HOME | DD

Description
Ninten began to wake up. It was a slow ascent at first, as when summer and its vacation comes, boundaries of sleep and waking shift leisurely, to later points.  But it was slightly different this time. Ninten, despite falling asleep later in the night, had awoken as early as if he’d had school that day. He wasn’t even particularly slow to get up for his general lack of sleep. He had gotten dressed quickly, and hadn’t even fallen back asleep in his attempts to get up and out of bed. He hardly knew what reasons there were for this, just that there was a slight and odd feeling of apprehension. These feelings, however, were not entirely unfamiliar to him. They were relatively rare, but always signalled something, whether cheerful or sorrowful. Ninten knew, though, that this feeling, like the others he had experienced before it, wasn’t going to be deciphered until whatever event it played the harbinger to had happened. And so Ninten had awoke, resentful of the sleep he couldn’t take back in the face of this odd precognitive feeling.

He strode to the door, tired yet anxious to see what this day would hold this time. As he was about to leave the room, he reached out to switch off the lamp. This action caused a variety of things, within and without of his mind, to occur. First of all, he realized that he’d never turned the lamp on. Second, he missed the lamp, not realising this was because it had dodged him. After that, he had realized that the lamp had never been there before and turned to face it. The lamp hit him solidly in the face, swinging with whatever weight it had, as he faced it. As Ninten stumbled, slipping to the floor, the lamp came down on him again, but its blow to the back of his head lacked the dazing force it has possessed in its first blow. Ninten reached out for the lamp again, but this time caught it as it tried to evade him. It continued to swing erratically, but the force was random and weak enough to be redirected. Ninten used this to his advantage, bashing the lamp against the wall with his force and its own until it had broke by the handle. Now broken in two, it ceased moving.

What a way to begin a day,  thought Ninten as his mind caught up with what had just happened. Quickly reviewing on the events, he passed the short stage of disbelieve and almost laughed at these events. Personally, I thought alarm clocks worked well enough, he thought to himself. This didn’t last too long, either, as he realized that there was some ruckus in the house and rushed to the door, stopping to open it before continuing his rush.

Ninten first stopped at his sister Minnie’s room, rushing in as he opened the door. She was unharmed, which brought some relief to Ninten, but the lamp was moving around, although not nearly as erratically as his had been.

“Ninten, what’s happening? The Lamp’s moving...” Minnie said, trailing off in a mixture of fear and fascination.

“I don’t know, but...” Ninten cut off in mid speech as he approached the lamp. He approached it, came up beside it, and watched the lamp sail at reasonable speed over where his head had been. This time, he grabbed it from underneath and brought it down, forcing it against his knee and bending it past its breaking point. Like the other lamp, it fell to the ground and rolled slightly to the side, now in two pieces.

“Mom’s not going to be happy about that” Minnie noted in the aftermath.

“If that means she was safe from the whole thing, I’ll deal with it” Ninten replied, already leaving for his other sister Mimmie’s room.

As he arrived, opening the door, he saw Mimmie’s doll, animated and floating. The movements were odd, as if whatever was controlling it had been taught how to move like a human, yet never had the reflexes. And, like Mimmie, he watched it for a short while, if only to appreciate the irony that it was only years ago that she had the childish imagination to believe it alive.

This sensation, however, didn’t last too long, because like the lamps, the doll started to attack him. It would’ve been comical to Ninten, even as the victim, except compared to the lamp (which hurt! ), it was flying much faster. He dodged to the side, and it went on past him, turning around to attack again. As Ninten dodged another attack, he delivered a solid blow to it, which was apparently all that was needed to ruin control over it – it continued careening and hit the wall, falling on the corner of the top of Mimmie’s shelf, inanimate.

Mimmie rushed over to it, now with a different kind of anxiety, hoping it wasn’t too badly damaged or broken.

“It’s still alright, but it’s damaged... why’s this thing inside it?” Mimmie asked, slight traumatisation giving way to curiosity.

“What thing? Let me see that...” Ninten removed the old box. It looked like an old toy, set to play a tune after being wound up. He took this as a possible conclusion and wound it up until it gave resistant clicks.

