The car pulled up to the front entrance of the school just like any other. The door swung open and a single crutch came out, followed by a slightly bandaged leg. The second leg, his left, came out fully revealed and totally normal. Zayne stood up and leaned against the crutch as he turned to look back inside the car, facing his Aunt Ver at the driver's wheel.

"Remember what we talked about. If you feel the surge coming-"

"Ask to go to the bathroom and calm down yes yes I know," Zayne finished.

"Okay. Just making sure. I'm picking you up at twelve-thirty today okay? That should be plenty of time to think about your answer, right?" Ver asked kindly.

"I guess yeah. I'll see you later," Zayne replied as he started closing the door.

"I love you," Ver quickly said just before the door closed.

"Love you too," Zayne answered as he shut the door, then turned and started limping towards the front doors of the school.

The sun was blocked out as the building loomed over his small figure, seemingly taunting him as he approached. Zayne ignored it and focused on the doors. What would it be like, he wondered, with all his friends? Had everyone heard about his parent's death? Would they try to comfort him, or would they try to not acknowledge it? How would everyone treat him? Suddenly a realization washed over Zayne, stopping him in his tracks towards the doors. What if Anton was here? He was apparently a student here, and no one but him and Ver knew who he really was. He would be perfectly normal in this setting, except for maybe his yelling at Zayne on Friday. Zayne shivered and kept going. Whatever the case he was safe here. Well, safer that was. Even if he was here, Anton wouldn't risk being caught here, would he?

Then again, Zayne remembered Ver's explanation of the Mythic and their goal. To cause chaos. If he revealed himself to be a mutated spider monster here that would certainly cause chaos for a while. The ideas floated but eventually silenced themselves as Zayne opened the doors and stepped inside. He slowly climbed up the stairs and entered the main waiting lobby. Everyone was there, the usual chatter and noise just like any other day. Zayne began to scan the crowds, looking for any face he recognized. At this point even the scared kid's face would be comforting. Instead he found no familiar faces, only casual expressions across the lobby from teen to teen. No one had apparently given much thought to the incident.

Two men came up behind Zayne and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to face them fully, concerned for a moment before sighing easily. It was two policemen, one much younger looking than the other. The older one seemed to be in his seventies, with a short grey mustache and soothing blue eyes. He had lots of wrinkles and did nothing to hide them. He seemed to be at peace with his age situation. The younger looking officer seemed more hyper, with shorter blonde hair slightly covering his ears and neck. His darting green eyes scanned the crowd of students before them. Zayne gave them as warm a smile as he could.

"You wouldn't perhaps be Zayne would you?" the older policeman asked.

"I am," Zayne replied as he stood up as straight as possible.

"We'd like to ask you a few questions if you wouldn't mind. About your parent's incident," the younger policeman jumped in.

"Oh uh," Zayne delayed, looking back into the crowd for any face he could meet with.

"We understand if you would rather not talk about it," the older man spoke up.

When he didn't find anything, Zayne looked back to the officers with a serious expression, "It's fine. Ask away."

"Right this way please," the younger officer aided Zayne as they moved towards a back room where teachers usually met for lunch.

----------

"So, first of all, we'd like to ask you personally what happened. We have our theories that it involved this Midnight Horror guy, or someone involved with him," the older officer began after they'd sat down.

Immediately the memory of last night's conversation with Ver popped up. The police thought this had something to do with the Midnight Horror and not Anton. If they found out that there were more of them they might begin pushing for facts and research into the discovery of multiple monsters across the world, and that would cause chaos and discomfort in the public. According to Ver that would be an easy victory for the Mythic. Zayne couldn't tell the truth, even if he wanted to.

"I was in my room when I heard banging on the front door. I went to investigate and saw that a guy had broken into the house. He quickly grabbed me and tried to restrain me, but my dad came in and stopped him, giving me the chance to escape. I guess the guy had a knife or something and killed my dad just after I left. I ran all the way to my Aunt and Uncle's right after," Zayne explained, making himself and the story sound as believable as possible.

"Might I ask how you got those injuries?" the younger officer, who had been taking notes on the discussion, asked.

"What these?" Zayne held up his slightly injured left leg.

It surprised Zayne that his body had healed this fast. He couldn't imagine how much damage he'd done to himself, especially with this healing rate taking three days to fully recover from. Still, the now minor injury was easy to explain. He simply gave the excuse that he'd tripped and twisted it funny on the way to Ver's home. They decided to try and put it back in place and ensure that nothing got to the injury before it was fully healed. The officers moved on quickly.

