“Wesley!” I looked around and found Arc up at the top of the junk holding out his hand, I jumped up and grabbed it as he pulled me over.                                                                                                    

                “Thanks, Arc. Where the hell did you go?”

                “No time, run!” Arc yelled out as we ran while the giant bashed through the junk, blasting all of the objects away. Arc and I ran for our lives and turned a corner. “In here!” Arc yelled as he ducked into a tent. The tent was only occupied by a bunch of boxes, it seemed to be a storage area.

                “We should be safe here for now.” Arc said without even a trace of panting in his breath.

                “What the hell are you? As old as you are and you don’t even have to pant after running like that!” I said, while I myself was panting furiously.

                “It comes with our job, you will be like this soon as well, now take this; I found it in one of the boxes in this tent while you were distracting the Strong Man.” Arc produced a worn down hunting knife from his coat and handed it to me. “It may seem rather ineffective due to its appearance; however the edge is still sharp. When we meet more of these rather undelightful fellows, use it.”

                “So you’re saying you left me to die at the hands of a guy fifty times my size so you could find a weapon?”

                “I never said that, I just happened upon it while you were dealing with him. It is not my job to get through this, Wesley, this all is not for me to handle, it is yours to handle. If anything, you are quite lucky I gave you the knife at all; unless that is, you want to give it back and fight them barehanded?”

                “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks Arc.”

                “You are very welcome, Wesley. Now, let’s continue.” And with that, Arc led me out of the tent and back into the danger that lurked in this twisted circus. The  Strong Man was only yards away, we could have heard his loud, heavy footfall from miles away. He noticed us and laughed as he bounded at us; his footsteps creating tremors on the ground.  I dived out of the way as quickly as I possibly could as he shuffled his feet to stop his momentum, to launch at us yet another time. Did I say us? I meant me, for once again, surprise, surprise!  Arc has decided to pull a Houdini on me. The fearsome giant slammed me into a tent while I was preoccupied checking where Arc went. I dropped the knife on the ground as I flew through the air and hit the tent, knocking one of the stakes holding it up loose; causing it to slacken. I scrambled to my feet and rand towards the knife, only to dive away as I was once again charged at by the giant. When I landed on the ground, I felt the pain of the strike the giant had landed on me.  It is at this very moment, that I begin to genuinely fear for my life; before being hit, I didn’t think the pain would be this real. And so I began to go for the knife again and dived towards it as the giant charged at me and slammed his arm down; the impact of his arm so fierce that material from the ground flew up and revealed a mini-crater in the ground. I barely got the knife into my hand as he charged again, swinging his right arm at me. I clumsily ducked the blow as I ran under him; narrowly escaping getting my head smashed in as I just barely sliced his leg, just making a scratch on him. The Strong Man didn’t even notice as he brought his leg up and thrusted it at me. I stepped to the side as I sliced the knife down at his leg to make a cut that sliced him just enough to make him flinch.

                I could feel myself getting faster, my body felt lighter, more nimble than before. With each blow I dodged, I felt myself react faster and fast as I finally got the hang of it. I dodged one of his right hooks as I countered by slicing part of his arm, the cut deep enough to cause him to howl. He grabbed me by the shirt and threw me up. I flew higher and higher; the tents getting smaller with each second as I flew high in the air until I began to crash down. ****… is all that went through my mind as I sped faster and faster towards the ground. I close my eyes and tried to concentrate; if I’m a diver, I should be able to create a board. And then I felt it for the first time; the energy that flowed through my legs and out of my feet, creating a tingle ever so slight throughout my legs, as well as a feeling of my legs being enveloped in cool water on a hot day summer’s day. I looked down and witnessed my board for the very first time. The board was a calm deep blue color, bearing a light and gentle glow. The texture of the board was that of constant ripples, as if it was water that had a stone dropped into it.

                Now all I had to do was to fly, and it came naturally to me; all I had to do was concentrate and tilt my legs in the way I wanted to go. I flew down at the giant and made a sharp turn and went under him as I ducked his outstretched arm. The knife tightly in my grasp, I created a deep slice in his leg as I flew past him, causing him to howl out in his agony. I pulled around and stopped the energy flow of my board. I ran at the giant and quickly twirled forward and to the side as he threw a punch at me. It was time to end this; I took the knife and stabbed him in the gut, quickly pulling it out afterwards. The giant doubled over and held his abdomen as I took his head and held it back to slit his throat to finish this once and for all. His blood spewed from his neck as he fell into the ground. When the giant hit the ground, a peculiar thing happened; his body just turned to ash, and there was no trace of his blood ever being on the ground.

                “Well done, Wesley.”

                “Well if it isn’t Harry Houdini himself.”

                “I apologize, but you must realize now that it was necessary.”

                “Yeah, I know that. So I have a question for you.”

                “Go on.”

                “When I was fighting my body felt light and my reflexes were like they’ve never been before. When I used the board, I flew as if I had been doing it my whole life. Why does it all come so naturally?”

                “Excellent question. You see Wesley, when a diver gains his or her powers their instincts naturally know what to do. It is like how a baby cries, it did not learn to cry, it simply just knows how to cry. Your other powers may surface over time, for now it seems like you only have flight and dexterity. Of course we all have flight, but dexterity is slightly more rare, and quite invaluable. Not all of us have dexterity; the chances of developing it is the chance of a quarter landing on heads or the chance of a baby’s gender; exactly 50%.”

                “How long?”

                “Pardon me?”

                “How long until the others surface?”

                “Days, weeks, months; it is different for us all, but it does not all come to us at once. You may have the instinct to use your abilities, but you now must learn different techniques to use them and more importantly, when to use them.”

                “So when do I learn all that?”

                “As soon as the hypnosis is broken. Let us take a walk to pass the time, and fight some of the fellows that are left over while we wait. You seem to have the main objective of this completed; we just need to wait a couple of minutes before it breaks.”

                “You said fellows that are left.”

                “Oh, yes. I was bored waiting for you to kill that berserk giant, so I killed some of the clowns and such while I waited; after all, they are merely apparitions made from inside your head.”

                “I forgot we were in my head… how exactly are you here again?”

                “In due time, Wesley. You will learn about it during training.”

                “Why am I not surprised? Whatever, let’s walk.”

                For awhile, there was nothing. The air was filled with silence and a light fog to complement the creepy atmosphere of this circus from hell. We all know one thing about these situations, and that is that silence is the worst possible event, Arc  wouldn’t have killed enough to be this silent; and hell is only silent when it is about to get worse. Worse yet, it had been a quarter of an hour since we had started walking, and the hypnosis had still not broken.

                **** hate the circus