It began to play a simple melody, single note by single note, without accompaniment. Something seemed to click inside Ninten, but then the song cut off abruptly. Mimmie seemed to pay attention, but then turned to seeing what was damaged and what could be fixed in the doll.

“I’m going to check out downstairs” Ninten said as an afterthought as he headed out the door.

Ninten admittedly wasn’t too worried as he went down the stairs – his mother was a parent and all, but there was something else about her that exuded a degree of safety so long as you weren’t the offender. As it turned out, he was correct. As he came down the stairs, he found one of the large chairs had taken up adornment in a different style: dismembered into component parts in some places and broken in others.

“Ninten, are you and your sisters alright? Oh, you’re hurt...” She looked him in the eye. Notably, the one the lamp had hit him in, blackening it.

“I’m fine, mom, and so are they... but... the chair...” He trailed off, at a slight loss for words.

“Oh, sorry about that... it wouldn’t stop moving no matter how many joints I pulled out, so I took a... different approach”.

The telephone began ringing. “I’ll get it” said Ninten, semi-automatically by virtue of being closer. He picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Oh, hey Ninten! What’s up?”

“Well, inanimate objects came to life. And attacked us.”

“Sounds like an interesting way to start your day. Seriously?”

“Yep. I’ll have you know that I was already up when the lamp hit me, though”

“I can’t think of too much to explain it... poltergeists, maybe?”

“If it helps, I’ve got one of those feelings”

“Hmm... Well, last time I looked into those, I came up with some odd research by your great-grandfather. PSI or something like it.”

“Telekinesis and all?”

“Apparently so. It could have something to do with what just happened. Either way, if it happens again, I think your old baseball bat and maybe a few other things are stored in the basement. Last I recall Rex stole the key...”

“Alright, thanks. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll give the phone to mom.”

Ninten gave the phone to his mother and walked outside. “Hey, Rex” he said, “What did you do with the basement key, you little old thief?” He was rather surprised when his talking aloud received an answer from the dog.

Oh, that. came the reply in his head umm, I did steal it... but it broke. I’ll get you the halves.

Rex went inside his dog house and came out, dropping two halves of a key from his mouth.

“Well, thanks anyways” Ninten sighed, as he took the key.

Sorry!   Ninten heard inside his head again. He could feel a slight bit of the emotion, but this telepathy evidently was far from mind-reading.

As he came inside, his mother was finished talking on the phone. “Did you get it?”

“Sort of”, Ninten replied as he handed her the two halves.
“And the teeth are bent out of shape, too. It’s not going to work.”, His mother said, examining the key.

“Great.”

Ninten sighed as he stared at the now impenetrable lock. He fiddled with the doorknob in futility, still staring at the lock.

“Damn it!” Ninten cursed, and heard a slight click.

“What was that?” Ninten heard from his mother.

“I just picked a lock. With my mind, I think” Ninten said as he tested the door to find that it was, in fact, open.

“Actually, mom, can I try something?” Ninten said, looking pensive.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Just wait a sec...” Ninten closed his eyes lightly.

This,   came the reply inside his Mother’s head.

“Wow... You have telepathy?”

“Enough to do that, apparently. No mind-reading, though. Just sort of happened when I was trying to get Rex to lead me to or give me the key.”

“Be right back” Ninten said, stepping down into the basement, turning on the lights as he did so.

Ninten looked through various packed boxes, going through them to find his great-grandfather’s diary first and his old yet weighty plastic bat.

He came up the stairs, bat in one hand and journal in the other. He sat down on the chair that remained in one piece, resting his bat at the base and reading through the journal. The journal was odd, more of a documentation than a personal recollection of his days. It contained organized information on PSI, which was, frankly, near unbelievable. Ranks by the Greek alphabet? Plausible, perhaps, as a large amount of research had to have gone into this. But... PSI fire? PSI lifeup? Beam? What kind of crazy research did this guy do? However, other things documented included unranked or innate powers: Telekinesis, Telepathy, Premonition. Premonition?   thought Ninten, Maybe that’s the feeling?
As he progressed through the diary, he also noted a section on use by humans, Wait, use by humans? That means it’s... alien or something?   Ninten found this only to get worse, as the journal mentioned the name Giegue, but never informed the reader much of him, only that the writer had felt the need to hide or escape from him and his race at the time of writing the journal.

