighed in a way that made
him seem like somebody who was trying to explain a simple math
equation to a child.  "Don't you ever wonder about the ifs? 
About the buts?  About everything that happens around you?  Do
you ever wonder about pain?  Or the equation of pain and
pleasure?  Do you wonder about emotions like disgust and anguish
and happiness and joy?  Do you wonder why we feel what we feel,
or why we are who we are?  That's what this Gift allows us to
answer Colt.  That's what this Gift has allowed ME to answer. 
The infinite questions that are out there to be answered."
  "And you're the one who can answer them?"
  "Not the only one, no, but I am the one who is trying."  Steve
looked almost proud of himself.  "See, you see one of my girls,
and you think it's disgusting.  You think using a human being as
a toilet is disturbing.  But what's disturbing to you, really, is
society's conditioning of you.  There are people, believe or not,
that find such acts to be erotic.  I, admittedly, am not one of
them, but... what's that saying?  Walk a mile in another man's
shoes?  And that's what I'm doing.  And I can track my subject's
response.  I can even make her respond in a different manner. 
Isn't that amazing?  She can equate a disgusting act with
pleasure and make it a pleasurable act.  Which proves that we
aren't hardwired to think in a certain way.  In fact, if I change
just her memories, I can still affect the way she reacts.  It's
marvellous really."
  Dammit.  Colt racked his brain.  He desperately needed a way
out soon, if not to escape but to throttle the guy.  "And you
have no problem with the lives you've destroyed, with the pain
you've caused?  These are human beings we're talking about!" 
What the hell were these shackles made of anyways?
  "Lives I've destroyed?  Pain I've caused."  Steve laughed once
more.  "What lives have I destroyed?  Humans are born, they go to
school, go to university, work, retire and die.  Over and over
and over again ad nauseum.  Until what?  Until the sun goes nova?
 Until the ozone breaks down and we all are fried?  What exactly
is this wonderful life I'm depriving people of?  Of freedom? 
What's freedom?  We're all slaves to our brains, all slaves to
the particular emotions, to the particular feelings and thoughts
our synaptic patterns give us.  We're slaves to the environment
we live in, slaves to the ideas that are around at the time. 
From our birth to our death we have no freedom because our
brains, our biological computers, are jails.  But this Gift
allows me to change that.  And I've caused no pain.  My girls are
all very happy, and isn't happiness the true definition of
success in life?  They will never be harmed physically, and if
they do, it'll dissapear.  No permanent damage or unhappiness is
ever caused.  And if they don't remember it, then it never
happened, for what is history but memory?  Don't presume to take
the moral high ground with me.  You're the one who arrests
Gifteds.  You're the one who wants to turn a gift into a curse."
  Metal.  Metal!  That was it!  His shackles were made of metal,
and not a particularly strong metal and rusty too.  And where
there was rust there was bacteria.  Colt focussed on the bacteria
and made them multiply faster, eat faster.  "There's such a thing
as too much freedom Steve.  One can go too far.  And you've gone
too far.  You can't do this to innocent girls!"  C'mon, faster
dammit.
  Steve looked annoyed.  He got off his chair and walked to the
far side of the room and took something out of a bag.  "That's
easy for you to say isn't it?  You who used girls so liberally
before and still won't release the changes on them even now.  You
who decided to be a good boy AFTER you had your fun!  You make me
sick.  But I'm tired of talking, I'm tired of trying to explain
myself."  He brought the object closer and Colt saw that it was a
knife and a rather fancy one at that with lots of jagged edges
and curves.  "I'm going to have fun slicing you into ribbons,
peeling the skin off you.  Just another experiment, just
another..."
  That was when the shackles, and Steve's mind shield broke. 
Colt leapt forward like lightning bolt and slammed straight into
Steve.  Steve stumbled but gathered himself quickly, more angry
than shocked.  He held the knife high and charged.
  Colt dodged easily and kneed Steve right in the midsection. 
Steve keeled over and Colt floored him with a stiff uppercut. 
Taking this chance, while Steve was down and woozy, Colt dove
into his mind and sealed him off from the Gift, completely and as
thoroughly as he could, putting up as many mind traps and shields
as he could.  Like Colt, Steve's Gift was developed enough that
it couldn't be removed from him, but that wasn't in Colt's game
plan at the moment.  Later on, in the comfort of the GJL, he and
Jade or Sherri could make Steve's "castration" permanent, but for
now Colt's manipulations would have to do.
  He looked down at the once powerful Gifted villain.  He saw the
hatred in his eyes, the anger, yet he also saw dissapointment,
honest dissapointment and pain.  Steve had lost more than a
battle, he had lost a chance to explore the world, to explore his
desires.  It was a chance that Colt sometimes wanted and
sometimes feared.  He wondered, inwardly, if Steve was right.  If
he really was afraid.  But now wasn't the time to worry about
such things.  He still had to find the girls that Steve had
captured and fix them.
  Colt smiled as he put cuffs on Steve and dragged him out. 
Whatever problems were out there on the horizon, he could deal
with, after all, he wasn't the top Gifted in the world for
nothing.


VII.

Trent hit the wall hard.  Venom didn't even wait for him to land
before pouncing again.  Tendril's whipped out from his body,
razor sharp, ready to shred him into bloody ribbons.  Trent, of
course, had no intention of letting that happen.  He reached out
and grabbed a handfull of the tentacles and pulled his much
larger adversary towards him.  As the huge mass approached, Trent
shot out his feet and slammed a powerful double footed kick
straight into the monster's head.  Venom fell hard but got up
immediately, obviously in some pain, but not letting that slow
him down.  As quickly as he had recovered, the beast was in full
charge once again, aiming to take his prey down.  Unfortunately
for him, Trent had not survived this long just to quit and leapt
clear out of his way.
  Venom let out a bestial roar that shook the room.  Damn Trent
and his enhanced abilities, the same enhanced abilities that
Venom held inside of him.  He faced off against his enemy,
against his blood rival, for what seemed like the billionth time.
 "We will have your blood this time, we will stop you from
hurting others."
  Trent looked relaxed, but his body was far from it, tensed and
ready to leap.  "Look Von, how many times do I have to tell you,
I'm not the bad guy here!"
  Von, Venom, it didn't matter anymore, they were one and the
same, stared angrily, his large fanged mouth opened into a
menacing smile.  "We have much reason to doubt your credibility
we do.  We are not interested in talk, nor are we interested in
your excuses.  We came here not for you, but to track down some
scum, but we find you here.  It is not surprising we suppose, as
scum tend to hang together.  Perhaps you were helping him?"  At
that he lunged.
  Trent leapt once again out of the way, this time landing a
quick kick to Von's temple in the process.  "You're absolutely
insane did you know that?"  He was shouting now, it seemed like
the only way to get through to him (or was it them?), if there
was any way to at all.  "I was here to find out what I could from
that idiot as well!  But at least I don't feel the need to rip
people apart to find things out!"  This time Trent was on the
attack, jumping at his adversary with his arm cocked back for a
hard punch.
