Pipe Hero

A gargantuan arm is now wrapped around my neck as they lift me from the car's trunk. A familiar smell of pinecones and grass rush my face as I try to wriggle my way out. It feels like when a small child is trying to wrestle away from their parent, a pit of strength I couldn't hope to cross at this time. I feel the air being squeezed out from within my lungs, gripping my throat with an ever-tightening grasp. A strained, "Aghh--let me go you fucking beast." I try to take in any bit of oxygen that I possibly can at this moment, but it seems futile. I'm desperate for air at this stage, kicking at the figure's chest with my bound legs trying to break free as desperately as I can. I feel my strength depleting, what I have left in the tank is pointless as my limbs are still bound together. I can't even claw at the figure's arm to release me.

At this point, I imagine that I look like a worm that was just ripped from the dirt squirming with all my might. My mind is going blank and my eyes are drooping shut, I feel it, I feel myself blacking out. "Please, please, please don't kill me. Just let me go, please." My body is going limp and any tension in my muscles that I have is slacking. Finally, my captor does let me go by throwing me into a nearby tree with what I suspect wasn't even his full force. A loud thud can be heard when my body collides with the tree, followed by an audible crack and hacking of blood once I drop to the floor. The impact forced my consciousness to split for a moment and left me in a daze, which isn't great when you are doing a combination of inhaling dirt and coughing out blood. "Haghh, hahh, aghh, I think I heard something break."

My awareness can be felt fading out as my head lies to rest in the dirt, and the only thing I can make out at this point is a few blurry branches, some moss, and some stones that are strewn about. All of which wouldn't be of any particular use to me right now and wouldn't give any semblance of hope in fending off this beast. I use every bit of strength I have left inside to keep myself from passing out. I roll over onto my back to stare at the gloomy afternoon sky, filled with rain clouds that seem ready to burst into a storm with just a touch. Time feels like it's slowing down for a moment and I take note of the birds flying overhead and the sounds of typical small animals skittering about. It's strange experiencing this odd and out-of-place sense of peace despite the state of affairs I'm left in. I take a gasp of air, feeling my body shuddering violently and my chest tightening as the air fills my lung. It seems as if my body is still unable to make sense of what the hell just happened to me. But I know what happened, "I got thrown into a fucking tree like some child's plaything", I mutter to myself.

The cornered animal inside of me is screaming at me to get up to run or fight and die trying. But my body is still bound tightly by rope and I can feel my hope escaping from within as fear seeps in to take its place. I can only hear the sound of someone snapping their fingers in the distance, and suddenly my bondage cut loose giving me the freedom to escape. I couldn't see what happened, but all I know is that I'm free for the time being. The only issue, however, is that my body can't move right now. An attempt to push off the ground was met with resistance from the damage, fear, and noodle arms preventing me from rising. I start to tear up, cursing myself for getting into these dire straits and cursing my captors for harming me to this extent. Tears stream down my face as I cough violently with almost every breath I take. My face is covered in dirt, blood, and tears while my body feels like a heap of mush and pain.

I can feel the blood slowly beginning to circulate through my arms and legs again, but just trying to move my hand not even an entire inch sent a sharp pain through my entire body. With tears mixing with the dirt and blood on my face a singular thought comes to my mind, "I think I'm going to die pathetically here, and in my pajamas to top it off. What a fucking disgrace." My captors don't seem to move an inch, they aren't even whispering, this makes me wonder if they were just silently getting off to watching me suffer and writhe in pain knowing they could simply end my life with a simple flick of the wrist.

Fear starts to mix with rage, and my rage mixes with fool-heartedness as I say, "I refuse to die like a fucking dog!", I scream this at my captors. But the sound is just barely audible enough for my kidnappers to hear as my throat has been put through the wringer. Despite everything, I wouldn't take whatever they are plotting lying down. Gritting my teeth and pushing myself off the ground slowly rising, a scream of pain escapes out my mouth as I force my body to rise up and face my captors. My legs feel like gelatin, my arms feel as heavy as cinder blocks, and my vision is extremely hazy at this point. I raise my head to stare into the sky and think to myself, "I wonder, I wonder what Thomas would do if he was here right now?" Thinking about my friend helped me momentarily bolster my body and mind allowing me to bring my heavy arms up to get into a simple boxing stance.

I rush them stance and all, but almost immediately I'm struck with a blow to the face penetrating through my guard and sent flying back like I'm in an anime or something. "What the fuc--." That's all I could think once my skull hits the ground, I see stars and my eyes almost roll back into my head. Then, the same gigantic arm grabs me by the skull with another vice grip and lifts me back up only to let me drop once again. Instead of simply dropping to the floor, my body is met with a kick this time to the chest and the next thing I know is I'm rolling into another tree. Similar to a car colliding into a tree and being wrapped around the bend. Haggard breathing seems to becoming the norm and so is getting my ass kicked, apparently.