Ninten sat up, placing the journal on a nearby desk. He needed some time to think on this. “Hey mom, I’m going to take a walk, catch up with all the weird stuff in this journal” he said, picking up the bat on an odd impulse.
“Alright, just make sure you’re not gone too long. That feeling still bugging you?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what it is yet, though.”

He strode outside, silently observing the outside world around him. Sometimes, he was happy to live in a small rural area. He noted squirrels, running, birds singing. Wait,   he thought I don’t think I’ve seen a crow before, maybe-   Ninten lost focus on the thought process at hand as the crow dived for him. He dodged to the side, but the bird was considerably more manoeuvrable than the inanimate objects he had fought earlier that day. The bird came to a hover, landing on Ninten’s head, pecking and scratching at him. As he flailed at it in an attempt to get it off, he managed to bat it off lightly, hitting it with the plastic bat as it tried to fly back at him. It fell and landed soundly, before getting up and flying away. Telepathy began to pick up words, of bewilderment about the situation at first and then a considerable number of curses at Ninten.

So maybe it’s not just objects... thought Ninten as he wandered on, considerably less at ease now. He felt more comfortable, though, as he saw Wally, one of their neighbours, if the distance between them in the rural area permitted calling it that. Wally had always been quite kind, if somewhat timid. “Hey Wally!” He said as came closer.

“What the hell do you want, punk?”

Ninten was shocked. This wasn’t like him at all. But it was considerably worse and decidedly more shocking when Wally came at him with a pitchfork. He barely dodged, getting a slight tear in his shirt as he dodged. Ninten had no idea what was going on, but he didn’t want to hurt Wally. As he dodged an over-reached stab with the pitch, he brought down his bat. The wood of the shaft was harder than the plastic of the bat, but it was thin, and the bat was heavy. The pitchfork broke, and Ninten stopped moving, ready to figure out was going on.

Big mistake. Wally stabbed again, hard, with the jagged splintered end of the broken pitchfork. It scored a solid hit on Ninten’s chest, cutting him, somewhat bludgeoning him, and gouging two large splinters into him. However, Ninten made a quick physical reply. He charged beside the pitchfork and whacked Wally right in the head. Wally stumbled and tripped. Ninten heard him say “Oh my God...”

“Did I do that to you?” He asked, eyes wide.

“Well... yes.”

“I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t even realize anything until you snapped me out of it...”
“It’s alright, Wally. Some pretty damn strange things are happening. I should probably head home, though” Ninten said, trying to resist the pain. The blow had hurt, far more than anything he was used to, but Wally was clearly already guilt-wrecked and fearful, and he didn’t want to traumatise him further.

He managed to make it out of sight and a bit further before sitting down and looking and himself. He grew slightly pale as he saw the size of the splinters sticking into him through his shirt. He pulled them out, only after realizing that this might have been a bad idea when the blood began to run more freely, soaking his shirt. He sat down, taking a moment to get used to the pain, not to be freaked out by his own blood as he lost it. For a second, Ninten had a wishful thought, just recalling his moment in the morning, awake, just before anything had hit him. He recalled it more vividly than was normal, felt like he was re-experiencing those few seconds, and said the first impulsive words that came to him. “Lifeup... alpha?” He said, curious and sceptical, but as he opened his eyes, the pain was gone, and he wasn’t bleeding. Notably, he didn’t even feel the black eye he had received from his lamp. Maybe my great-grandfather wasn’t such a lunatic after all... He thought, feeling tired.

He continued the walk home, hesitating before arriving at the door, realizing that his mysterious healing power hadn’t cleaned up his shirt. He opened the door and went, in, slightly fearful. “Hey, Mom. I think I really need to talk to you” he said, in a lower, more depressed tone of voice.

