Time Warp: Light in the Dark (Everett)

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Lilien Residence, Autumn 2003

It was storming outside. Kiara didn’t like that. Thunder was roaring and lightening had lit up her room multiple times by now. Each time she feared that the sudden and brief illumination would show someone standing next to her bed. It had made the nine year-old shuffle further under the covers, both hands tightly holding up the fabric just underneath her eyes. Despite lying on her back, frozen with fear, she still had quite a decent view on her surroundings. Normally a roll-down shutter would coat the entire room in darkness, but the mechanism had started to malfunction a couple of days beforehand and her father had not gotten around to fixing it yet.

As another flash lit everything up, loud thunder soon rolled as well and in turn the young one quickly turned onto her side and flicked on the small light that stood on her nightstand. Fearful blue eyes rested on the window as she now sat up in bed with hands still gripping the blanket. As the storm only seemed to be getting worse (at least according to her), lightening must have hit something as electricity bailed on her. While the initial reaction of most might have been to try the switch a couple of times, only to realize that it was not just that lamp, Kiara’s was to rush out of bed and into the hallway. Bare feet quickly led her to the door next to hers. Without bothering to knock, the young blonde mentally ushered herself into the room.

The door got closed again and within seconds, Ki was crawling into another bed, immediately under the covers. “Everett?” She whispered. His room was dark as well, so getting in there had been based on memory. The girl tended to go there whenever it was storming outside. She figured he would be awake by now, but she checked it anyway. “Are you awake?”

[Everett Lilien]

Everett felt weird. That was his only thought as he laid still in bed, afraid that if he moved, something would happen. He was overheated, but stayed underneath his blankets. He'd never been afraid of thunderstorms really, they were natural and there were a number of times he'd watched as his mother took photographs of the lightning flashing across the sky from their home. It was beautiful, but at the moment, it didn't feel like it. It felt dangerous. He felt wired, with energy, a kind of energy he'd never felt before and it was freaking him out, so when he heard the door to his bedroom open and then quickly shut, he knew it had to be Kiara, because she didn't like thunderstorms in the least bit.

He felt his matress sink in, but only slightly as her tiny form crawled into bed next to him. "Yeah, I'm awake. I've been awake." He couldn't get back to sleep. It was like he'd woken up feeling like he'd rubbed his feet on the carpet so many times that he could shock someone with a single touch, something he used to think was funny.

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Okay, good. Everett was awake. Of course he was. Thunder was rolling and roaring outside; it would be a miracle had he slept through it. That, and Kiara had yet to develop skills when it came to tiptoeing into the room quietly. Shuffling closer under the covers, the young girl eventually poked her head just a couple of inches above the hem. Darkness made it close to impossible to detect him, but the blonde knew he was there. “Can I sleep here?” Her voice hardly above a whisper as the question got asked – another rhetorical one given her brother always allowed her to, as long as cold feet were being kept to her side of the bed. “I won’t snore.” She never did (as far as she was aware), but randomly babbling did occur often whenever Ki was scared or nervous.

"Cat is also scared...” Cat being the plush that she dragged along anywhere. The blonde girl pushed it forward, closing the distance between her and her brother, to nuzzle the plush against him – presumably his face.

[Everett Lilien]

Just as she always did whenever there was a storm, she asked if she could sleep in his bed, even though she knew he would say yes, that he wouldn't protest. And she told him she wouldn't snore, as if she could control it, which he'd told her a thousand times that she couldn't just make herself not snore when she was sleeping. He was trying to deal with the madness that was happening, trying to make sense of why his body was reacting this way and also trying to calm himself down so he didn't freak his sister out, but before he could answer she was shoving her plushie in his face, the little thing she couldn't put down. She rubbed it against his face and he could just feel the static electricity. "Ki-" he started, but the action actually caused him to be shocked by the static electricity.

He shoved Cat away. "Ki, something's wrong." He rubbed his cheek.

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Kiara was completely oblivious to the fact that something was wrong. Everett didn’t always say a lot, so his lack of reactions was normal in her opinion. Either way, her brother was good at making her feel at ease. Perhaps he could do the same for Cat? At least that was what the young girl had been hoping for. Before she knew it, however, the briefest of shocks stabbed at the hand holding the plush. A quiet ‘ouch’ slipped past her lips, despite that it not hurt enough for her to fully withdraw Cat. It was Everett who completely shoved it away. Slowly, a tad bit sad because he had rejected the plush (and also because of his words which began to worry her), the blonde held it close. “Is… it me?” She ventured carefully. She was prone to doing things wrong.

“And why did you do that?” Of course Ki had no freaking idea what was going on, let alone that her knowledge about electricity was developed (other than knowing to not put anything in the power points around the house). While having no clue what had just happened, she knew it was her brother who caused the brief pain. “You hurt Cat. Poor Cat.” Despite the fact that it was dark, she managed to place a couple of kisses on its nose – something Ev could surely hear.