"Now we'd like you to take a look at this picture. It's from the school camera at the gym on Friday," the older officer pulled out a surveillance image from a camera and showed it to Zayne.

It was a picture of Anton leaning against Zayne's shoulder as they left the gym. Just the thought of that encounter got Zayne heated. He quickly exhaled and took a deep breath, calming down his already rapid nerves. The officer continued.

"Do you know anything about this kid on you? We understand he was threatening you before school ended, and the very next day you were attacked. We believe he may have some involvement in this."

Zayne was about to let the floodgates go on everything he knew about Anton except the Mythic part until he stopped and thought for a moment. Even if he didn't tell the police about his Mythic side they'd still investigate him. They'd dig as deep as they could and would eventually find the truth. If they suspected Anton even a little bit he'd get exposed. On the other hand, if he didn't tell them anything the police would never figure out who did it and would be at a dead end, the case filed away forever and lost in history. Zayne thought about it from Ver's perspective. If the police never dove too deep and eventually lost interest that was good. No interference or chance of discovery. He then observed it from his own vantage point. If the police dealt with Anton then he'd never get his chance for revenge. The decision was made.

"Him? Oh, he's just weird like that sometimes. He does that to lots of people, mostly outside of school," Zayne lied.

"Really? Might we ask who and where?" the younger officer spoke up.

"I don't know specifics, I just hear a conversation about it from here to there," Zayne answered.

"Do you know where he lives? We can't find any of his school records, like they've all been erased," the older officer asked.

"Nope. Don't know anything other than he's a total weirdo," Zayne finished.

The older officer leaned over and looked at the younger officer's notepad. He nodded and then stood up, as did the younger officer and Zayne.

"Well, thanks for your time Zayne. Don't worry. We'll find whoever did this and bring them to justice, for you, and for the entire police department," the older officer promised as the group began exiting the room.

"I won't worry a bit," Zayne replied as he entered the lobby and lost himself in the crowd of students.

----------

Zayne sat alone at his table for lunch, eating his burger meal quietly. With his new enhanced senses he could pick out and determine what certain people in certain places were saying. He could listen in on specific conversations and eavesdrop. Not that that was a good thing, but it was something he'd noted to himself sitting alone. The sound of footsteps, the chatter of hundreds of students, the constant sound of chewing, all were things loud and clear thanks to the new hearing. Zayne was having difficulty pulling in his volume, he would have to find some way to control that. Randomly and sporadically his hearing would shift to a noise on the other side of the room, or sometimes sounds right next to him. He kept wincing when it would shift to a loud noise instantly then shift back.

He found quickly that if he focused with his eyes on one person while listening or on an individual object he could focus more and more and eventually not lose his hearing on the origin point. He would have to sharpen and train his new senses if he wanted to not look like a total weirdo just wincing every few seconds. Perhaps the training with Ver was a good idea. At first Zayne was all for it, but then he thought about the responsibility it entailed. Spiderman had the same words that zoomed through Zayne's mind every time he thought about it. 'With great power comes great responsibility.' Zayne had repeated those words over and over, and after thinking about what responsibility he would take, he grew doubts. But even so, he could just train his senses and tell Ver he didn't want the bigger stuff.

The situation was demanding one of two options. Either he could abandon and reject his natural born talent and in turn the ability he'd been given, or he could train himself to use the gifts to their fullest extent and become the very thing his father and mother were, heroes. But just like every hero in the comics, movies, cartoons, or even now in real life Zayne thought, they all had so many challenges in their lives. Dead parents for Zayne, the secret of his true identity and secrets of the world, the responsibility of taking out creatures like Arachnid, creatures with training from birth to cause chaos and violence in the world with no merit or reward. The thoughts and excuses raced to not do it. Zayne was on the fence, but the more he stewed over it the more he leaned to the yard where he didn't follow through with it.

His life would be so much simpler and easier if he just ignored it and put it aside. But then again, even if he did so, one night in bed it would resurface and grab him. He would remember it all and feel guilty that he'd never acted on it. Then again as long as he could accept the truth and not let it slip he could live a mostly normal life. But the thoughts reoccurred that he could actually do something about the truth. He could become apart of it and actually make a change. Those thoughts quickly changed course and entered a more personal area. Arachnid.

If he could train his powers and get stronger with the Dragon Heart he could personally beat the life out of that murderer and monster. Zayne lost himself in a fantasy where that idea was a reality. It was around then that he was snapped back to the true reality by the two figures now in his vision. It was Aries and Austin, both looking at him concerningly. Zayne gave them a puzzled expression.

"Are you okay?" Aries asked.