  Venom caught it easily and slammed Trent hard into the wall
over and over and over again like a toy.  He didn't let go of his
arm when he stopped either and held him there in front of his
face, in front of all his teeth.  "You of all people should
understand the need for justice, the need to destroy those who do
wrong.  You created our better half, you created us!  It is
fitting that we should destroy you then, before we let you
destroy any more lives."  He shot his tongue out and wrapped it
around Trent's throat, squeezing, waiting to here that delicious
sound of his neck snapping, of his arteries bursting.  He had
waited an eternity to hear that sound.
  What Venom had not expected to hear however, was the sound of
his own voice screaming in pain.  In desperation Trent grabbed
his tongue and pulled hard, so hard, so unexpectedly, that Von
thought that his head was about to be ripped off, which of course
was never a danger.  The pain was, however, enough to force him
to let go of Trent and recover.
  Trent hit the ground and rolled to safety.  He got up and
breathed hard.  This was absolutely insane.  Why the hell
wouldn't Von leave him alone?  But he knew why, he knew Von, he
knew all his reasons, he knew this monster in front of him all
too well, for the human part of Venom was once Trent's best
friend, and the other half, was once Trent's other half.
  It was a long story, as most everything in his life was.  The
short summary was this: Von Appollito was Trent's best friend
back in high school.  He was also unpopular, though not
neccesarily a smart guy, but he was strong-willed and always
wanted to be the best.  He didn't have Trent's killer-instinct
however, and it meant in sports games (and especially hockey
which Trent was the star and leader of the team), Trent would be
the one who didn't choke and Von was the one who could never come
through in the clutch.  Even in fighting games such as Street
Fighter or King of Fighters, Trent would win and Von would lose.
And it wasn't like Trent was the absolute best at everything
since he was also notoriously lazy.  But Trent always, always
beat Von, he got the girls ahead of Von (who never got any), he
got the marks, even if Von worked at it (although he never really
did), and he beat the tar out of him in each and every
competition.  And then one day Von got the Gift and he wreaked
havoc on Trent's town, school and family.  Von did horrible
things that Trent wanted to forget but never could and the new
Gifted had humiliated who was supposed to be his best friend.  It
was a horrible period of time for Trent, until one day he got the
Gift as well.  Although it was an uphill battle, he eventually
found and soundly defeated Von with a desperate come-from-behind
victory, even though Von had by far the mostthe experience. 
Trent then proceeded to strip him of the Gift.  So Von's quest
for power ended in humilation and worse yet, Trent made him
forget it all, and go back to being the regular Von, but without
being so bitter.  Now he was like a faithful puppy.
  Trent stopped thinking.  Venom was back up.  He steeled himself
as the monster lunged once more.  Trent rolled out of the way and
shot out a leg for a sweep but Venom dodged deftly and swiped a
claw at him.  Trent hopped out of the way and threw a punch which
was blocked but his elbow wasn't.  And so they danced once more,
jumping, punching, blocking, kicking, biting, clawing, doing
anything they could to win the battle.  Finally Venom missed on a
vicious backhand and Trent clubbed him hard two-handed sending
him careening away.  He stayed in a crouching position, ready to
hop out of the way at the first sign of danger, that blow
wouldn't do anything but wind Von for a few seconds.
  He wished that their battle on top of the school had been the
final one.  He wished that this chapter of his life would have
been closed at that.  But of course, these things never ended
tidily.  Trent, several months later, found another
consciousness.  One, he would find out later, that was alien.  He
had no idea where it came from, except that when it was with him,
he had the faintest idea that it was some sort of predator, that
it was the last remnants of what was a great alien killer, like
the great white of another galaxy.  At first it was great. 
Trent's body had been enhanced permenantly by his fierce battle
against Von and the alien only helped to further exagerrate his
abilities.  He could jump further, fight harder, run faster,
everything, but there was more to the alien than he realized.  It
wanted blood, it needed to feed and it wanted him to help him do
it.  This of course wasn't what Trent had in mind when he had met
the creature and he desperately tried to get the damned thing out
of him.  It took every ounce of energy he had and it was only at
the end that he realized that the thing took on all his
characteristics including his fears and by bringing it into
proximity with spiders (Trent was deeply afraid of spiders), he
was able to drive it out of his psyche.  But of course, it didn't
die.  It left Trent and went looking for another suitable host,
and by coincidence found Von.  Trent had no idea how they met,
but they had, and Von quickly realized everything that had
happened, from his brief ascent to power to Trent beating the tar
out of him and this realization turned immediately to hatred. 
They were a match made in heaven, Von's lust for power, lust for
revenge being perfect fuel for the being's need for blood and
flesh.  They became one, and Von, who had always been a big comic
buff, recognized the similarties between what he now as and
Venom, and decided to become Venom, right down to the black
costume and large sharp fangs.  And so "Venom" had sought out
Trent and attempted to kill him, and of course Trent had avoided
death each and every time.  This of course didn't stop them from
tangoing over and over again.  What made it even more difficult
was that the being had given Trent's powers to Von, and so they
were more or less evenly matched except that Von was much
stronger due to the creature's innate predatory persuasion.  The
only weakness Venom had was vibrations and especially
high-frequency vibration.  Von had been trapped in an earthquake
as a kid, and that experience had haunted him until even now, and
since the creature took on the fears of it's host, intense
vibrations was the only weakness Von really had.  Unfortunately,
Trent wasn't able to produce seismic shocks at a whim, and so
they usually had to duke it out.
  Speaking of which.  Trent quickly dodged the couch that Venom
had hurled at him.  "Look this is moronic!  We're both here for
the same reason!"
  Venom, however, wasn't about to let a little thing like logic
get in the way of his revenge.  And he made that clear with
several tentacles sent in Trent's direction.  "We care little for
your reasons for being here.  Our reasons are in the best
interests of justice.  But at the moment, we simply want to
dispose of you!"
  Trent avoided the tendrils as best he could, dodging some,
punching others away.  "You've got absolutely no grasp on reality
you know that!?"  He rolled quickly to avoid having his ears
lopped off.
  Venom didn't let up and tried again with his razor sharp limbs.
 "Reality is a relative concept.  We never did well in philosophy
so we apologize if our views are not to your liking."
  Realizing that there were too many tentacles to deal with,
Trent decided to switch strategies and chucked a loveseat at Von,
which forced him to use his tendrils as a shield rather than to
attack.  "Look, I really don't have time to argue with you Von,
right no..."
  The slamming of a door caught their attention.
  Venom turned to the sound almost as quickly as Trent did.  "You
idiot!  You let him get aw..."
  Trent cut him off.  "Shut up!  What the hell is that sound?"
  Venom did indeed shut up, though rather reluctantly.  He
listened carefully.  "It appears to be a beeping of some sort."
  "Beeping?"  Trent looked confused.  "But I thought I shut off
that bomb when I came i..."  His voice trailed off as he realized
what had just happened.
  Venom stared at him.  "Bomb?"