“Sure, what’s it- Oh my God... Ninten, you’re... what the hell happened?!” She had gone from casual to shocked and only more surprise awaited from the first of shock.

“Whatever made our house go crazy... makes people crazy too. Wally just... snapped and tried to kill me, stabbed me with a broken pitchfork. I had to hit him in the head so he’d snap out of it. I’m alright now...”

“You got stabbed and you’re alright? Have you gone crazy too, or is this more of that odd PSI?”

“More PSI... the shirt’s still bloody and I’m really tired now, though.” Ninten said. It wasn’t for lack of sleep, but PSI of that calibre being used for the first time had put quite a strain on him.

“Alright, get yourself a new shirt, I’ll make lunch, then you can head to bed and take a rest.”

“Thanks mom, but...” Ninten wasn’t actually quite sure what he was going to say, but then, his precognitive feeling fell into the rest of his mind with a veritable click.

“I’m going to have to leave tomorrow. I want to find the root of this, and that’s where my feeling’s pointing me. And, considering how weird today’s been, I think I want to follow it.”

Ninten agreed to this partly out of fear and protectiveness: he had seen whatever it was influence a normally kind person to attempted murder. What if it had picked him, with his younger sisters just a room over? What if his mother, who had dismantled a psychokinetically animated chair without any worry, had turned on them? Crazy objects are one thing, but when you can’t even trust people to be remotely close to in their right mind...
Ninten’s mother let out a deep sigh. “Are you sure? I won’t stop you.”

“I wish I was more sure, but I saw one of the kindest people I know attempt murder. I really don’t want to let this go on, and it looks like I’ve got the powers, so...” He trailed off.

“Okay, Ninten. However, it can wait until tomorrow, because you’re exhausted, underslept, and need to break the news to your sisters.” Ninten didn’t look forward to that – he was an active sibling, but as protective of his sisters as he could possibly be, and this showed in their sibling relationship, as they were close and active together, despite what age differences can usually entail.
Ninten put down the bat and sat in the chair again, pondering the day’s events again while he waited for lunch.

What an interesting day, indeed...

Description
Ninten began to wake up. It was a slow ascent at first, as when summer and its vacation comes, boundaries of sleep and waking shift leisurely, to later points.  But it was slightly different this time. Ninten, despite falling asleep later in the night, had awoken as early as if he’d had school that day. He wasn’t even particularly slow to get up for his general lack of sleep. He had gotten dressed quickly, and hadn’t even fallen back asleep in his attempts to get up and out of bed. He hardly knew what reasons there were for this, just that there was a slight and odd feeling of apprehension. These feelings, however, were not entirely unfamiliar to him. They were relatively rare, but always signalled something, whether cheerful or sorrowful. Ninten knew, though, that this feeling, like the others he had experienced before it, wasn’t going to be deciphered until whatever event it played the harbinger to had happened. And so Ninten had awoke, resentful of the sleep he couldn’t take back in the face of this odd precognitive feeling.

He strode to the door, tired yet anxious to see what this day would hold this time. As he was about to leave the room, he reached out to switch off the lamp. This action caused a variety of things, within and without of his mind, to occur. First of all, he realized that he’d never turned the lamp on. Second, he missed the lamp, not realising this was because it had dodged him. After that, he had realized that the lamp had never been there before and turned to face it. The lamp hit him solidly in the face, swinging with whatever weight it had, as he faced it. As Ninten stumbled, slipping to the floor, the lamp came down on him again, but its blow to the back of his head lacked the dazing force it has possessed in its first blow. Ninten reached out for the lamp again, but this time caught it as it tried to evade him. It continued to swing erratically, but the force was random and weak enough to be redirected. Ninten used this to his advantage, bashing the lamp against the wall with his force and its own until it had broke by the handle. Now broken in two, it ceased moving.

What a way to begin a day,  thought Ninten as his mind caught up with what had just happened. Quickly reviewing on the events, he passed the short stage of disbelieve and almost laughed at these events. Personally, I thought alarm clocks worked well enough, he thought to himself. This didn’t last too long, either, as he realized that there was some ruckus in the house and rushed to the door, stopping to open it before continuing his rush.