My vision fades in and out when I roll over to look at my kidnappers, eventually, I was able to make out the one that nearly broke my entire body with one toss, for now, I'll call him "Raidboss" or "RB" for short. It sure feels like it would take an entire team to take on this goliath of a man. Upon closer inspection, RB was an extremely muscular African male that looked about 190 cm tall with a faded mohawk with a red lightning bolt design on the left side of his head. My vision clears and to my surprise, on the right side of his skull RB had four bull horns that started by his temple and ended by his neck. His horns became proportionally smaller the closer they got to his neck. He donned curled orange goat horn gauges resting on both of his ears, wearing a plain sleeveless black zip-up hoodie to display his abnormal-sized arms with a grey undershirt, black dickie cargo shorts, and black and orange-checkered high top converse.

Looking to the left of RB, there was a thin-framed female with a short bob of red-dyed hair and velvet tips added to her hair. She couldn't be any taller than 160 cm with icy pale skin that carried an altered light blue hue with it as if she merged with the gradience of the sky. She has domineering emerald eyes, strong cheekbones with a petite face, and a cold gaze that only an ice queen could have. She wore a black Metallica t-shirt with a red patchwork flannel over it, ripped at the knees dark blue skinny jeans, and Timberland boots. Rightfully nicknaming her, "Ice Bitch" or "Ibby", although my body was damaged by RB originally my adrenaline-fueled intuition and gaming knowledge told me she was much more powerful. I grimace at the mere thought of what she could potentially do as she seemed to be his superior. Beads of sweat began running down my face and a shudder ran down my spine from the mere thought of the damage she could do to me if she did truly control this titan of a man.

From the pain to the kidnapping, and the definite mental trauma that I'm experiencing now every part of me just wished for the day to end and to wake up in my comfortable cheap bed. No superpowered mutants after me for god knows what, just alone time with my bed. It was like one of those days when you failed your final and wanted everything to be over, or when you were working as a server and you meet a series of horrible customers wishing for it to all be done with, but in this case, I actually might get murdered and 'be done with'.

With everything that is happening I needed to know what the hell was going on here, I'm just a bystander, just a fucking background character! Angry and frustrated, I yell out to my captors, "What the fuck do you want?! I'm nobody special, leave me alone! On top of all this crap, you bastards are putting me through, what the fuck are you two?!! You aren't humans, you fucking freaks go bother someone on your level!" RB clearly expressed that they didn't like it when I called them freaks, letting out an angry grunt as he swung his massive fist into the car they brought me herewith. The car, now crushed, looked like an elephant got ahold of it and stomped on it until it became a pancake. After witnessing that, I immediately shut my mouth and begin to take a few steps back out of fear. Funny how your mind works under stress, I'm imagining that instead of the car being crushed that it was my face being pounded into a bloody heap in a matter of moments. 'Am I dreaming?' A dumb mental question I ask myself, but I know what the answer was, it wasn't a dream by any means and I just opened up an extra jumbo-sized can of worms.

Ibby placed her delicate hands on RB's arm to calm him down, the size contrast between the two was simply incredible. She pets his rippling muscular arm for a few seconds, from what I'm assuming that's her way of saying 'down boy'. She takes a step in front of him as if to signal to me that she's taking the lead in our one-sided conversation from this point on. I only just met her eyes and my entire body felt like a jolt of electricity ran through my veins. My heart beating faster than ever before, I couldn't believe it, I had just fallen in love with my captor. I've heard of something similar to this before what was it called...Stockholm Syndrome? I don't believe this is an accurate description of it, but it's the only one I have at the moment so I'll go with that for now. Only just realizing that I spaced out in front of the two freaks, I shake my head and regain focus although I'm still unable to believe how ridiculous I am for being heartstruck at this specific moment.

She takes off her boots and neatly set them beside the now-demolished car, frost can be seen from her boots and when she turns back to face me she hugs herself tightly before suddenly leaping forward as a ballerina would. All of a sudden I'm watching a ballet performed by this beautiful blue woman, it reminded me of the time back when I was in junior high and my classroom had gone to watch 'Swan Lake' for an English assignment. The only difference between that performance and this one is the fact that the ice is springing forth from where she dances and the ice begins entwining themselves with each other to form a six to seven-meter tall golem. The newly formed ice-golem gets on one knee and bows to Ibby, placing both of its hands in front of her, and as if on queue, she finishes her ballad and sits on the golem's hands.

I make a mental note to myself, "After this nonsense is over...if I'm still alive I need to make a reminder to myself to go see my therapist...twice, if not thrice as much now."

