A Beast with a Smile
Chapter 21 (Scarlett): Eleven Forgotten Heroes

My head felt foggy: my emotions weren’t in check and I couldn’t control them if I tried. Thoughts swirled in an emotional whirlpool, tossing them out at random. I would go from enthusiastic adult to crying toddler at the drop of the hat. Almost injuring Chris snapped me out of it, but I still didn’t trust what was going on in my head. Elly said that my little trip through memory lane with the Mother of Time was the cause of it. At that moment in time, I didn’t know what to think mainly because my emotions were being drawn out of a hat and I had to hope it wasn’t psychopathic rage.

Thankfully, my emotions couldn’t blind me from the beauty of Paradise Valley. The sky was the perfect blend between light and dark blue that could take a person’s breath away. The grass was full of life, free of weeds and desiccation. The air smelled of the sweet nectar of invisible flowers. This place oddly enough looks like the window’s screensaver, I thought... It was hard to believe that such a paradise would be so true to its name.

I’m sure the citizens of this fine sanctuary are glad I tore through their market with alien, newborn oaks. I’ll repay my sins later down the road, hopefully with this mission to resupply the city with power.

I didn’t have time to look around as I chased Elly to the largest house/barn that I had ever seen. The outside was quite deceiving to the mysteries held within the white wooden walls. The second I walked past the door I felt shorter than I had been only a few steps before.

“Keep calm beautiful girl. The world is much bigger than you think,” Chris said while holding my shoulders whispering in my ear.

His greasy hair clung to my bare neck, leaving an uncomfortable dampness on my skin. I had to hold back my vomit and my emotions.

Yep, there’s that psychotic rage I was worrying about, I thought to myself.

No matter how gross he was, he was right about the world getting bigger. The further I walked, the smaller I got, and the closer Chris grew to my side. The hallway seemed to never end, and the ceiling grew to be its own sky. I was at least half my height or less by now and the house had become its own state.

The walls were painted with what appeared to be ancient stories that rose to the ceiling. Each wall had a story; each story more different from the last.

The first was a group painting of five children: four girls and two boys, all wore elegant attire in front of a fireplace.

The next painting depicted a forest burning brighter than the sun. In front of the fire was a person in red armor who was carrying a man bridal style.

The next portrait had an individual in green, but their helmet looked more similar to a gas mask. They were releasing a glowing bright green cloud above them.

In the fourth one, the person wore light blue armor and they floated with the clouds. Their armor spirited long beams in the shape of wings on their back.

The person in the fifth painting had armor made of gold and held iron in one hand and silver in the other. Both hands reflected their respective metals.

The next painting had a person with a purple body with green linings. They were raising a spear with a purple glowing tip at a cloud of sand and darkness.

The seventh was a figure with dark blue, almost black, armor, but half of their body was coated with black feathers and one arm was a bird’s wing.

The last painting, I gazed at had a familiar color, bright yellow. The figure stood opening up to the sky inside a lightning bolt.

I stopped to look at the powerful image.

“I was the seventh to the team,” Elly said, staring at her mural.

“I’m guessing the six before were the children in the first painting?”

“Pyre, Smoke, Icarus, Ore, Zenith, and Raven.”

“The girl from the Mother of Time’s office? Kind of a strange assortment of names. Don’t any of you have last names?”

“Only the lucky ones too old to be adopted. Everyone else is technically an Atom. There’s a reason we only say our first names.”

“Does Atom even have a first name?” Chris asked me.

I thought to myself about all the time that I had been around Tyler and Atom, but the more I thought about my six years with the demon spawn, the more my mind drew blanks. I couldn’t think of any dates that I went on with Tyler or even being anywhere near his house. I don’t remember ever saying a word to Atom and I know that I have met him, but I can’t even imagine his face and when I try, I feel dizzy and get a stomach ache.

“My beautiful girl, you look sick. Do the murals sicken you? I shall tear them off the walls,” Chris pandered.

Elly gave him a minor zap and shouted, “Cathy has spent years on these you ungrateful little rat.”

“I’m ok, just a little queasy. Probably another side effect from the Mother of Time. I can’t remember if he ever said his first name. Maybe he’s named Adam Atom.”

“Well judging by what he named his favorite six, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“You didn’t deserve to be on Alpha Team, lightbulb,” a voice said from the shadows; the same stuck up British accent echoed off of the walls.

“Oh goodie. The queen is here and look she’s still up on her high horse,” Elly swung around to meet the Raven’s black conceited eyes.

She sat up from leaning on the wall, “Atom picked us, he trained us, he raised us and only us to be on that team. You were an accident. A miscalculation. A mistake. You shouldn’t be alive, let alone included.”

The lights began to flicker as Elly shut her eyes and clenched her fists.

“Raven knock it off. Can’t you see you’re hurting her?!” I screamed at the hooded girl.

“Scarlett, stay out of this. I can fight my own battles,” Elly managed to spit out, “What are you doing here anyways?”

