10. Suffocate
Suffocate
Before Dustin even realized what was happening, Leo was already on him, slamming him into the tile wall of the locker room with enough force to knock the breath out of his lungs. His iron grip clamped around Dustin’s neck with one clear goal; to wring the very life out of him.
Dustin’s mind went blank as his eyes widened and darted around the room.
He grasped fruitlessly at the air, like he was trying to force a weapon or something to materialize out of nowhere.
As darkness pricked at the corners of his vision, he caught a glimpse of the ring clasped around his pinky and he was instantly reminded of the fact that he had literal magic powers; a fact that had managed to slip from his consciousness the second his life was put in danger.
He knew that he only had a few moments before he’d black out completely, so he needed to act fast if he was going to save himself.
He grit his teeth and focused on the heavy amounts of water vapor in the air around them, feeling each droplet as an extension of his own consciousness.
With a burst of willpower, he commanded the vapor nearest to Leo’s head to solidify, forming jagged, frosted crystals that crawled like claws across his face.
Ice webbed over his mouth and sealed his lashes shut, crackling as it took shape.
It wasn’t enough to keep him busy for long, but it served its purpose of forcing him to drop Dustin as he clawed at his face.
The sudden rush of air back into Dustin’s lungs made him cough, and he gently rubbed his bruised throat as he tried to steady his breathing again.
“This is the best the modern Water Sage can muster?” Leo spoke, finally managing to brush the last few ice crystals out of his eyes, “this is the best talent Sima Yao could find? You are a far cry from the skill of Fusu, that is clear,”
Fusu… Dustin had heard that name before, somewhere. He couldn’t place it right now though, not with everything else racing through his head.
“Water Sage? Fusu? What the fuck are you even talking about right now?!” Dustin scrambled to his feet, preparing himself for Leo’s next move.
“Questions you won’t live long enough to have answered, I fear,” Leo smirked; a truly wicked grin like he was a cat playing with a bird carcass. And then, he lunged again.
This time Dustin saw it coming, sidestepping just as Leo’s fist collided with the wall…
and punched through it like wet tissue paper.
Sure, Leo had definitely been hitting the gym, but no one was strong enough to just punch through tile and concrete like it was nothing.
Whatever had come over him had clearly boosted his strength to an insane degree.
Dustin knew that one punch like that, and it would be over for him; he had to take drastic action if he wanted to stop Leo and save himself…
As Leo struggled to pull his arm free from the wall, Dustin closed his eyes and felt the water in the pipes, just on the other side of the tile that Leo had so brutally smashed through. If he focused just right, he could use it to freeze Leo in place and maybe talk some sense into him…
But much to Dustin’s dismay, Leo broke free far faster than expected, rushing at Dustin with a guttural growl that sounded almost too intense to be fully human.
Dustin’s eyes snapped open with such a panic that it caused him to completely lose control of the water he’d been so intentionally guiding…
forcing it to erupt from the pipes in a torrent so intense that it blasted through the wall with the force of a fireman’s hose.
It sounded like a crack of thunder as it shot forward, colliding with Leo and sending him hurtling into the opposite wall with a crunch so sickening Dustin felt it in his chest.
A scream tore from Dustin’s throat, ragged and involuntary; the way Leo’s neck and spine bent at unnatural angles before his body limply collapsed to the floor… the image would be burned in his mind for the rest of his life.
Before he could do anything, the locker room door burst open and a burly man rushed inside; Coach Carter. His jaw went slack as he examined the scene; the holes in the wall, the busted pipe still gushing water across the floor… Leo’s motionless, twisted body.
He didn’t say a word; he just slapped his hands over Dustin’s eyes, as if to shield him from the horrors he’d already witnessed, and pulled him out of the room.
The flash of sirens in his periphery was the only thing keeping Dustin tethered to reality.
He was sitting in the parking lot on a stretcher; the entire building had been evacuated, and since he was at the scene of Leo’s death, he’d been thoroughly examined and questioned.
He barely remembered the EMT checking his vitals, didn’t recall the specifics of the police’s questioning…
all he could hear was the crack of Leo hitting the wall.
Over and over. Like it was echoing around his skull.
The police were patient enough as he stammered through a lie about the pipes bursting and killing Leo. The story was incoherent and waylaid by his incessant sobs, but eventually they chalked it up to a freak accident and faulty piping…
But Dustin knew the truth.
It was no accident, no fault of outdated plumbing… it was his fault. Sure Leo had been attacking him, but clearly he wasn’t himself. He’d wanted to simply subdue him. He’d tried.
But now he was fucking dead. All because he couldn’t control himself. And that was a cross Dustin would forever have to bear.
Coach Carter was in the process of calling everyone’s parents, and the rest of the team were either crying quietly into their hands, holding each other, or sitting tight-lipped and staring off into space.
Tears steadily streamed down Dustin’s cheeks, and he knew he was seconds away from spiraling again…
until his phone started ringing from his gym bag; the Star Wars main theme cutting through the heavy atmosphere in a way that would’ve been tasteless if anyone had enough mental energy left to give a fuck.
“Hello?” his voice was brittle and thin… like the icicles he’d forced onto Leo’s face.
“Oh thank fuck, you’re alive,” Chris’s voice crackled on the line, “everyone’s talking about what happened on Myspace, but the story keeps changing. What actually went down?”
