Growing Up – Part One
Middle School - Year Two

They graduated with unsurprising marks. Flick was the top of her class, with the highest test scores of anyone else in the school. Kuro was number two next to her. Eric was somewhere in the slightly above average section and Chris was stuck right in the middle of average. Eric liked to joke that it was because Chris didn’t know about any of this supernatural stuff, and Kuro would always throw right back at him; well you aren’t anything special, you just know too much.

The two of them would never be the best of friends, but at the start of their second year in middle school, and the first year of high school for Kuro; who was simply right across the street and always there for lunch without any questions asked, they became almost like twisted brothers. If two brothers were madly in love with the same girl that is, which probably actually happens a lot.

Flick, poor oblivious happy Flick, never picked up on the tension between the two of them; usually because Kuro was so damned good at keeping her happy and thanks to the fact she still hadn’t removed her command on Eric to stop being so jealous. While the command hadn’t made him unable to be jealous, it had numbed her ability to pick up his jealousy; so while his other emotions were painfully obvious to her, jealousy just wasn’t there anymore.

This was the first year ever that Flick actually wanted to get involved with school, and despite both Eric and Kuro’s disapproval she wouldn’t be stopped and allowed her to get involved with band; that way whenever anything big happened Kuro could be with her since he was in the high school band. The two bands often played together at big events, and that was all Kuro worried about. He taught her how to play the clarinet, and like everything else in her life she excelled quickly to being one of the best.

While Eric still hated the fact that Kuro made her happier than he could, he did enjoy the fact that he wasn’t alone anymore when it came to trying to please her. It was much easier to keep her satisfied and therefore keep her power of control under control when there were three others keeping her happy all the time. It was also far easier this way to keep her out of trouble, and during the biggest football game of the year; the game when the varsity middle school players and the benched high school players got together to play off against the schools biggest rival, he was proven this.


He was to get a ride with Chris and Chris’s father to the game while Kuro and Flick sat on a bus together to and from the game. This infuriated him more than anything else, while they were all going to the same game he couldn’t be with Flick for any of it. She would be stuck sitting next to Kuro until half time, which was when they were all supposed to meet by the food stand. He wasn’t freaked out about Kuro’s strange desire to have the entire group together on this day either, but he was slightly worried. While this game was the biggest for their school, it wasn’t the biggest game Flick would be at.

He didn’t dare argue with the 15 year old, and he simply nodded and went along with it; Chris was happy enough to go to the football game, but he was clueless as to why his older cousin had actually wanted to go, he just figured it was because he got to be on a bus alone with Flick there and back. The fact Chris had joked about this had hurt Eric as well, since it was painfully obvious to everyone just how close the two of them were.

He sat in the back seat next to Chris, ignoring the painful thoughts of Flick sleeping on Kuro’s shoulder on the bus as they pulled into the school parking lot and drove around to the back where the football stadium was. They were at the high school across the street for this game, and the field was huge. The bleachers at first appeared to be ground level, but they were wrapped around the edges of a giant pit which was the actual foot ball field. The walls around the pit were hollow in some places and reinforced with different building materials in order to make the food stands, bathrooms, and even the locker rooms.

The sight did nothing to him though, for his mind was too lost in thought about Flick and Kuro, and whatever was running through Kuro’s mind while he had his arm around her. He hit his head absent-mindedly on the window as the car pulled to a stop in a parking spot, and ignored Chris’s obviously confused gaze in his direction.

“You kids have fun.” Chris’s dad mumbled mostly to himself as Chris and himself stepped out of the car. Chris waved to him as he pulled out of the parking spot and drove away before turning to give Eric a strange raised-eyebrows glance.

“You okay? You’ve been on edge all day.” Chris’s voice was actually worried, and Eric was stunned silent for a moment, he didn’t think Chris was…perceptive enough to pick up on things like that; unless he was mobbing around more than he thought he was. The thought made him blush to himself.

“I’m not.” His voice was harsh, and sharper than he meant it to be, but Chris dropped the question and they walked off in silence to the side of the stadium Flick and Kuro would be on.


She stood in line, leaning against one of the school’s walls while she waited for the teachers to tell them to load the buses. She held her clarinet in both her hands, and next to her stood Kuro, looking around anxiously, it was making her nervous.

“What is your problem tonight, it isn’t the first time we’ve gone off to play at a game?” Her voice was quiet, but she knew he heard her because he stopped looking around apprehensively and stared straight ahead towards the busses.

“I’m fine.” His voice was soft, but colder than normal when he spoke to her, and she sighed slightly; both him and Eric were acting weird today, and she didn’t like it one bit, but she hated how Kuro was acting slightly more, just because of the fact that she understood what was wrong with Eric; she was alone with his rival, why she wasn’t sure, but at least she had some way to tell people why Eric was the way he was. Kuro, on the other hand, hadn’t started acting like this until they were waiting outside for the busses.

She didn’t ask him anything else about his attitude then, scared to bug him to the point where he simply stopped listening to her; he had done it before with Eric. She didn’t understand they had issues deeper than simply bugging a person.

