Self Defense by The Elitist

It’s not like I set out to kill anyone.  That wasn’t the intention.  But you have to admit that there comes a time when protecting someone involves hurting someone else, especially when that someone is your daughter.  Add a few special powers in and, well, it just snowballed from there.  Let me start from the beginning.

I had a really rough pregnancy with my daughter. I couldn’t sleep, there were no breaks.  Every time I closed my eyes, I’d have nightmares.  Before I knew I was having a girl, I’d see the image of a small girl walking across my mind leaving flaming footprints.  I could see her dark eyes topped with red hair looking back at me.  There was going to be something special about this baby.  By my third trimester, she seemed too aware of people talking to her from the outside.  Now that I think about it, she’s always seemed old beyond her years.  Too smart, too capable.  It never occurred to me that she got it from her mother.

When she was a few months old, I was on my way to pick her up from daycare when I felt something terrible was happening.  As I drove up the street to the house where she was being watched, I saw a man in dark clothing menacingly screaming through the front door as he tried to shove it open.  I closed my eyes and could see the day care lady hiding inside with the kids, quietly sobbing.  I searched through her memories and saw that she had hid a shovel around the side of the house.  I parked two houses down and crept to the side of the house, finding the shovel I had seen in my mind.  He didn’t notice me walk up behind him.  I gripped the middle of the handle tightly, swung around once slowly in a circle to warm up, then quickly the second time to connect with his skull.  The cracking sound echoed down the street.  He slowly slid down the side of the door and looked up at me stunned.  My eyes locked with his and I could feel his shattered thoughts try to collect.  Estranged father of one of the children inside.  He wasn’t getting near my child.  I turned the shovel sideways and brought it down on his neck, severing his windpipe.  He flailed and didn’t make a sound.  I grabbed his legs and pulled him further onto the porch and stood over him, positioning the shovel directly above his neck.  I brought the point down until it hit the cement.  There were no thoughts after that.

It was the first time I remember being able to tap into someone’s mind and read their thoughts and see their memories.  They call me Hazard.

It was a couple of years later that I was taking my daughter for a walk in her stroller along with my sister and her kids when a man approached us with a gun.  I instinctively held out my purse thinking he’d let us go, but I faintly saw something else pass through is mind.  He was looking us over picturing pulling the trigger in my daughter’s face.  I put my purse back on my shoulder and stepped in front of my family and looked directly into his face with no fear in my eyes.  I’d gotten hold of his mind.  He struggled to move his arm that held the gun straight out in front of him, inches from my chest.  Instead, I held out my arm towards him and hissed “You shouldn’t play with guns.  You may accidentally shoot yourself if you’re not careful.” I then bent my arm at the elbow and pointed my fingers under my chin.  His arm moved in unison.  He began to scream “No, no, NO!” as I pulled the trigger with my fingers and watched him shoot himself in the face.  The police thought it was unfortunate that this man had decided to commit suicide in front of me. I agreed.

It wasn’t long after that I noticed that my daughter wasn’t affected by heat the way normal people are.  Her sense of touch was intact, but if she touched the stove, her skin would not burn.  She adored candles.  She’d want me to light them all over the house and turn all of the lights out each night.  But she’d let her fingers linger over them too long. I started to wonder if this was connected to my flaming footprint dreams.  One day I was cooking rice and was draining the boiling water into the sink when my daughter came flying into the kitchen and knocked into me, causing me to dump the scalding water down my pants and over her head. I screamed in pain and she stood very still, stunned.  I dropped to my knees to examine her face and scalp for burns.  Nothing, not even redness. I took off my soaked pants to look at my skin.  Nothing, although the pain was immense.  Then I realized that by touching me, she could transfer her energy and therefore powers to me.  I decided to call her Hot Spot.

Did I tell you I’m divorced from her father?  He remarried shortly after she was born and there used to be a step mother in the picture.  One day I walked into her father’s house calling her name to pick her up and witnessed her step mother grab her by the arm as she shook her violently.  She screamed in pain as she was dragged across the kitchen.  The woman dropped my daughter’s arm and began to back away as soon as she saw me in the front door.  I knelt down as my daughter ran to me and lifted her up in my arms.  I reached my arm out to stop her step mother from escaping out the back door.  I raised my hand and lifted her three feet off the ground, suspended in terror, wondering what was going to happen next.  Noticing a candle near by, my daughter reached out for it and put her finger tips to the flame and I watched the light dance in the air above her hand. She reached back as if to throw the flames she held forward towards her attacker and I told her that was too messy and the fire immediately went out.  She looked disappointed.  I carefully put her on the ground as her father came running down the stairs to see what was happening.  I told him what I’d seen and his face went pale.  I calmly held out a second hand in front of me and stated “In my right hand is her brain and my left her heart.  Do I crush one or the other? Certainly no autopsy could point to me if one decided to explode.” Then I clapped my hands together and she dropped lifeless to the ground.  Perhaps she should be picking on someone her own size instead of a defenseless child.

There are certainly no killing sprees in store for Hazard and Hot Spot, but there will be no victims either.  After all, it was all done in self-defense, right?

The Elitist can be reached at insidetheheadofanelitist@gmail.com