  The beeping stopped.


VIII.

Alan held the device over Alicia's now-still body.  He had been
forced to give her a tranquilizer to stop her from acting like
such a slut which was becoming quite tiresome and made it
difficult to treat her.
  Slowly he scanned her body with the device and then pressed a
few buttons, causing 2 metal prongs to shoot out from the tip. 
Those were the antennae that would initiate the clean-sweep.  He
entered in the final command and watched as the prongs glowed a
bright red, then turned to blue, then slowly began to fade in
colour as the process ended.  It was fascinating to watch,
especially since he had no idea that Alicia had changed her body
that much.  Slowly her body turned back to the way it was, the
way her true self was.  Her hair returned to its original
shoulder length, it turned a dark brown and became thin, flat and
wavy.  Her eyes became grey/green, her breasts shrank at least a
cup-size and a half, and her body shortened.  She lost muscle and
gained a couple of pounds, her legs were short and chubby, and
her bottom was less well-formed and larger.  Her top half was
still thinnish, but it didn't match her bottom too well.  Her
skin also returned to its original state of disrepair.  She was a
completely different girl.  Alan felt almost like he had just
watch her strip naked.  He knew something of the Gifted ways,
having hunted them for so long.  Seeing a Gifted in his or her
original form was the most private thing that could be shown to a
person, and usually meant something special.  Alan felt almost
like he was raping her.
  Alicia's eyes slowly fluttered open, regaining consciousness. 
She looked like she was trying to figure out what had happened. 
Alan almost wished that she couldn't know.  She looked up at him
and he tried his best to smile, but it was hard because Alan
wasn't the smiling type.  He settled for something between
concern and nothing.
  Alan knew he had to say something.  She looked so conflicted,
trying to process her memories of what had happened and the
strange new (or was that old?) sensations from her body.  But
what could he say?  He didn't feel bad, even though he knew he
should, but it was war, and people got hurt in wars, or worse. 
Finally, he looked down at her and tried his best to sound
disarming.  "I had no choice."  It came out cold.
  Alicia looked confused.  "You're the Gifted Hunter.  What are
you doing here?  What do you mean no choice?  No choice to...?" 
Then she stopped.  She felt it.  She was nervous.  Really
nervous.  Her shyness was back, she had no confidence, no... she
looked down and almost shrieked.  Her body.  Everything, her
legs, her ass, her breasts, everything was back to the way it
was.  She was the old Alicia, the Alicia she wanted to bury, the
weak Alicia, the Alicia that couldn't come to terms with her
homosexuality, the one who wanted to be popular.  She wanted to
cry, except... she didn't.  Because she felt it.  The Gift was
still there.  Thank God, the Gift was still there!
  Seeing the relief in her eyes, Alan knew what she had felt. 
"No, you didn't lose it.  I had to do a clean-sweep, which meant
wiping out everything."  He stopped at that.  He felt something
else needed to be said, some words, distant words he no longer
knew how to say, no longer wanted to say, no longer cared to say.
 Alan thought of an alternative.  "You have the gift, you'll be
okay."  It sounded uncaring, but it was true, she would be okay.
Luckily for her, he thought bitterly, the change is far from
permanent.  There was absolutely no reason for sympathy.  She was
a Gifted, she had the power to heal herself from almost any
injury, physical or otherwise.  She was the lucky one.
  Alicia got up slowly and waved off Alan's hand.  She hobbled
off into a corner and crouched down.  Alan could see nothing but
the back of her trenchcoat.  Slowly she changed, it was like
watching a person take a leak, you knew it was private act and it
was uncomfortable watching, but Alan stood there, hands folded,
watching blankly.  People could be so obsessed with embaressment
sometimes.  There were more important things in life than modesty
and niceties.  You could learn a lot by watching people take
leaks, just by how they stood, and if Alan was going to survive
and win this war, he would have to understand everything about
Gifteds including deeply personal things.  And so he watched.
  Alicia slowly became herself again, her eyes, her face, her
hair, her body, everything turned back into the strong woman
figure that she had been moments before.  And most importantly,
she gave herself the renewed confidence she once had.  But she
didn't turn around yet.
  Alan looked curiously.  She was still crouching.  This was
unusual.  She should have been done by now.  He didn't have all
the time in the world.  Then the sound hit him.  It was a small,
quiet sound.  Sobs.  She was crying.  Nothing loud or dramatic,
just small controlled sobs, her soulders heaving to the teardrop
melody.  Alan didn't know exactly what to say or do.  He
understood fight situations just fine.  He was absolutely
comfortable in those.  He understood the emotions involved in a
fight.  He knew hate and fear and anger all too well, but sadness
was something he had problems dealing with.  Probably because he
couldn't deal with his own.  He had so much sadness in his heart
that he just shut it off, he refused to deal with it, preferring
to concentrate on anger and revenge.  But here, right now, in
this warzone of a bar, was sadness, and he couldn't ignore it
because it was right in front of his face.  He walked up to her.
There was something on the tip of his tongue, something that he
knew he should say, but couldn't.  Alan just couldn't bring
himself to say those two words.  So instead he settled for
others.  "I told you, I had to."
  Alicia just kept crying in her slow and controlled way.  "You
saw something private, Hunter, something I never wanted anybody
to see or remember ever again, you saw it, and I can't change
that.  But you aren't the reason."
  Alan tried again.  "But you're okay now, you're fixed, I got
rid of the people..."
  "Do you really think something like this can be fixed?  Do you
really think I can ever be okay?"
  Alan decided that at that moment, discretion was the better
part of valour and said nothing.
  Alicia rose up, her eyes still red from the crying.  "Do you
know how it feels?  To have your feelings not be your own? 
You're not being FORCED to do something, you're not even being
coerced into it!  You WANT it!  You WANT to do something that
disgusts you because every feeling you have tells you you want
it!  Do you know how that feels!?  To have more than your freedom
taken away from you, to have your freedom of thought and FEELING
taken away from you!?  That will never be gone from me!  Never! 
It will never be removed from my memory, even if I wanted to get
rid of it, because IT HAPPENED.  I wanted it.  Oh God, I wanted
it!  I wanted any of them to... to..."  Her voice broke and Alan
understood.  He may not have understood a whole lot at that
moment, but he understood that.  He couldn't know, could never
know, how it felt, and hoped he never would, but he understood,
and he understood that the pain would always be there.  It wasn't
just a rape, it was worse, it was making someone WANT a rape, it
was making them need to be raped, it was raping them of their
emotions, of their ability to reason, of themselves, it was
making them work against themselves.  And he knew then, he knew
that he was a witness to one of those moments in a person's life
that never is forgotten and never could be removed.  It was...
painful.
  All he could do, all he knew how to do at that moment was
nothing, and so he just stood there.  Finally, after several
minutes, Alicia gathered herself as best as she could and walked
over to him.  He looked at her.  "Your girlfriend is sitting down
over there.  I had no way of fixing her."  Alicia nodded slowly
and walked over to Deanna who was still giggling like a stupid
bimbo.
