Imperial Orders

♕The Power♕

"...Telekinetic?" Tuofah gaped at Hugo, momentarily forgetting the ever-present dull throb that seemed to emanate from every joint of her body. Her grimy hands gripped the exposed skin on her kneecap where her pants had been shredded by her fall and her tired eyes sharpened with newfound attention. The leader of the Peenutz, who sat across from her, looked to be in a much calmer state of mind at first glance, but his thigh shook nervously as if he were ready to jump to his feet and take off at the slightest sign of danger. Great tension was evident in both of the battered teenagers who sat in the shade of the tree's sprawling limbs.

"Yes," Hugo gulped, his eyes flitting around nervously. "You were pinned between two walls of the ship when I saw you first in the wind. The pieces of metal were grinding against each other with the force of the tornado and I was sure they'd mash you to a pulp. But then, just when I was sure you were done for, one of the walls popped off and came flying toward me. Remember that I was falling through the wet air to what I thought was my death, and wasn't exactly thinking straight. So I remember kicking wildly out of pure instinct to get the thing away from me, but get this: the detached wall didn't slam into me, it slid under me."

"That's impossible," Tuofah shook her head. "Things fall down, not sideways. It's called gravity." A strand of brown hair, hardened by the cakes of mud that surrounded it, came loose from the remains of her messy updo, obscuring the outer edge of her right eye.

"If this was normal, do you really think I would be taking this time to tell you about it?" Hugo smiled dryly. "Anyway, it was obvious that the metal wasn't falling. It was undergoing a controlled descent. I was laying flat on my back, completely out of it, and the piece of metal didn't even make me think it was going to drop me. Actually, it didn't even tip. As if that isn't crazy enough, when I turned my head to the left, I saw you laying on the other piece of ship-wall with your eyes rolled back in your skull like you were possessed or something. Your hands were up in the air and they were vibrating with inhuman intensity as we drifted down and away from the tornado."

"Hold up," Tuofah put her palms in front of her defensively, breathing hard. "You're telling me that I did all of this, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever?"

"I know what I saw," Hugo nodded. "When I got to the ground, the Peenutz were already there, relatively unharmed. I had lost sight of you somewhere along the way, so I decided to wait out the storm in the woods with the kids. We all got to looking for you in the morning once the tornado passed. Not long after we started, we found you in the lake, and you know the rest."

"That is..." Tuofah paused, not having the slightest idea of what to say in response to Hugo's seemingly fantastic story. Thankfully, she was relieved of the expectation to continue the conversation by the sound of the quickly approaching footsteps of an ever-energetic Nut. The Peenut carried with her a cone-shaped cup fashioned out of a very large leaf which was filled to the brim with random paraphernalia.

"Got it, Captain!" she announced, squatting beside Hugo as she proudly placed her leaf-cup in front of her. Her hair had been redone with haste into what resembled a pair of pigtails and it was clear that she had made an effort to wash some of the mud off of her oversized shirt. The poorly made container Nut had brought with her sprung back into its original, flat shape as soon it touched the moist ground, revealing its varied contents. A roll of thick, white gauze, a thumb-sized bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a faded rubber duck first caught Tuofah's eye, but many more trinkets lay below the surface of the pile.

"Wonderful," Hugo nodded with approval, silently surveying the items. "That plus Dot's stuff from earlier is probably about all you and the others would be able to carry. It's probably a good idea for Tuo and I to get back to the crash site now to see if we can salvage some of the larger working parts of the ship. Right, Tuo?"

"I suppose so, yes," Tuofah replied, using this moment of distraction to temporarily push her newly discovered telekinetic abilities out of her mind. As a capable Tactile, she was more than able to differentiate between something that could be put to use and something that belonged in the garbage heap. Until she had figured out what to do about the knowledge she had acquired about herself, she would help Hugo and the Peenutz sift through the ruins of their ship. Excited to put her Gift to use after more than a week, Tuofah stood up, but not before pocketing the bottle of rubbing alcohol. She knew she'd need it for her larger wounds.

She followed Hugo's lead, trudging through the mud that covered the rocky Celatysian ground as they approached the tall, relatively uniform line of trees before them. Nut, having folded her findings back into her "cup," easily skipped ahead of the two older Peenutz, humming to herself all the while. Now finding herself alone with Hugo once again, Tuofah decided to pose to him her biggest question.

"If I really am telekinetic, how is it that I only just showed it? Why yesterday, of all days?"

"It's Nardysk," Hugo laughed, his words punctuated by the sound of his boots as he painstakingly stepped over ferns and ducked under the lowest of the tree branches.

"What about it?"

"You mean no one's ever told you about the city's unique magnetic properties?" The leader of the Peenutz shook his head in disbelief. "It stifles all powers, especially ones that stem from mutations, such as telekinesis in your case and Foresight, the ability of mutant Oculars to see the future. Why do you think there's practically no Gifteds there?"

"You mean..." Tuofah put a fingertip to her lips, thinking.

Why did she live in Nardysk?

Her mother told her its lawless streets were the only place they could safely live and work without being arrested on the account of the numerous imperial orders that wished them dead or imprisoned, but Nardysk was far from the only city of its kind. There had to be something more to it. Tuofah's eyes widened in realization and she flattened her back against the rough bark of a nearby tree as she began to put the pieces together in her head. Hugo turned around when he realized she had paused, watching her curiously.

"My mom knows," Tuofah whispered, scenes of her mother's unyielding insistence that they move to Nardysk flashing through her head. "She knows I'm a mutant."