“Thought I’d see what was taking you so long to turn the power back on. And again, you are wasting your time and risking our lives. Trying to fail the mission again and get some more people killed?” Raven challenged.

“Don’t you dare put those deaths on me. You know I could do nothing.”

“You doing nothing is the reason I blame you.”

The lights flickered so much that they began to pop and explode. The massive room grew dark with only shadows of light to keep us company. Elly opened her lightning filled eyes, which brightened the room like a camera flash every few seconds. She opened her hand and let a lightning bolt free towards Raven. The bolt was inches away from Raven’s face; she was taken by surprise that Elly would attack her. I saw a smile begin to form on Raven’s lips while regret formed in Elly’s heart. A blur zoomed by and in the blink of an eye the bolt was gone.

“Elly, please no bolts inside. I just cleaned up. If you wish to fight, take it to the proving grounds and not in the hall of heroes,” a voice said from further up the long hallway.

It was a sweeter version of Raven’s accent, a much less proper, but still just as sweet and pure.

“Velicity! Are you crazy? You could’ve gotten yourself killed!” Elly said with worry.

“You could’ve killed Raven, Elly. I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt.”

I felt a brush of air, then a girl with short brown hair stood in front of me. She appeared out of thin air, all five feet of her. She was much younger than Elly, around ten or eleven. Her armor sparked and smoked, and little bits of electricity shot out every once in a while. She wore a shiny silver armor that sparkled in the light. The bolt hurt her, but she was trying to show that she wasn’t in pain. Elly had a mixture between a concerned and embarrassed face. Regret was filling her eyes, taking away the storm.

“Are you ok? I’m sorry Velicity. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m ok. Just happy no one’s hurt. And I don’t have to clean this place again,” she winced.

Velicity froze looking at me, her eyes stuck on mine. She vanished for a millisecond, then reappeared two inches in front of me. She looked up at me and moved her hand near my face. She moved a loose hair that was on my forehead to the side of my head to rejoin the others.

“Aw, that’s better. It was bothering me that it wasn’t with the others,” she said with relief.

She vanished again and popped up next to Elly a second later.

“Teleporter?” I asked

“Speed demon,” Elly answered.

“That’s right. Fastest girl in the universe right here.”

Her suit sparked, and she winced again.

The lights that didn’t blow up began to brighten again.

Raven rolled her eyes and began to walk away, “Whenever you’re done screwing around and pretending to play hero, go do the only thing you’re good at, being a battery.”

Before Elly could say anything back, Raven became true to her name and flew back towards the entrance as a small black Raven.

“No. No. No. she’s going to drop feathers everywhere again. Isn’t she?” Velicity squirmed.

“I have to go clean it. No messes, no messes, no messes” She repeated as she sped off up the massive hallway.

“Elly are you ok?”

“No, the girl tried to murder the bird. What would make you think she’s ok?” Chris asked, offended at my question.

“I’m ok. She just knows how to get under my skin, but she’s right. We are wasting too much time. We need to get going before we miss the next storm. Chris, get to alpha control and prepare a lifeboat to the next tropical storm.”

Chris looked at her in severe disapproval but turned and started walking back towards the door without saying a word.

I kept walking and looking at the paintings. The next was Archy’s: in his bronze armor he was fixing a broken wall in a rundown shanty, somewhere in the desert. Two children huddled together in the corner away from him and a tank sat in the distance perched on a hill.

The tenth painting was Velicity sprinting next to an upside-down car suspended in air, her silver armor glistening as she reached for an unconscious passenger.

The eleventh was Chris’s; he was half invisible and half mirror armor. He stood in what looked like a prison.

The twelfth was a person I had yet to meet. They stood in wooden armor, holding their arms out with tree’s bending at their will towards an unknown enemy.

“Woodrow. He controls plants. You’ll meet him soon. He’s coming on the mission with us,” Elly said, noticing my stare.

The last painting was the man who haunted my dreams. The infamous black armored figure stood with a sword and shield. His chest had a grey wolf imprinted on it. His shield had a wolf head figure in the center. The eyes of the wolf were red and stared at me regardless of where I stood.

“Scavenger,” Elly said.

The name made it feel like I was hit in the gut with that shield.

If Scavenger was the man in the black suit does that mean he was the one who killed those people in the hospital? I thought to myself.

I decided to keep my visions to myself since they could have all been lies; a memory implanted by my psycho ex-boyfriend to disgrace Scavenger’s memory.

“We will find him. I promise,” Elly said, noticing my discomfort.

She patted me on the back, then pointed towards the door at the end of the hallway. Archy stood in the doorway, bent on the frame.

“Could you walk any slower?” he asked impatiently.

“Bite me,” Elly snapped, pushing him out of the way.

He stumbled for a few steps, but eventually regained his footing.

“What’s her problem?” he asked.

“She doesn’t want to be made fun of.”

I gasped, shocked, as I gazed around the room that was filled to the top with giant cages, each filled with its own environment.

The animals inside them were just as peculiar.

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