  Alicia tried not to get too upset over what her beloved had
turned into, but Alan could tell on her face that it was
definitely in her mind.  However, she was an incredibly
strong-willed person and she dealt with it, knowing she had to
fix it.  Closing her eyes, Alicia appeared to focus for a second,
then opened them as Deanna seemed to jolt awake from her
bimboness.  "Oh Alicia!  You're here!  I just had the most
horrible dream!"  She looked on the verge of tears, fear was
evidently painted across her face.
  Alicia grabbed her and held her close.  They stayed there,
hugging for several minutes, each taking solace in the other. 
Alan wasn't enjoying this at all.  Being uncomfortable was
something he wanted others to feel, he hated feeling it himself.
Still, he had information to get, so if it meant toughing out a
sensitive moment, then, well, he'd been through worse.
  Finally, Alicia broke the hug.  She looked at her lover and
said "Honey, could you please wait outside?"
  Deanna looked confused.  "Wouldn't it be better if I stayed
here with you?  I could help."  Alan found her enthusiam
refreshing, if not a bit misguided.  She didn't talk like a bimbo
at all, nor did she act like one.  Deanna was softer than Alicia,
but no less capable, and she too could be assertive.
  Alicia smiled.  "No darling, just wait outside, please?"
  Deanna looked to protest again, but decided against it after
seeing the seriousness in Alicia's face, nodded and walked out.
  When she was obviously clear of the bar, Alan turned to Alicia.
 "So, can she see what's really here?"
  Alicia looked tired.  "No.  I didn't think she needed to. 
She'd be able to handle it, but some things... some things are
just better if nobody sees them at all."
  Alan nodded.  "Out of curiousity, does she like you for real,
or..."  His question was answered when she shot him a glare.
  "Do you think real love can be made?  Do you think even if she
loved me because I made her, I would be able to love her back
knowing that it wasn't real?"
  Alan said nothing.
  Alicia sighed and walked over to the women in the lounge, all
still in full-out wanton slut mode.  She looked at a couple girls
who were currently in a sixty-nine and mentally put them both to
sleep.  She then proceeded to turn them back into their original
forms.  "This is what they think lesbianism is.  Sex.  Just
something else to entertain their moronic libidos."
  Alan again said nothing.  There was nothing to say.
  It was quiet for the next few minutes as Alicia walked from
woman to woman, putting them to sleep and turning them back into
the way they were.  She then mentally commanded them all to leave
the bar, go back to their old lives and forget everything.
  Finally, when all was done she turned back to Alan.  "So
hunter, you rescued me for a reason."
  Alan took a deep breath.  At last, all that quiet, sensitive
stuff was over with.  "I'm looking for Rick Evans."
  Alicia looked interested.  "You're going after Rick?  Are you
sure you can take him?"
  Alan's faced blackened.  "I've been ready to take him on for a
long time."  His hand clenched around his gun, an action that was
not lost on Alicia.
  "Personal issue huh?"
  The young Gifted Hunter chuckled bitterly.  "It doesn't matter.
 I'm just looking for him, do you know where he is?"
  Alicia nodded.  "I hear he's set up shop in the GJL.  It's
unconfirmed, but I trust the source."
  "The GJL?"  Alan was incredulous.
  The lean, athletic woman nodded again.  "Yes.  Both Jade and
Colt are off right now, and Sherri and the rest apparently fell
pretty quickly."  She looked at him for a moment.  "You're not
planning to bust in there are you?  Fighting Rick is bad enough,
but in what's now his home base, is not a smart idea. I wanted to
go after him too, but this is really Colt's business now, if he
was harrassing girls like I thought he was, I would take him
apart, but this is just him continuing his feud with Colt."
  Alan's face was as cold as stone.  "I'm going to find him and
I'm going to kill him, one way or the other.  And if I happen to
do it before Colt gets his hands on him, then all the better. 
Colt will eventually be on my list too."
  Alicia seemed to take offense to that.  "Your list?  Am I on
that list too?  What are we?  Animals to be hunted?"
  But Alan wasn't really listening.  He had more important things
to do than argue about his ethics.  "I don't have time for this,
you're safe, your girlfriend's safe, the girls are safe, and I
know where Rick is.  That's a good days work for me.  I think
it's time we left."
  Alicia appeared miffed at being blown off, but decided not to
press the subject.  "What are you going to do about these guys? 
Arrest them?"
  Alan shrugged.  "No time, no patience, and honestly, no reason
to."  He walked over to the kitchen and returned with a large
container of kerosine.  He uncapped it and began pouring it
across the room and even on the patrons, several of them now
stirring from being beaten unconscious.
  Alicia looked on in horror as it dawned on her what Alan was
doing.  "You're just going to burn them all?"  How insane was
this guy anyways?
  The young vigilante kept pouring.  "I'm not going to burn them.
 Just the building.  If they happen not to make it out in time,
it's not my fault."
  "But this is murder."
  Alan shrugged, tossed the barrel aside and lit a match.  "They
chose to wipe their existences off of any known record, they
chose to change their identities and they chose to conceal this
bar.  It's not murder to kill people who don't exist in a bar
that's a figment of the imagination."  He dropped the match and
walked out as the blaze quickly spread, soon consuming most of
the interior of the bar.
  Alicia couldn't believe what was happening, though she wasn't
really that pissed.  Those bastards did deserve to die, but...
what a way to go.  She turned to say something to Alan but found
that he'd already dissapeared.
  She sighed and walked over to her car where Deanna was waiting
patiently.  Alicia got in, gave her beloved a deep french kiss,
then was about to start the car, when she noticed a note attached
to her windshield.
  Curious, she picked it off her wiper and read it.
  <<Alicia,  You are not high on my list, but if you ever are, I
promise you, you will be seeing me again.  You can then assume
that our next meeting will be our last.  Regards, Alan.>>
  Alicia smiled sadly, and stuffed the note into her pocket.  She
got back in her car and started it, then turned the key to stop
it again.  She looked straight out at the window, at the burning
bar, at everything it represented and cried.  Deanna held her
close and she let it all out.  It was not a girly cry, it was not
a weepy, emotional cry, it was a deep, mournful, powerful cry. 
It was a cry that showed more strength than any act of violence
ever could.  There had been so much sadness this night and there
had been a lot to cry about.  There was no shame in it.  She
cried for her violation, for Deanna's enslavement, and for Alan
Storm, because like them, he had lost something valuable to his
humanity as well, except that unlike others, he didn't know it.


IX.

Ezekiel Rage woke out of bed with a huge headache as his alarm
clock woke him up with it's annoying mix of off-key noise and
rock music.  He had no idea why his head hurt so much, or why he
couldn't seem to remember anything that happened after his date
last night.  All he remembered was that he had been humiliated by
Lauren Jamison and then he had slunk out of her house and
attempted to grab a bus home when...  Augh... It just wasn't
coming to him, he really had no idea what had happened. 