With her soft sky-blue lips she speaks to me in such an eerily soothing tone of voice, "Boy, I sincerely apologize for Demetris's 'rough handling' of you. However, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover and resort to name-calling at that. Isn't there enough hatred in this world already? Or perhaps we need to 'cool' down your fire once more." She then looks to her golem and eyes over Demetris before returning her gaze to me.

I honestly felt very embarrassed when she gave me such soft-spoken beratement when my family as well as I were victims of discrimination and had faced harsh racism when we first moved to the States so I felt able to sympathize. "I...Uhm, I'm sorry for calling you freaks. It was a spur of the moment thing, although that is no excuse." Then I thought to myself, 'Wait, did I just apologize for insulting these criminals?', a befuddled face followed quickly after. Ibby smiled and nodded to show that she acknowledged my apology, although I didn't understand what made me feel compelled to apologize when I was the one captured and beaten in the first place.

She hasn't broken eye contact with me and in all honesty, it's hard to not get lost in those deep emerald eyes, hopefully, Ibby doesn't notice that I've been staring at her for way too long this entire time. Ibby continues speaking, "I know, I know. I'm beautiful, sighhhhhhh, and it's becoming very hard for you to stay focused on our conversation. However, I am about to tell you some life-changing information about 'Charlie Huang'. So it'd be in your best interest if you stay focused, hun." Life-changing? Everything that has happened to me so far is pretty freaking life-changing already, what else could she tell me? I wasn't surprised that she knew my name, I mean I'm looking at two characters that could be starred in their very own anime. I was feeling reluctant to have my world turned upside down any further for one night, but I needed to know what was going on.

"Okay, I'll listen to what you have to say. It's not like I have any other choices, with you two forces of nature standing in front of me. I have one condition, tell Raid boss-er...I mean 'Demetris' to not beat my ass anymore. Quite frankly, my body can't handle any more punishment." My body nearly gave out when I sat down to rest my aches and pains, letting out an audible grunt of pain. Ibby let out a cute giggle while watching me before she replied to me, "No worries, Demetris wouldn't cross me even if he wanted to. He's a powerful child, but he falls far beneath me in terms of unadulterated strength. Back to the matter at hand, we are what society calls 'Indigo Children' special humans that were allowed to receive power beyond human imagination. This is Demetris as you already know, and my name is Laura Stallworth we have come to you today to have you join our faction and receive the blessings of evolution."

I feel like I have a very dumbfounded look on my face now, and I had every reason for what I'm hearing right now. Interjecting, I said, "Woah, Woah, hold on now let's dial it back a bit. You're telling me to join you guys to become a...whatever you guys are, am I following you so far?" Ibby, or rather Laura doesn't change her expression retaining her beautiful yet distant smile and gaze not even uttering a response as her statement is very clear. I'm assuming that's her way of saying yes, without actually vocalizing anything. I have heard bits and pieces of these so-called "Indigo Children", through Reddit and my online gaming friends, but nothing ever made any sense to me when it came up. Anything I looked up was either taken down or just ambiguous things about humans evolving or developing strange illnesses, I was never the kind of guy to buy into rumors like that without any evidence. And like a slap in the face, the evidence is right in front of me.

I feel like I'm handling this situation a little better than most people, although confused if I do say so myself. While lost in my thoughts, just thinking in silence trying to make heads or tails of this entire situation, I realize that I never gave Laura a response. "Before I decide, tell me more about the 'Indigo Children' I've always heard vague things about you guys on the internet. But, I don't even know how you guys came to be or exactly what you are either so how can I give you a proper response?" Honestly, I'm worried that this is going to turn into one of those situations where I never actually had an option, to begin with. "You are quite interesting Charlie Huang, most people at this point would outright refuse and call us monsters for whisking them away from their humdrum lives." Laura let out another giggle as if her previous encounters with other captives were just a form of entertainment to her. She eyes me with a curious look and flashes a mischievous smile, which made me feel like I was nothing more than a mouse being toyed with by a very large cat.

She continues, "At that point, I would simply allow Demetris to take care of them because quite frankly they don't have a choice in the matter. We need more brethren, more kindred souls, and we'll gather them by force if we have to." I could feel a sharp tension in the air, even Demetris took a step back after she said the "by force" part. It makes me wonder what Laura has done in the past when she first acquired her powers, but I'm also afraid to ask if we are being frank here. As if she read my mind she said with a malevolent undertone with a sly smile, "Are you afraid, boy? Perhaps you're thinking about what I have done to others, or maybe what I could do to you?" Fear. That's the only word I can use to describe that immense pressure that I can feel emanating from her. Unable to reply, she bolstered a devilish grin and continued with what she was saying, "Let me tell you a story, boy. It will be an exciting tale about us, the Indigo Children, and the All-Mother. Our savior."