The conductor came out of the building a few minutes later, and waved them all onto the bus. Flick stole the window seat, which Kuro gave up willingly enough before sitting down next to her. It was an awkward bus ride, not as loud as the one to and from school, since these people weren’t as mindless as the others at school, but awkward because Kuro sat there next to her as still as a statue. He even had to keep forcing himself to breath.

They arrived at the high school about fifteen minutes later, and Kuro hadn’t said a word the entire time; he nearly clung to the clarinet in his arm and Flick was beyond surprised it hadn’t snapped under the tension yet. She climbed off the bus almost too quickly, and he had to catch her around the waist before the hit the pavement. He did this unlike he had ever done before, and it actually scared he. He absent-mindedly caught her and the second she was stable and standing again he let her go. No extra embrace nothing, and once again he was back to scanning their surroundings.

Something was wrong, and it only intensified as she reached her mind out to touch his, and he recoiled from the mental touch. You see, with her and Eric the connection was always there because he wasn’t mentally strong enough to fight back, as Kuro had put it. Kuro, on the other hand, was, which was why he could also resist her power of control unless she truly commanded him to do something, but never before had he pulled back from her mental touch.

She watched him walk away towards the place they would be playing, and was stunned still. Never before had he done that, and for the first time since he showed up in her life…she wished Eric was right there…so she could cling to him instead. She fought back tears and ran to catch up with the band.


It got dark a good hour before half time, and the moment half time started and the entertainment went out Flick and Kuro jumped up to find Chris and Eric. Kuro was still on edge, and still refusing to allow Flick’s mind to touch his, and she still felt utterly alone. She walked ahead of him, hiding the anger in her emotions the best she could as she walked past people, her connection with Eric sparked and her entire outlook on life lit up as she began to run to find him.

All she could see in her mental blanket was the spark of life that was Eric, and all she wanted was to embrace him and escape from this dark emotionless version of Kuro. She ran, unaware of the fact Kuro was falling behind her in the darkness. She dodged people using her mental capabilities, each other their ‘life dots’ gray on her bright white outlook, she was running towards that single blue one; Kuro’s was pink and a good distance behind her now. All she wanted was that blue dot; all she wanted was to lose herself in the emotions of that blue dot, to feel wanted.

Her sprint picked up into a full run, and a red dot flashed into her mental blanket. She felt herself smack into something hard, almost like running into the side of a building and she gasped as she allowed herself to pay attention to her surroundings again, the mental blanket in the backdrop of her mind as usual.

She stepped back from the wall, and looked around quickly to learn that she was somewhere between the football stadium and the end of the football stadium that led off into the woods. She panicked and took one quick glance back at her mental blanket; the blue dot had passed her and was heading towards the other end of the stadium. She had gone the wrong way in her rush.

Her eyes flashed back towards the wall she had run into, and she felt her heart stop as the face smiled down at her, its lips spreading to reveal sharp canine teeth. She took a step back, slowly, and watched as her vision focused in the dark to reveal a large man standing before her. He was taller than any human she had ever seen before, but he wasn’t fat or buff in anyway. He just wasn’t as gorgeous as Kuro was.

Her eyes locked on his for a split second, his pupils were gone. His eyes were large slits with a solid color of red in them where the pupils should be. His grin widened some, and he took a large step towards her, nearly closing the gap between them. He was shirtless, and his blue jeans almost appeared too tight for him and they were torn at the knees.

“Well…well…I never would have thought the mouse would walk right up to the cat like this.” His voice was dark, nothing like Kuro’s at all, and she shivered slightly in fear, begging mentally for him to show up.

“Oh stop having that delicious little look…makes me want to eat you right up…and we can’t have that….can we?” His words were darker, and he took another step towards her, she could now feel his body heat radiating off of his flesh, and felt tears build up in her ears.

His eyes glared at her for a moment longer, and then shot to a spot directly behind her; his grin morphing into a scowl, his lips pulling back in a growl, his human face turning to something far more evil.

“What are you doing here…?” He spat the words out, the growl lacing every word with repugnance.

The voice which answered him sent chills down Flick’s spine; she had never before heard a voice like that before. It was deep and strong, with an accent lacing every vowel which she couldn’t name.

“Get away from her.” His voice rang over and over through her mind and she saw the demon-human creature in front of her actually take a step back, then she heard something that sounded like a muffled gunshot and felt something push the air past the side of her face, she also saw the bullet as it pierced into the creatures body, and the oddly colored blood that spilled out from his flesh.

The creature let out a scream, a scream that sounded like millions of other screams in one, and his pale flesh became black from the bullet wound in his chest outward, until his entire body was black; the black hair on top of the creatures hair fell out in long clumps until he was bald as well and she covered her eyes as the flesh pulled back from his eyes and his scream turned to that of such agonizing pain she could almost feel her own skin rotting from her body.

She wanted to turn and see the man who had shot the bullet, but before she could she felt the ground give out on her, as if she had just fallen through ice, and then she felt her body land against the ground as everything around her went black and silent.

This would be the first of her curse of fainting spells.

In the darkness she heard various voices, she recognized Eric’s, then Kuro’s, then the accented one again; who sounded older than all of them by a good few years. Then she heard sirens and all the voices muffled together. She didn’t come back to school that year. She didn’t come to for almost longer, and she was absorbed in her dreams, and in her pain. Kuro never came.