Ninten first stopped at his sister Minnie’s room, rushing in as he opened the door. She was unharmed, which brought some relief to Ninten, but the lamp was moving around, although not nearly as erratically as his had been.

“Ninten, what’s happening? The Lamp’s moving...” Minnie said, trailing off in a mixture of fear and fascination.

“I don’t know, but...” Ninten cut off in mid speech as he approached the lamp. He approached it, came up beside it, and watched the lamp sail at reasonable speed over where his head had been. This time, he grabbed it from underneath and brought it down, forcing it against his knee and bending it past its breaking point. Like the other lamp, it fell to the ground and rolled slightly to the side, now in two pieces.

“Mom’s not going to be happy about that” Minnie noted in the aftermath.

“If that means she was safe from the whole thing, I’ll deal with it” Ninten replied, already leaving for his other sister Mimmie’s room.

As he arrived, opening the door, he saw Mimmie’s doll, animated and floating. The movements were odd, as if whatever was controlling it had been taught how to move like a human, yet never had the reflexes. And, like Mimmie, he watched it for a short while, if only to appreciate the irony that it was only years ago that she had the childish imagination to believe it alive.

This sensation, however, didn’t last too long, because like the lamps, the doll started to attack him. It would’ve been comical to Ninten, even as the victim, except compared to the lamp (which hurt! ), it was flying much faster. He dodged to the side, and it went on past him, turning around to attack again. As Ninten dodged another attack, he delivered a solid blow to it, which was apparently all that was needed to ruin control over it – it continued careening and hit the wall, falling on the corner of the top of Mimmie’s shelf, inanimate.

Mimmie rushed over to it, now with a different kind of anxiety, hoping it wasn’t too badly damaged or broken.

“It’s still alright, but it’s damaged... why’s this thing inside it?” Mimmie asked, slight traumatisation giving way to curiosity.

“What thing? Let me see that...” Ninten removed the old box. It looked like an old toy, set to play a tune after being wound up. He took this as a possible conclusion and wound it up until it gave resistant clicks.

It began to play a simple melody, single note by single note, without accompaniment. Something seemed to click inside Ninten, but then the song cut off abruptly. Mimmie seemed to pay attention, but then turned to seeing what was damaged and what could be fixed in the doll.

“I’m going to check out downstairs” Ninten said as an afterthought as he headed out the door.

Ninten admittedly wasn’t too worried as he went down the stairs – his mother was a parent and all, but there was something else about her that exuded a degree of safety so long as you weren’t the offender. As it turned out, he was correct. As he came down the stairs, he found one of the large chairs had taken up adornment in a different style: dismembered into component parts in some places and broken in others.

“Ninten, are you and your sisters alright? Oh, you’re hurt...” She looked him in the eye. Notably, the one the lamp had hit him in, blackening it.

“I’m fine, mom, and so are they... but... the chair...” He trailed off, at a slight loss for words.

“Oh, sorry about that... it wouldn’t stop moving no matter how many joints I pulled out, so I took a... different approach”.

The telephone began ringing. “I’ll get it” said Ninten, semi-automatically by virtue of being closer. He picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Oh, hey Ninten! What’s up?”

“Well, inanimate objects came to life. And attacked us.”

“Sounds like an interesting way to start your day. Seriously?”

“Yep. I’ll have you know that I was already up when the lamp hit me, though”

“I can’t think of too much to explain it... poltergeists, maybe?”

“If it helps, I’ve got one of those feelings”

“Hmm... Well, last time I looked into those, I came up with some odd research by your great-grandfather. PSI or something like it.”

“Telekinesis and all?”

“Apparently so. It could have something to do with what just happened. Either way, if it happens again, I think your old baseball bat and maybe a few other things are stored in the basement. Last I recall Rex stole the key...”

“Alright, thanks. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll give the phone to mom.”

Ninten gave the phone to his mother and walked outside. “Hey, Rex” he said, “What did you do with the basement key, you little old thief?” He was rather surprised when his talking aloud received an answer from the dog.