Groaning, Ezekiel forced himself out of the comforts of his
sheets and sat up.  Argh, what the fuck had happened?  He hated
waking up as it was, but with this headache, not to mention his
morning stiffy.  He sighed.  He had hoped to have that taken care
of last night with Lauren and not use his hand like always. 
Well, nature called after all.  Ezekiel slipped his hand into his
boxer shorts and almost screamed.  What the hell was he grabbing
on to?  He knew how his dick felt well enough, and this was not
it.  Almost in a panic, the sixteen year old boy ripped off his
shorts and looked down.  It WAS his cock all right, but it was
bigger, MUCH bigger.  His penis had been an embaressment to him
last night when not only could he not get it hard but Lauren had
laughed at it's not so impressive size of 4 inches, but now, now
it was at least 10, and much thicker.  Ezekiel couldn't believe
it at all.  He quickly ran out of his room and into the washroom
next door and shut the door.
  The slightly pudgy, short, rat-faced kid looked in the mirror
and couldn't believe his eyes.  It wasn't like he was a whole new
man, but his little bit of excess weight had dissapeared and he
had a more fit built now, also, if his vision wasn't deceiving
him, he had grown a couple inches, and his face was, well, more
or less the same, but more serious looking and he looked more
rugged and less comical.  This was of course, not possible.  Rage
touched his face and body, making sure that this was actually
him, then he touched the mirror.  He absolutely could not believe
it, nor did he exactly know how to feel.  He was currently caught
between being deliriously happy and being worried of being
deliriously happy.  Nothing good ever happened to him.  Yet, this
was real, wasn't it?  He pinched his arm, and quickly decided
that it was indeed real.  What the fuck happened last night?
  Rage left the washroom and ducked back into his room.  He
quickly went to the closet and got out his clothes from last
night and hunted through the pockets for possible clues.  His
black trenchcoat yielded nothing, nor did his black gothic styled
shirt, but in the back pocket of his pants...  Feeling something
there, the bemused teen shoved his fingers in and pulled a small
sheet of paper out.  He quickly opened it and read it eagerly.
  <<Hello Ezekiel, by now you must have some idea that something
has happened to you.  This is not an accident.  You have been
given powers by me.  I know it is in your nature to be
suspicious, but I think you should have physical proof by now. 
Anyway, these powers allow you to alter any biological matter,
humans, animals, plants, whatever, you can do with them what you
like.  You can also control minds, and not just control but alter
and plant thoughts in.  This works with any form of communication
including written words, email and phone.  You may have as much
fun with this power as you please, but on one condition, you must
come to a meeting at the address written at the back of this
sheet Sunday at 10pm sharp.  I am not forcing you to come, but I
think out of a gratefulness to me you should.  You should also be
aware that if you are not grateful, I could very well take the
powers away, if I so chose to.  Anyway, until we meet, feel free
to play around with your new found Gift.>>
  Blinking twice, Ezekiel read it again just to make sure he
hadn't missed anything.   He then turned it around hoping to get
some clue as to who had written it but found nothing except for
the aforementioned address.  Ezekiel slumped down upon his bed
and gave the whole situation some consideration.
  So some person had decided to give him a power to practically
do anything he wanted?  Why?  Was this a test?  Should he not
abuse it for fear of losing it?  But the note did tell him to do
whatever he wanted with it.  That couldn't be also a test could
it?  He had so many questions, but also a deep curiousity that
was growing inside him.  Ezekiel had a very scientific mind, and
loved to test things out and there was no way he wasn't going to
test this power out.
  Sucking up his reservations, Ezekiel decided to first test them
out on himself.  He stepped back into the washroom and checked
himself out once more in the mirror.  Not bad, he thought, but
not great.  He pondered what to do about himself?  Should he make
himself into a super jock?  Or maybe a suave Fabio?  But that
wasn't in his style, he wasn't that sort of person, even if he
had the chance to be.  Rage looked at his reflection, now how did
this work?  He began to come up with the idea in in his head and
amazingly enough he saw his body changing.  His hair became jet
black from its original brown, and lengthened down to his ass
like he had always wanted.  His skin became slightly paler and
his normally out of control body hair vanished completely.  He
made himself a bit taller, and more fit.  He looked at himself in
the mirror, he looked almost like a vampire, and he liked it. 
For a second, he considered adding fangs, but decided that would
be going a little too far.  He was amazed how good he looked. 
Now he hoped he would fit into his clothes.
  Going back to his bedroom, Rage got into his oversized black
jeans and slipped on a baggy black t-shirt.  Well they seemed to
fit, all right, although they didn't bunch up at his ankles at
much, which was probably a good thing.  He then slipped on his
various menacing looking necklaces and attached the chain that
linked his wallet to his pants and put the wallet in his back
pocket.  He applied a new coat of black nail polish on his
fingers and took one last quick glance in the bathroom mirror
before he went to school.  His reflection was perfect.  He was
exactly the man he wanted to be.  Regal, handsome and menacing
all at once.
  Smiling to himself he went downstairs for breakfast.  His
mother, baby sister and stepfather were waiting for him.  A
sliver of fear crept into him.  Would they notice?  He hoped
maybe that somehow they wouldn't, that they'd just assume he
looked normal, though that was probably hoping a lot, since his
parents already didn't like the way he dressed.  However, he
couldn't very well just sit in his room for the rest of the day
avoiding everybody, so with a bit of trepidition, Ezekiel walked
into the kitchen and moved to get a bowl and some cereal. 
Amazingly enough, nobody said a word.  His mother saw him and
wished him a good morning, as did his stepdad, his sister said
nothing as usual.  Stupid brat, he thought, at least treat your
brother with respect.  He leaned poured himself some cereal and
went to get the milk from the fridge but it wasn't there.
  "Here you go big brother.  Good morning."
  Ezekiel blinked and turned around to see Rayne, his 8 year-old
sister pouring him milk.  "Wha.. what was that for?"  He asked
somewhat shocked at her abnormal behaviour, and as usual, quite
suspicious.  "What do you want?"
  Rayne looked hurt.  "I don't want anything big brother, I just
wanted to do something nice for you, isn't that what little
sisters are for?"  She smiled cutely up at him.
  Now Ezekiel KNEW something was up.  She rarely smiled at him. 
He didn't really know why either.  Maybe she was just a bitch at
heart, or maybe she didn't feel he was her real brother since
they didn't share the same father, or maybe it was because he
swore at her all the time.  But either way, she was never nice to
him and never, not in a billion years, THIS nice.  But here she
was, Rayne Rage, treating her half-brother Ezekiel Rage with
respec...  Respect!  That was it!  He had wished in his mind that
she would treat him with respect and she was now doing so.  He
did have a power after all!  That was also why nobody was
astonished by his appearance either.  Amazing.  He could do so
much with this!  A grin spread on his face.  It was time to test
it out some more.
  Ezekiel took his cereal and sat down.  He began eating it
slowly while throwing ideas around in his head on what to do.
  "Ezekiel, you better come home early today."