“It’s Leo Chang… I, well… Chris, can you please come and pick me up? I know it’s a hassle but…”
“I’m already in the car bro. The others are here too; we all ditched class as soon as word started spreading” Chris cut him off, “we’ll be there in 30,”
Dustin breathed a sigh of relief, and the tears came again.
“O-okay, I’ll see you guys soon,”
As soon as Dustin hung up the phone, he immediately started spiraling again, staring down at the pavement and watching the lights from the sirens flash against it.
He was so lost in his thoughts he didn’t know how much time was passing, and he didn’t even notice Nathan Parker walking over to him until he took a seat on the end of the stretcher.
“Hey I uh… they’re saying you saw it happen,” he said, his throat raw. Dustin’s eyes snapped over to him with a glare hot enough to incinerate titanium.
“Fuck off Nathan. I’m not in the mood,”
“Chill, I’m not here to give you shit man,” Nathan rose his hands in surrender, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. Even seeing his body under that sheet was fucked… I can’t imagine what you saw. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye…”
“If by that you mean that you’ve tormented me for being gay for the past three years, you’re exactly right,”
“Y-yeah… I guess that is what I mean. But my point is that you’re one of us. Part of the team. If you need anything, let me know alright?”
Dustin continued glaring at Nathan, waiting for a joke to undercut the sincerity or for the other shoe to drop… but it never came. Nathan looked nothing but sincere, and while Dustin certainly wasn’t ready to just bury the hatchet after so many years of abuse, he at least appreciated the sentiment.
Before either one of them could speak again, Dustin heard the sounds of people yelling at the end of the parking lot.
He looked up and saw the crimson Cadillac he and Chris shared stopped on the other side of the police partition.
All he could see was Chris’s blonde hair as he stuck his head out the window yelling at the officers.
“MY FUCKING brOTHER’S ON THE TEAM DICKHEAD. LET US THROUGH!”
Dustin immediately ran to the partition, putting himself between the angry cops and the front of the car. The officers had one hand on their belts, the other waving him back like he was little more than an annoying fly.
“I’m so sorry, he’s emotional. He’s my twin brother here to pick me up,”
The officers exchanged annoyed looks, but ultimately allowed Dustin to slip into the passenger’s seat without incident.
“Fucking pigs,” Chris spat, giving them the finger before shifting into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot with righteous fury.
“Damn it Christian,” Bailey spoke up from the backseat, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, “can you ever just be calm?”
“Not when it comes to him,” Chris fired back, inclining his head to Dustin, “tell us what actually happened,”
Dustin sank down in the seat, tears welling up in his eyes again as he stared at the road ahead of them. That image of Leo’s body flashed before him, and the tears came back in force.
The moment Chris saw him crying, he pulled the car over in front of some random restaurant, and got out, practically forcing Dustin to do the same. He pulled Dustin into the tightest hug of their lives as the others gathered around them.
“It was me,” Dustin babbled through his tears, “he attacked me, and I lost control of my powers and it just… it was over so fast,”
“Wait, he attacked you?” James asked, rubbing slow circles on Dustin’s back as Chris still held him close, “everything I’ve ever heard about Leo makes him seem like a total sweetheart,”
“He was at first, but then something shifted. He seemed like a totally different person outta nowhere,” Dustin explained, “Sima Yao said something in my head right before he came at me though. Something about this ‘no longer being the one I knew’. What the fuck does that even mean?”
“This is why that metrosexual ghost needs a cell phone,” Chloe groaned, “we can’t just go back to the palace whenever we need to ask him questions,”
While Sima Yao definitely didn’t have a cell, it did seem like he could hear them somehow, because no sooner than those words left Chloe’s lips, a thick fog started to rise around the group, completely whiting out their surroundings like someone had just dropped a smoke bomb on them.
After a few disorienting moments, the fog cleared and the group found themselves standing in the Palace of Radiant Clouds once more, in front of Sima Yao, who looked over them with a mixture of grief and resolution on his porcelain face.
“I offer my deepest apologies young masters. I regret not informing you of the true dangers you faced before it came to such a grisly confrontation,” Sima Yao slowly dropped to his knees, before pressing his nose to the floor in a complete kowtow before the group.
Dustin knew enough about Ancient Chinese social etiquette to know what that meant; complete and total humility and surrender, “I only hoped to allow you to grow into your power in a more neutral environment before pressing upon you the full weight of your obligation,”
“Enough,” Dustin practically growled through clenched teeth, “enough riddles, enough apologies. We deserve answers, now. Leo… or whatever the fuck was speaking through him, said something about a Water Sage, and someone named Fusu. You need to tell us the whole story,”
Sima Yao rose to his feet once more, and nodded solemnly, drifting aside to reveal the mural etched into the wall that Dustin’s eyes had been drawn to on both visits to the palace; those five warriors, standing against the strange figure in antlered armor.
“You are correct Second Master Ying. I will tell you the story of how I came to be the guardian of this place, and the battle that my allies and I failed to put an end to, that now falls upon you to finish,”
As Sima Yao’s floppy sleeve brushed the mural, it was suddenly charged with pale moonlight; brightening until it became blinding. Dustin shielded his eyes, but he was powerless to stop what was coming…
The last thing he felt before the palace blurred around him, was a whirling in his stomach as the light encompassed them all…