Oh, that. came the reply in his head umm, I did steal it... but it broke. I’ll get you the halves.

Rex went inside his dog house and came out, dropping two halves of a key from his mouth.

“Well, thanks anyways” Ninten sighed, as he took the key.

Sorry!   Ninten heard inside his head again. He could feel a slight bit of the emotion, but this telepathy evidently was far from mind-reading.

As he came inside, his mother was finished talking on the phone. “Did you get it?”

“Sort of”, Ninten replied as he handed her the two halves.
“And the teeth are bent out of shape, too. It’s not going to work.”, His mother said, examining the key.

“Great.”

Ninten sighed as he stared at the now impenetrable lock. He fiddled with the doorknob in futility, still staring at the lock.

“Damn it!” Ninten cursed, and heard a slight click.

“What was that?” Ninten heard from his mother.

“I just picked a lock. With my mind, I think” Ninten said as he tested the door to find that it was, in fact, open.

“Actually, mom, can I try something?” Ninten said, looking pensive.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Just wait a sec...” Ninten closed his eyes lightly.

This,   came the reply inside his Mother’s head.

“Wow... You have telepathy?”

“Enough to do that, apparently. No mind-reading, though. Just sort of happened when I was trying to get Rex to lead me to or give me the key.”

“Be right back” Ninten said, stepping down into the basement, turning on the lights as he did so.

Ninten looked through various packed boxes, going through them to find his great-grandfather’s diary first and his old yet weighty plastic bat.

He came up the stairs, bat in one hand and journal in the other. He sat down on the chair that remained in one piece, resting his bat at the base and reading through the journal. The journal was odd, more of a documentation than a personal recollection of his days. It contained organized information on PSI, which was, frankly, near unbelievable. Ranks by the Greek alphabet? Plausible, perhaps, as a large amount of research had to have gone into this. But... PSI fire? PSI lifeup? Beam? What kind of crazy research did this guy do? However, other things documented included unranked or innate powers: Telekinesis, Telepathy, Premonition. Premonition?   thought Ninten, Maybe that’s the feeling?
As he progressed through the diary, he also noted a section on use by humans, Wait, use by humans? That means it’s... alien or something?   Ninten found this only to get worse, as the journal mentioned the name Giegue, but never informed the reader much of him, only that the writer had felt the need to hide or escape from him and his race at the time of writing the journal.

Ninten sat up, placing the journal on a nearby desk. He needed some time to think on this. “Hey mom, I’m going to take a walk, catch up with all the weird stuff in this journal” he said, picking up the bat on an odd impulse.
“Alright, just make sure you’re not gone too long. That feeling still bugging you?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what it is yet, though.”

He strode outside, silently observing the outside world around him. Sometimes, he was happy to live in a small rural area. He noted squirrels, running, birds singing. Wait,   he thought I don’t think I’ve seen a crow before, maybe-   Ninten lost focus on the thought process at hand as the crow dived for him. He dodged to the side, but the bird was considerably more manoeuvrable than the inanimate objects he had fought earlier that day. The bird came to a hover, landing on Ninten’s head, pecking and scratching at him. As he flailed at it in an attempt to get it off, he managed to bat it off lightly, hitting it with the plastic bat as it tried to fly back at him. It fell and landed soundly, before getting up and flying away. Telepathy began to pick up words, of bewilderment about the situation at first and then a considerable number of curses at Ninten.

So maybe it’s not just objects... thought Ninten as he wandered on, considerably less at ease now. He felt more comfortable, though, as he saw Wally, one of their neighbours, if the distance between them in the rural area permitted calling it that. Wally had always been quite kind, if somewhat timid. “Hey Wally!” He said as came closer.

“What the hell do you want, punk?”

Ninten was shocked. This wasn’t like him at all. But it was considerably worse and decidedly more shocking when Wally came at him with a pitchfork. He barely dodged, getting a slight tear in his shirt as he dodged. Ninten had no idea what was going on, but he didn’t want to hurt Wally. As he dodged an over-reached stab with the pitch, he brought down his bat. The wood of the shaft was harder than the plastic of the bat, but it was thin, and the bat was heavy. The pitchfork broke, and Ninten stopped moving, ready to figure out was going on.