  Knocked out of his train of thought, Ezekiel looked up at his
stepdad angrily.  "Why?  I was planning to hang out at the
computer club tonight."  Well, that was half-true, he wasn't part
of the club, nor did he have much aptitude at programming, but he
did have many friends who attended it.  Of course, he never had
any intention to go to the club anyways, he had originally
planned to go to the local pool hall where he normally hung out,
but those plans were changing rapidly.
  "I know you're not going to go to any club Zeke.  You're just
going to hang around with your loser friends in your little
hole."  His dad lowered the newspaper he was reading slightly and
glowered at him.  "When are you going to grow up Zeke and learn
that you have responsbilities?  You have your little sister to
take care of?  You have to be home to keep an eye on her!"
  Suddenly a smile began to creep onto Ezekiel's face.  "C'mon
David," he said calmly, relishing using his stepfather's first
name casually, "she's old enough to take care of herself don't
you think?"
  His stepfather looked shocked.  "Zeke, she's hardly old enough!
 She's only 8!"  He was about to say more but Ezekiel decided to
cut him off right there.
  "I think you mean 18 dad."  A smile spread broadly onto the
teenager's face now.  "Rayne's 18 remember?"
  His father blinked twice.  "Ye..yeah... you're right.  I'm
sorry son, I don't know what got over me.  She's old enough to
take care of herself."  He looked disturbed at his own lack of
memory, shrugged and went back to reading the paper.
  Rayne, however, did not share her dad's sense of calm.  "Big
brother!  What did you mean by that?  I'm not--"
  Ezekiel sighed, looked at her, and she shut up and sat stock
still.  He grinned inwardly.  This would take some work, but what
better way to flex those mental muscles eh?  He got up from his
chair and sent a mental command to his mother that also made her
believe that she had an 18 year old daughter.  Then he walked
into the living room and plopped himself comfortably onto the
couch.  "Rayne, dear sister, please come into the living room." 
He called out almost mockingly.
  As if in a trance, Rayne walked in.  Ezekiel looked her up and
down and chuckled.  His sister was just a little girl, but she
was already looking like she belonged in the family, and that was
in no way a compliment.  She didn't look too similar to her
brother of course, but that was to be expected since they were
only half related.  Rayne had the same deep brown eyes as Ezekiel
and his mother, and also the thick eyebrows that unfortunately
added to his former rat-like appearance, however that was it for
the similarities, the rest of her features came from her father.
She had the same dark curly brown hair, thin lips and bulbous
nose he had as well as a larger than preferred backside and a
body shape which hinted at a future appearance less than...
attractive.
  Ezekiel grunted.  He didn't know the extent of his powers yet,
but he did know that he was, at heart, a scientist, and was by no
means timid about trying new things.  And boy, was this a new
thing.  He concentrated, first deciding to make her older.  He
closed his eyes, concentrated and thought it then opened them
again.  Ezekiel noticed two things right off the bat.  Firstly,
his sister wasn't going to become a very good looking 18 year
old, and secondly, he had forgotten that she was wearing clothes.
 It was a situation easily rendered of course, he simply ordered
her to take off her clothes.  Now that she was 18, he had no
qualms about seeing her naked.  And incest never really bothered
him anyways.
  He looked her over.  Now that she was undressed he could study
her as he would a painting.  First off, the grown-up Rayne was
unusually hairy.  Her pussy was covered in deep thick dark pubic
hair that looked quite unsightly.  As well, she had hair on her
legs, armpits and a little on her arms.  It wasn't exactly
pleasent to look at.  She was also a bit on the chunky side, her
ass was still bulbous and her face wasn't very pleasing.  As well
her breasts with smallish and saggy.  She wasn't UGLY, and he was
certain that had she grown up normally, she would obviously have
shaved, but she wasn't exactly the very model of a modern major
male wet dream either.
  Ezekiel clasped his hands together.  Time to get down to
business.  First went her hair, dropping to the floor like so
much flotsam.  He also made sure that she wouldn't grow any new
hair on her either, why not plan for the future after all?  After
that he decided to change her body shape.  It was simple enough
business.  She soon became a 5'8" ravishing beauty (except for
the face of course) with long thin legs, silky smooth, slightly
tanned, skin, a small tight ass, large firm C cup breasts and a
nice taut thin waist.  Next was her face.  He decided to make her
eyebrows thin and shapely, her eyes a deep green, her lips full
and red and her nose dainty and small.  He laughed.  It was like
he was a fairy godmother in some bizarre retelling of Cinderella.
 There was only one more thing to do.  He snapped his fingers and
hair brown frizzy hair became straight and went down to her ass.
It was still brown, only now it was light brown with blonde
highlights.
  Ezekiel observed his work and smiled.  It was good.  His 8 year
old sister was now a voluptious and very very sexy 18 year old
sister.  All he needed to do was make sure she thought so and
everybody else did as well.  He smiled and quickly sent some
commands to his sister.
  <Rayne, you are 18, you remember growing up older than me, and
you remember being popular and slutty.>
  <You love me, and you always have.  You also have been sexually
attracted to me for as long as you had hormones and we've been
fucking for years.  You have no better lover than I.>
  <You are bisexual, and love to have sex with women.>
  <You are a slut at heart, you love flirting and teasing, but
you love sex even more.  You will, however, under no
circumstances have sex with anybody except me or other women
without my express consent.>
  <You love sex in every position and you're an expert at
pleasure and you multi-orgasm very easily.>
  <You go to my high school and are in your final year, you will
act as such and will act like you know people and have friends.>
  Ezekiel grinned.  That was pretty simple.  He didn't want to
let her unfreeze yet, for he had something else to do.  He took
her student card and imprinted some messages into it.
  <To anybody who reads this card.  This is both Rayne Rage's
driver's license and student card.  Her age is 18 currently, and
you know that.  Nothing is different, she's always been this old.
 She is the most popular girl at Thorn Avenue High School and you
will react accordingly.>
  After he was finished, Ezekiel gave the card back to his now
sexified older sister.  "Rayne listen to me very carefully.  This
is both your student card and driver's license.  You can drive. 
All the neccesary abilities to drive are being copied from me to
you right now.  Show this card to everybody the first time you
see them from today on.  You will now wake up."
  At that Rayne's eyes fluttered open and she looked at Ezekiel.
Immediately she smiled.
  "Hey there little brother, what's up?"
  Strangely enough, Ezekiel wasn't sure how to respond.  "Uhh,
not much really."
  She looked down at herself.  "Hey why am I naked?  For that
matter, why aren't you naked?  Oh well, that can be fixed."
  Ezekiel had no clue what she was talking about and was shocked
and also pleasently surprised when Rayne knelt down, unzipped his
fly and pulled out his cock.
  "Wow, I'm always amazed by the size of this thing.  I really
should be calling you BIG brother."  She took it quickly in her
mouth and sucked on it, deepthroating him.