[Everett Lilien]

"No, no it's not you," Everett assured her, wondering how she could even think that. "You're always welcome in here." He was sure she'd felt that shock, she had to of. Everett had never felt like this before, like he was holding an electric charge in his veins and he couldn't release it. "It started when the storm did. I feel like....like I'm full of electricity. You know, like when you rub your hair on a balloon and it stands on end. Like that, but way worse." He tried to put it in terms she'd understand, but he didn't even understand what was happening.

He'd only pushed Cat away because it only seemed to make it worse. "Sorry," he told her, still rubbing his cheek, which was still tingling. He heard her kissing her plushie and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Such was the reaction of a boy near teenage years. "Tell Cat I'm sorry." This whole thing was actually making him more irritable and when there was another flash of lightning, Everett got out of bed quickly, unable to remain there any longer. He fumbled around for his lamp on his bedside table, reaching for the switch on it, but when he turned it on, it was only light for a moment, and then the lightbulb shattered, making him jump away from it.

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The way Everett tried to explain it to his younger sister made sense. She only had to disagree with one detail: ‘when you rub my hair on a balloon”. With that correction made, Kiara nurtured the orange plushie, whispering Ev’s apology to it. He could have told Cat himself, but clearly something else was on his mind. Kiara, however, didn’t really mull on the rest of his words. How could someone be full of electricity? That was weird and impossi-… The blonde’s attention snapped away from Cat when the lightbulb shattered, quick to sit up and to stare in the general direction of where her brother should be standing.

“What was that?” Kiara quickly asked. She knew her brother had a flash light around here, mainly because she always wanted one during night like these. Everett could probably hear her roll to the edge of the bed to rummage on the nightstand that didn’t have the broken lamp. Within the seconds that followed, Ki had a beam of light aimed at him. The blonde looked genuinely worried before slowly shuffling closer to where her brother stood – Cat effortlessly being dragged along. “Maybe… you ate something wrong and are sick?” For a second she paused, only to suggest the typical solution. “I can wake up mom.” All she tried to be was helpful, but in reality Kiara had no clue what to do.

[Everett Lilien]

"Whoa!" Everett said, as he jumped away from the lightbulb which had shattered, causing Kiara to sit up very quickly and dig around for his flashlight before there was a steady steam of light on his face. He squinted in response. "Ki, not right in my face," he urged her. "It was the lightbulb in my lamp. I tried to turn it on and it exploded." He was torn between fear and thinking this was awesome.

"When people get sick, do things usually explode?" It wasn't a question meant for an answer, but he posed it anyway. "Ki, I don't think I'm sick, I don't know what's going on." Wake up mom? How would that help? At Ki's age, she liked to believe that their mom could fix everything and at one point, Ev thought so too, but he was sure this had to be out of her hands. "No...I don't know." He slowly raised one of his hands up to his hair, which he felt standing up. "Does my hair look funny?"

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How was Kiara to know where his face was?! Then again, when her brother demanded to aim it somewhere else, it took a couple more seconds before an ‘oh’ slipped past the girl’s lips and she let the beam of light drift to the exploded lightbulb on his nightstand. “Appendixes can explode when people are sick…” She replied to his rhetorical question, not having caught on to the nature of how it was asked. In her mind, it was quite a smart response, and one that Ev couldn’t deny.

Luckily her brother didn’t appear to be sick though. Thank God! She seemed more relieved about that than worried about not knowing what was going on. As well as entertained when Ev asked about his hair. The light might have blinded him for a second again as it went up from his chest to his hair. The soft laugh that filled the room surely answered his question. “Very funny! It’s poking out like everywhere. You’re like a cactus now! Oh, oh, oh! Or a hedgehog!” With a sheepish grin, the blonde shuffled forward on the mattress. And while she tried to reach over to pat her hand on the hair standing up, her arm seemed to be a tad bit too short.

“Maybe you were electo… electRrrrocuted?” Because that was always the cause of this kind of hair in all the cartoons on television. And it could also explain the exploded lightbub? Sitting on her butt again, Ki now aimed the flashlight at Cat, tugging the plush onto her lap. “Like you did to Cat…” A finger timidly poking the nose of her toy before blue eyes drifted back to the boy.

[Everett Lilien]

"Your saying that my appendix are going to explode?" Everett asked incredulously. That didn't necessarily mean that they were, or that it could even happen. Kiara was young and was just trying to give him any explanation. "That does not make me feel any better! Let's just...let's stop talking about things that explode, okay?" He ran a hand through his hair again, shocking himself. It was as if all the static electricity was ending up in his hair.

At least it was making Kiara left, even if he was really panicked about it. "Yeah, it's funny." Or at least it normally would be. "But it doesn't always do this." He really shouldn't have asked her. But it was just more proof that something was going on.

"Electrocuted? But I felt like this without moving from the bed, before I tried to turn on the lamp." Why was he speculating about this with his younger sister?