Big mistake. Wally stabbed again, hard, with the jagged splintered end of the broken pitchfork. It scored a solid hit on Ninten’s chest, cutting him, somewhat bludgeoning him, and gouging two large splinters into him. However, Ninten made a quick physical reply. He charged beside the pitchfork and whacked Wally right in the head. Wally stumbled and tripped. Ninten heard him say “Oh my God...”

“Did I do that to you?” He asked, eyes wide.

“Well... yes.”

“I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t even realize anything until you snapped me out of it...”
“It’s alright, Wally. Some pretty damn strange things are happening. I should probably head home, though” Ninten said, trying to resist the pain. The blow had hurt, far more than anything he was used to, but Wally was clearly already guilt-wrecked and fearful, and he didn’t want to traumatise him further.

He managed to make it out of sight and a bit further before sitting down and looking and himself. He grew slightly pale as he saw the size of the splinters sticking into him through his shirt. He pulled them out, only after realizing that this might have been a bad idea when the blood began to run more freely, soaking his shirt. He sat down, taking a moment to get used to the pain, not to be freaked out by his own blood as he lost it. For a second, Ninten had a wishful thought, just recalling his moment in the morning, awake, just before anything had hit him. He recalled it more vividly than was normal, felt like he was re-experiencing those few seconds, and said the first impulsive words that came to him. “Lifeup... alpha?” He said, curious and sceptical, but as he opened his eyes, the pain was gone, and he wasn’t bleeding. Notably, he didn’t even feel the black eye he had received from his lamp. Maybe my great-grandfather wasn’t such a lunatic after all... He thought, feeling tired.

He continued the walk home, hesitating before arriving at the door, realizing that his mysterious healing power hadn’t cleaned up his shirt. He opened the door and went, in, slightly fearful. “Hey, Mom. I think I really need to talk to you” he said, in a lower, more depressed tone of voice.

“Sure, what’s it- Oh my God... Ninten, you’re... what the hell happened?!” She had gone from casual to shocked and only more surprise awaited from the first of shock.

“Whatever made our house go crazy... makes people crazy too. Wally just... snapped and tried to kill me, stabbed me with a broken pitchfork. I had to hit him in the head so he’d snap out of it. I’m alright now...”

“You got stabbed and you’re alright? Have you gone crazy too, or is this more of that odd PSI?”

“More PSI... the shirt’s still bloody and I’m really tired now, though.” Ninten said. It wasn’t for lack of sleep, but PSI of that calibre being used for the first time had put quite a strain on him.

“Alright, get yourself a new shirt, I’ll make lunch, then you can head to bed and take a rest.”

“Thanks mom, but...” Ninten wasn’t actually quite sure what he was going to say, but then, his precognitive feeling fell into the rest of his mind with a veritable click.

“I’m going to have to leave tomorrow. I want to find the root of this, and that’s where my feeling’s pointing me. And, considering how weird today’s been, I think I want to follow it.”

Ninten agreed to this partly out of fear and protectiveness: he had seen whatever it was influence a normally kind person to attempted murder. What if it had picked him, with his younger sisters just a room over? What if his mother, who had dismantled a psychokinetically animated chair without any worry, had turned on them? Crazy objects are one thing, but when you can’t even trust people to be remotely close to in their right mind...
Ninten’s mother let out a deep sigh. “Are you sure? I won’t stop you.”

“I wish I was more sure, but I saw one of the kindest people I know attempt murder. I really don’t want to let this go on, and it looks like I’ve got the powers, so...” He trailed off.

“Okay, Ninten. However, it can wait until tomorrow, because you’re exhausted, underslept, and need to break the news to your sisters.” Ninten didn’t look forward to that – he was an active sibling, but as protective of his sisters as he could possibly be, and this showed in their sibling relationship, as they were close and active together, despite what age differences can usually entail.
Ninten put down the bat and sat in the chair again, pondering the day’s events again while he waited for lunch.

What an interesting day, indeed...