Discord, Volume 1

I remember the first time I used my powers. I didn't know I had them at first. Nobody ever does. I was 13 and had just begun that process of becoming a woman.

That day began like most of them. Nothing I thought was out of the ordinary at that time. I woke up, late as usual. That hasn't changed since then. I was rushing to get ready for school. I kept tripping over things. I swear things were leaping out under my feet.
Dad was waiting for me downstairs with my lunch in his hand and my bookbag at his feet. He always took good care of us. Looking back now, as a single father of 2 girls, he did the best he could. I wish I had been a better daughter to him...

"Good morning Ti Ti," he said to me. I hated when he called me that. "I need a new alarm clock, dad," I told him as I scrambled to get some toast into me. "The clock is fine. Serenity woke up on time. You need to go to bed on time and learn how to get up in the morning." I gave my dad a scowl. My perfect sister, Serenity. Daddy's little angel.
I am an hour older than my sister, but she exceeds me in every other aspect. She bets better grades, she has more friends, she even knows how to be a girl better than I do. People always complement her on how proper she looks in her skirts and dresses. I'm always told I look like I belong in a street gang. She's got her life together while mine has always been a ball of confusion. She drove me crazy, but she’s still my twin sister. I can’t help but love her.

"She's out there stalling the school bus now, so hurry up," dad told me. I grabbed my lunch and bag and headed out. I slammed the door behind me. I froze when I heard the window in the door crack from the force. I could hear dad sigh from the other side of the door. I could feel it was going to be a particularly unlucky day.

I hated school. Always have, always will. It's not that it was hard; I got by with B's and C's. Nah, that wasn't the problem. It was the idiot classmates I'm always stuck with. For whatever reason, they didn't like me and I didn't want to deal with their teasing and bullying, so I stayed to myself as a kid. Seems like as I got older, they didn't. I don't have time for their immaturity, so I still keep them at arm’s length. Girls are too catty and guys nowadays only want one thing. All of them eventually become heart breakers. I don't have time for that.

I got to school that morning, things kept going wrong. My pudding cup exploded when I opened it at lunch. We played volleyball in gym that day. The ball was fine until it became my turn to hit it. It was in shreds after it burst. In the computer lab, all the computers just so happened to crash at the same time while I was in there. By that time, I wasn’t feeling well.

I spent a bit of time in the nurse’s office that day. She couldn’t tell what was wrong with me. I had a bit of a fever, but there was no explanation for it. She couldn’t make sense of the sensation I was feeling. My skin was tingling, like there were ants crawling all over me. It was a sensation I had grown used to.

Serenity came to visit me in the nurse’s office. “What’s wrong,” she asked. “I don’t know. I just…” I started to respond when a group of girls walking by looked into the nurse’s office. I was not in the mood to be dealing with them, and the snickers on their faces irked me. “I’m fine,” I told my sister. I got up off the nurse’s bed, pushed past the girls and walked outside. I needed fresh air before I detonated.

After school, I walked home. The fresh air felt good to my body and I didn’t have to deal with the kids on the bus. The rest of the school day finished without any more incidents, but I still felt dizzy and fuzzy. I felt like if I could just get home, I could crawl into bed, dad would make me some soup and take care of me, and I could end this day. Maybe I would feel better in the morning. Of course I was never that lucky, especially not that day.

I was about 5 blocks away from my house. I had turned a corner and the most unfortunate thing of the day happened. The populars at my school, the most annoying group of girls in the world, were gathered on a porch across the street. Two of the girls had seen me in the nurse’s office, so I was positive they all knew about it. “Oh great,” I grumbled. “Look who it is,” one of the girls said. They started making their way over to me, a pack of wolves closing in on their prey.

They blocked my path. “What do you guys want?” I didn’t have time for them. “You look awful, Tiana. Looks like you swallowed a frog,” girl #1 said. “Yeah, you should be more careful about what you eat. Ribbit ribbit!” girl #2 chimed in. It was quickly getting tiresome. “Get out of my way,” I stressed as I tried to get past them. I wasn’t going anywhere. “Where you goin, Frog Girl,” girl #1 said. This was Rachel Cumminsky, the rich, “pretty” leader of the populars. She pushed me back. I stumbled, still feeling dizzy. I was really starting to get angry. One by one, they all started making fun of me, the third girl, the forth, the fifth. It was too much.

They had me cornered. There were too many to have fought off, but I would have loved to have punched each and every one of them in the mouth. They were closing in on me. They just kept laughing and teasing. I had never heard the word freak used more at one time than I did in that moment. There were more “ribbits” than nighttime in the bayou. It infuriated me. Why did they think that was okay? What gave them the right to treat me like that? I never even did anything to them!

My blood was boiling. The tingling in my skin had been steadily increasing since they approached me and at the time it felt like sparks popping all over my body. I was getting dizzier and dizzier, feeling like I was about to spew chunks.

“You okay Tiana? You don’t look so hot. Need a few flies to settle your stomach?” Rachel said. The followers burst with laughter. I had had enough. “What is your problem?” I asked. The anger that had boiling had grown in pressure, and it had nowhere to go but out. My body started to glow with a red aura. For the first time I’ve known them, the girls had finally gotten quiet, their faces that had been showing joy and malice now showed fear. “Why won’t you just leave me alone!!!” I yelled.

I exploded.

I could feel the energy erupt from every pore of my body. Red lightning-like energy was discharging everywhere. The force was so powerful it knocked the girls on their butts. They got up and ran away screaming. I never felt anything like it. I know now what it must be like to be a hamster in a microwave.

20 seconds. It was over.

I was dazed, my skin sizzling. I looked around at the damage I caused. A nice crater had formed where I stood. The telephone lines, having snapped, danced around my feet. Water was pouring onto the streets from the pipelines below. The gate that was beside me had been ripped from the ground and laid contorted on the group yards away.

It was at that moment that I realized something was wrong with me. Maybe the girls were right, I wasn’t normal. I ran home. I couldn’t tell anybody. The girls would tell everybody at school. People avoided me for a long time. I told my dad that night what happened. That was the night he sat me down and told me who my mother was. An Atlantean Serpent, Eris.

This was the information that changed my life forever. That day set in forth the events that led me here. Maybe if those girls hadn’t cornered me that day, maybe I wouldn’t be held captive right now. I’d still be at home with dad and my perfectly normal twin sister…

Maybe not, but I’d still be in a much better situation than this. *Sigh* What am I going to do?