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Hey, he asked! Kiara only wanted to be helpful, even if that meant answering a question he hadn’t expect to receive a reply to. Okay, if Everett worded it like that, it actually sounded awful… But it was the truth! Kiara had totally heard that on television once! Lips were kept tightly together after it, if only because her brother stated that it didn’t make him feel any better. “Okie,” she mused sweetly, only to also suppress another chuckle at how his hair was sticking out.

In an attempt to make him feel better again, Ki held out Cat out for him to take. The plush soothed her, and it was a very genuine gesture. She barely parted with Cat, but the young girl could tell her brother might need it more. “Maybe… in your sleep?” The girl pouted. “Like that guy from your comic books? Lightening man? Or Flash or something like that? He got hit as well, right? And he had magical powers.”

Lips pursed as blue eyes might have gotten an hopeful spark to them. “Maybe you’re magical as well? Oh! Maybe you can fly?”

[Everett Lilien]

"Thanks," The elder blonde told his sister when she'd agreed.

When Kiara held out her companion Cat for him to take, he shook his head. "Thanks Ki, but Cat stays with you. It's where she belongs," he told her, and it was true. Besides, with how he was feeling, he didn't want to risk somehow ruining Cat, who was as much of a friend to Kiara as the girls she hung out with on the playground at school. He wouldn't tell her that though.

As Kiara went on, Everett mused along with her. "The Flash did develop powers from lightning, but also chemicals," he corrected her. "And Electro got his powers from being struck by lightning when working on powerlines...besides, he's evil and I really don't want to be evil." In Ev's eyes, he was to be a superhero, never a super villain. However, thinking of it in comic book terms did make him calm down. "Well, at least Electro's not a very good villain. Spiderman always defeats him." Most of all of the other characters with electric powers were girls.

Magical wasn't the right word in his opinion. It wasn't like Harry Potter, but he kept himself from correcting her. "Maybe," he mused. Although if he wanted a superpower it wouldn't be flight...he wasn't really sure what he'd want. As he mulled over this, the lights in the room began to flicker on and off. Was he doing that? Was that even possible?

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Cat quite possibly was a better friend than the girls she hung out with on the playground at school. The latter also couldn’t compare to the friendship and affection gained from her brother – and that was something she wouldn’t tell him. If Ev could see the smile and gratitude on her face, however, he definitely would be able to tell how much those words meant to his sister. Of course she had been the one to offer the plush to him in the first time, but that didn’t take away she was incredibly relieved when he declined the offer.

As for the conversation about superheroes… Yeah. Kiara only knew names from when she would plop down on the couch next to her brother while watching television, or from whenever he took her to the comic book store with him. It still sounded the same to her: they had powers! No matter how they got them. “But you’re a superhero no one wrote stories about yet. You’re different.” The blonde reasoned, only for her gaze to tear away from her brother again as the lights (except for the broken one) began to flicker.

His sister was slowly convinced that Everett caused this. “Can you make it turn pink?” Ki asked with hope filling her voice, pursing lips lightly while gazing up at the one on his ceiling. Surely he could, right? He had magic! For a second she wanted to ask him if he could fix the lamp in her room, but nope… That would mean she had to go to her own bed and not be around her magical brother. Not going to happen!

“Or make it spparrklllee.” Her eyes pretty much doing just that as they drifted over to Ev again.

[Everett Lilien]

Everett could tell that she was relieved when she didn't have to hand over Cat, but the offer was enough for him to know that his sister cared. He wouldn't take away one of her best friends. Besides, she needed Cat more.

"Maybe..." he mused. But would anybody ever write a comic about a super hero with electric powers? It hadn't happened yet. He looked up, watching the lights flicker. Either the storm was doing that or he was and he was pretty sure that he was. He could just feel it. He'd actually felt sort of better after the lightbulb exploded, as if he'd released some of the energy inside of him. But he still felt as if he was overflowing with it.

"I don't think so?" Everett phrased it more as a question. If he had powers, which he didn't understand how that was possible, would that be a part of what someone with electricity powers could do? He didn't think so.

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He didn’t think so? Why didn’t he just try and they would find out soon enough. “You should test it!” Kiara decided before shuffling to her side of the bed (the one she usually claimed), slipping out to tug open the drawer of his nightstand. She knew a spare flashlight could be found within – even though it usually ended up in her bedroom as well since the girl never returned it after using. Amazingly enough it was in the drawer at that moment.

Taking it out, she tested it a couple of times, switching it on and off. Given it clearly worked, the young girl wobbled over to her brother and handed it to him. Of course Ki didn’t know anything about powers, but she kind of figured he might make it work without touching the button. Right?

“Oh oh oh! Wait!” While obviously excited, Kiara still managed to very quietly sneak back to her room. When the girl returned, she had tugged a string of star lights from under her bed. Usually it decorated her wall, but she had taken it down a week or so ago.

Upon entering his room again, Kiara handed him the wire. No one could claim she was stupid for thinking of this. “Can you light them uppp?” She asked, lips pursing slightly.