  Ezekiel's eyes rolled to the top of his head.  The feeling was
incredibly.  He had never had a blow-job before but he had a
feeling that this one was probably something special.  He
couldn't hold it in for long and came quickly into her mouth,
flooding it with sperm.
  Rayne didn't seem to mind at all and in fact held it in her
mouth to suck up every bit.  She opened her mouth to let him see
it in there then closed and swallowed.  When she re-opened her
jaws, her oral cavity was empty.
  Ezekiel plopped down on the couch, shell-shocked, but Rayne
seemed to be expecting more and crawled on top of him, while
taking his pants off.
  "I know you're going to be hard in a second my incredibly hot
brother, so let's not waste more time."
  Rage looked down and smiled bewilderedly.  He was hard already.
 He was thinking it in his head and his body reacted.  It was
amazing.  He had total control over himself.
  Rayne smiled and slipped her tight, wet cunt over his tool. 
"Oh yeah little brother, you're so FUCKING HUGE!"  She cried the
last part out as she sank all the way over his 10 inch cock.  She
closed her eyes as she orgasmed visibly.  "FUCK YEAH!!! I LOVE
FUCKING YOU!!!"  As she recovered she began to ride him slowly at
first, then quicker and hard.  And apparently, Rayne was as loud
a teenager as she was a child.  "Oh fuck me!!!  Fuck me little
brother!!!  Yeah!!!  I love it!!!  I fucking love it!!!  Fuck my
pussy.  Fuck it you stud!!  Fuck your sister's slutty twat!  Yeah
fuck my sloppy pussy!!!  Fuck it!!!  OH FUCK I'M CUMMINGG!!!!"
  Ezekiel was enjoying the sensations incredibly.  Not only
wasn't he a virgin anymore, he had become a stud overnight and he
loved every fucking minute of it.  And as his sister kept riding
him, he thought of the possiblities.  This wasn't going to be the
last time he used the gift for sure.  His thoughts were drowned
out soon after as another wave of pleasure hit him as his sister
clamped her wet pussy right over his cock and came again.


X.

Jerome Jackson stared triumphantly at the flaming wreckage of
what used to be his apartment building.  Fire trucks, ambulances
and police cars now surrounded it, as news crews began to arrive
like vultures looking for a meal.  The black teenager smiled from
his perch on the top of a nearby building.  He may not have been
as strong as the two fuckers who had so rudely busted into his
home looking for information which he would never divulge, but he
was smarter than them.  Okay, so his trap hadn't surprised Trent
the first time, but the point was that in the end he had gotten
it to work while they were fighting.  And that was what
distinguished the winners from the losers and if Jerome was
anything it was a winner.
  He smiled confidently once more and turned to leave and as
quickly as his smile appeared, it faded.
  "Okay now I'm pissed."
  Jerome quickly spun around in an attempt to dash off but Trent
was too quick for him.  A couple kicks and a punch later and the
ebony pseudo-Gifted was down on his stomach gasping for air.
  Trent closed on him.  "Now are you going to be cooperative or
do I have to have beat you around some more?"
  Jerome, looking like a cat cornered, got up quickly, really
quickly, shoved Trent out of the way and attempted to make a dash
to the stairwell leading to safety.  He made maybe one step
towards freedom before his leg broke.  A scream leapt from his
throat shattering the stillness of the night before another
tendril wrapped around his neck forcing him to shut up.
  Trent walked over to Venom who had the criminal tied up like a
puppet.  "Was that really neccesary?"
  Venom's luminous "eyes" focussed on Trent.  "Perhaps you would
prefer to take his place?"  His teeth, those sharp pointy teeth,
broke into a large grin, showing the pleasure that he would get
from such an arrangement.
  It was however not an arrangement Trent was exactly thrilled
about.  "Look, if you can just go five minutes without making
threats at me, we might actually be able to get some information
out of him and NOT get blown up for once!"
  "If you had not interfered in our apprehension of this
criminal, then perhaps we would not have been in that situation."
  "Look fangs for brains, we can keep arguing until the sun comes
up or we can actually find out what this guy knows.  All right?"
  Venom appeared to consider it for a moment.  "That is
acceptable to us.  You will be allowed to assist us in
interrogating him."
  "Good."
  "And then we will eat his spleen."
  "No!"  Trent wasn't sure whether to laugh, pale or scream.  "No
eating spleens!"
  "But our other wishes it.  We are Venom after all."
  Trent sighed.  "No, you're not Venom!  Jeez!  I'm surprised
Stan Lee hasn't slapped you with a lawsuit yet!"
  The pale half moon eyes focussed on the Chinese teen once
again.  "Then we would be forced to eat his spleen.  A most
unfortunate turn of events."
  "Fah!"  Trent threw his hands up in the air in frustration. 
"Fine!  You know what?  I don't care!  I don't know why I ever
cared!  You can eat as many spleens as you please while I'm not
around, but when I'm here, you don't kill anybody.  Got it?"
  "We would like to see you try and stop us."
  "Oh you'd like to would you?  I think that could be arranged."
  "We look forward to your demonstration."
  Trent glared at Venom.  "Don't push me okay?  All I want is to
get the information out of..."
  Jerome made a noise, it was a slight gurgling noise and
obviously he wanted to say something, except that Von had him
currently in a tight noose with his tentacles.  He gurgled again.
  Trent stared at the larger Gifted.  "Well?"
  "Well what?"
  "Aren't you going to listen to what he has to say?"
  Venom grumbled and the hold loosened slightly, but only
slightly, on Jerome.  But at least he could now speak.  "Guys,
seriously... uhh... could you please just let me go?  I haven't
done any..."  Immediately the pressure around his throat
increased again, making it almost impossible for him to breathe
let alone talk.
  Trent sighed.  "You know what?  I was wrong, he doesn't get to
talk."
  His fanged adversary looked annoyed.  "We do not see why we
have to delay.  We should just rip into his mind and take the
information we desire."  He focussed and it was obvious that he
was beginning a mind probe.
  "Hey wait!  You can't just go in there!"
  Venom looked peeved.  "We can go where we choose, we are
Ven..."
  Trent didn't have time for his egoizing.  "Yeah I know, but
look, whoever was in there last really did a number on his mind,
and if you try to get the information you're looking for you're
going to kill him."
  Those unblinking staring half moons came back.  "Your point
being?"
  "My point being that you can't just go around killing people!"
  "We do not agree.  This man is a criminal he deserves to be
punished.  We wi-"
  "Punishment, yes!  Beaten to a bloody pulp with bags of
doorknobs sure!  Thrown into a pit of rabid weasels, why not? 
But not death!  We've come further than that!"
  "Then how do you suggest we get the information then if we are
not allowed to waltz in and take it?"
  Trent stopped for a second and thought.  "I don't know."  He
admitted.
  "Very well then we will act as we see fit."
  "No!!"  Trent leapt at Venom and slammed a hard right into his
head.  Venom recoiled angrily and took a swipe at his most hated
enemy.  Trent dodged with a roll and got back up ready to attack
once more.
  "We always knew you were soft on crime being a criminal
yourself."  Venom's voice snarled with as much hatred as a person
could have, if Venom was even a person anymore.
  "I'm the criminal?  I'M THE CRIMINAL?  Excuse me mister let's
take over a town and fuck up everybody's lives.  I didn't know
that saving people was a criminal act."
  It almost looked like Venom was growing larger, his muscles
were tensing so much.  "Aiding and abetting those who harm others
is a criminal act.  Those you consider to have "saved" were not
fit to live their own lives!"  He charged dragging a helpless
Jerome behind him.
  Trent blocked his attack and flipped over him.  "Von, I am
getting really sick of you butting into my life and trying to
kill me!  I'm getting sick of you fucking up my investigations
and I'm getting real sick o-"  And he felt it.  Venom felt it too
because he stopped moving as well.  Both looked in confusion as
the psychic presence flew in out of nowhere.
  "What the-?"
  And then Jerome keeled over as his brain began to shut down.
  Trent ran over to Venom and Jerome swearing.  "Goddamn it.  Can
we save him?"
  Venom who was already in his mind shook his head.  "No, it's
too late.  If you had not atta-"
  "Shut up!  Fuck!  Do you know where that came from?"
  "We felt nothing until the last moment.  We cannot track it."
  Trent uttered profanity in several languages under his breath.
"Goddamn it!"  He waved his hands in the air helplessly.
  "Ne.. ne.."
  "What was that?"  Trent quickly turned around to face the
now-dying Jerome Jackson.  He knelt over over his body as Venom
did the same.  "Ne.. new something?"
  "Ne.. new... new yo..."
  Venom blinked.  "New York?"
  Jerome nodded once then his world faded to black.
  Trent stood up.  "New York then.  Something is happening in New
York.  If we could go there, maybe we'd be able to find ou-"  He
turned around to see Venom perched on the top of the building
ready to leap off.
  "We implies you and us.  We are not a team.  There is only one
"we" that we are aware of and that is us."  His head craned
slightly towards Trent, staring at him.
  Trent stared back.  "You've said a mouthful already.  Do you
even listen to yourself?  And where do you think you're going?"
  Venom flicked his tongue out and bared teeth.  "We are going to
New York to find the mastermind behind all of this.  We will let
you live for now because feasting on the bones Jerome's boss is a
more urgent matter.  However, when we are finished our task, we
will be back to destroy you."  And with that he dropped out of
site.
  Trent ran over to the ledge seeing only Venom's shape dissapear
into the night as he hit the ground and leapt off.  "I wouldn't
count on it."  He mumbled.
  The Chinese Gifted straightened his back stiffly.  Oh damn, he
was sore.  He needed to get back home and get some rest.  Being
with Amy wouldn't hurt either.  He smiled at the thought of a
night of carnal sex with his girlfriend.
  He walked off, after speeding up the decay of Jerome's body and
burning his clothes so that there was no evidence.  And tommorow,
he thought with both excitement and reservation, he was going to
book a flight to New York.


Epilogue.

Ezekiel Rage walked into the empty warehouse not exactly sure
what to expect.  Maybe he'd be walking into a trap and dozens of
FBI officers would jump him for abusing some sort of phychic
power (though that would have been pretty insane).  Maybe he
would find a warlock inside, or some sort of Satanist cult?  He
wasn't exactly sure if what he saw before his eyes was any more
ordinary however.  There were at least a dozen men in that room,
of various ages all sitting facing what looked to be a makeshift
stage.  Each one of these men looked almost normal, much like
Ezekiel himself looked almost normal.  He could see in each
person, what they SHOULD have looked like, but what he saw on the
outside, on every person, was a perfect man.  Each perfect in
their own way, with their own differences, but there was not a
zit between them or a scar, or even a mishapen beard or a flabby
stomach.  He understood.  Everybody had the same power as him. 
And everyone had been given it by the same person that had called
them all here.  Ezekiel had to admit to a bit of nervousness. 
This wasn't exactly something that was of the norm.  And he had
no idea what was to come.
  Rage shuffled his feet nervously and found a nice crate to sit
on.  He tried to make conversation with the others but it wasn't
going particularly well.  Everybody here was just as confused as
he was, and most of the conversation around him was mainly
focussed on what each and done with their powers.  Finally, the
crowd hushed up as the light dimmed a little and the feeling was
much like the opening trailers ending in a movie theatre.  Rage
looked to the "stage" and wondered what was to come.
  A teenaged boy walked on.  He looked more or less normal and
wore a t-shirt and jeans.  He didn't look very impressive. 
However, Ezekiel knew that appearances were decieving.  The boy
spoke.
  "Welcome all.  I trust you had no problem getting here.  I'll
make this short and to the point.  You have all been given a
Gift.  This Gift is from me.  The Gift once belonged to others,
but I have since taken it from them and have decided to bestow it
on to you.  The reasoning is simple.  I am a Gifted.  We Gifted
have been given a power by Aliens that allow us to do almost
anything, a power you should all be familiar with by now.  You
have not been chosen at random.  Each of you have exactly the
type of personality and beliefs I want.  You all hate your lot in
life and wish to improve it and understand that life is about
opportunity and exploitation, not about bleeding heart
liberalism.  We have a power and we should use that power, we
deserve as much as we can get.  You know I'm correct.  However,
there are others that don't agree with this philosophy.  Which is
where you come in.  I require allies and associates, which I
hope, will be you.  There is one who will seek to stop us, and we
must be ready for him, and with you at my side, we will be.  We
will be triumphant and take from this world what we want and what
should be ours!  I can feel in your minds that you agree with me.
 Together we have no boundaries!  Are you all with me?"
  Nobody needed to say a word.  The thought appeared around them
and everyone agreed except for one who was still thinking.
  It was a brief thought.  A brief hint of worry about morals but
that was it.  Ezekiel knew he wanted to be part of this, because
the man was right, they were better and deserved better. 
Beautiful people took advantage of their Gifts, this was no
different.  He nodded once and the mental vote was unanimous.
  Rick Evans smiled.  "Well then gentlemen, welcome to the Gifted
Underground Alliance."


Author's Note:

That was painful in too many ways.  This was a "transition"
chapter, it sets up the various storylines to get to the more
interesting stuff.  These chapters are perhaps the hardest to
write because you just want to get on with it.  If any of you are
wondering about Ezekiel Rage, his full story is currently in
writing.  That will obviously be filled with more MC and sex and
less plotline (which I figure will go over well with a great deal
of people).  Anyways, sorry about writing so slowly, it happens.

And yes, I'm aware that Venom is very very similar to the
Spiderman Venom.  It's an homage, not a rip-off.  Venom and
Spiderman's relationship is one of my favourites in all of
fiction and I wanted to put that into my story as well, it's out
of respect for the people behind Spiderman that I decided not to
mess up with a rip-off character hidden under sheep's clothing
and add a character that was very much Venom.

And as usual, comments, questions or requests to write in the AG
world are welcome.  a_resolute@yahoo.com