"Yeah, why?" Zayne replied as he took a final bite of his burger.

"Well," Austin perked up, "We saw the news report and we figured out that it was your parents and so we just, well..."

"We saw you get taken in by the officers this morning too," Aries stated.

"Wait where were you guys? I tried finding you but couldn't," Zayne tried changing the subject.

"We were at the very back. You wouldn't have been able to find us unless we actually made a move because of how many people were in front of us," Austin explained as he began to eat his lunch.

"So back to the original question-"

"Look can we not talk about it?" Zayne cut him off.

Aries held both hands up in defeat, "All right all right no more. I just figured... well, you know."

"Yes, I understand, I appreciate it, but I'd rather not talk about it here. Maybe later or something," Zayne finished the conversation.

An awkward silence fell over the group of three. Despite the loud crowds around him Zayne felt like he was hearing nothing at all, as if his senses had gone from overcharged to dead in a second. He stared down at his leg. It was still lightly bandaged but at this point he didn't need it to be. It had been fully healed since the third hour, but he left the medical stuff on just so he wouldn't arise any suspicions or get accused of faking anything. He was lucky the injury was his leg, a place that he could easily keep covered. If it was his head or arms or something people would definitely see the healing process occur, and they'd get curious.

That was an issue Zayne was going to have whether he trained his powers or not. The advantage there was that if he didn't train his powers and never used them he would get fewer injuries, fewer situations. If he was constantly getting into fights with Mythical monsters then he'd get more injuries and be constantly under pressure to explain his activities to his fellow students and teachers. That would be a very annoying thing to worry about every single day of one's life.

"I've got two gigabytes of memes I found last night, wanna see them?" Austin perked up with his computer.

"Boy, you know I'm all about those memes," Aries chimed in as he leaned over to see.

"You want to see them too?" Austin asked, moving his computer so Zayne could see.

"Before I do, I've got a question for you both," Zayne addressed his friends very formally.

"Uh huh," they both responded in unison.

"Let's say someone messes with you and you want revenge, but can't exact it cause they're stronger than you. Now let's say you come across a gift that allows you to take that revenge. Would you take it?" Zayne illustrated, trying not to draw as many conclusions to his own life as possible.

Aries and Austin both leaned back a bit and thought about it for a moment. Knowing their personalities Zayne would get different answers. Aries was a jokester and funny guy at heart, but in a serious or down situation he could think and reflect deeply on different options and give a reasonable conclusion. He was a great helper with advice on a wide range of subjects. Aries looked over at Austin to try and read what he was thinking. Austin was an impulsive thinker. He would think of whatever benefited him or his friends and acted on it without a second question. If it didn't benefit him or his friends he would find a way to make it do so and then act upon that instead. Zayne had already predicted their answers, but he wanted to hear it from them anyway.

"Hell yeah," Austin replied with enthusiasm.

"I concur," Aries smiled.

"Concur?" Zayne asked.

"Agree. I agree," Aries restated as he took a bite of his pizza.

"Can I ask you a question?" Austin spoke up quickly, grabbing both friend's attention.

Zayne raised an eyebrow, obviously the one being addressed by Austin.

"Why do you wanna know?"

Zayne just smiled calmly and kept his cool somehow under the sudden pressure.

"Just curious to get your opinions on some subjects."

The two friends shrugged it off and continued their binge of the massive compilation of memes and videos. Zayne blankly watched from the background. He was more focused on something else now, something he found much more interesting. Whereas before he'd never actually seen the kid unless he was up and around, Zayne could now easily see the scared kid with his hood sitting against the farthest wall of the cafeteria with his earphones in, slowly eating his homemade sandwich. He seemed calmer now, as if nothing was wrong at all. He had his eyes closed, which was odd since he was so easily moving his arms and food back and forth from his mouth to his box and such without seeing them. Zayne tried to focus, looking past and listening past everything else to hone his senses on the kid.

The kid was listening to music, his earphones an obvious sign of that. His hood was up once again, and he seemed relaxed. The key word was seemed, as Zayne zoomed in and noticed his hands were still shaking. He was stressed out. Zayne tried focusing on the music. He closed his eyes, diverting power to his other untrained senses. They immediately exploded with sounds and smells, but he focused more and tried to hone back in on the sounds from the kid's earphones. The sound of the forest slowly became clear, birds chirping were plain as Zayne sifted out the other sounds. He could hear leaves rustling and a creek almost like he was right there. Then he heard a gasp. Zayne opened his eyes and saw the kid had accidentally tripped someone, exactly like Zayne had done days before.

Unlike the person Zayne tripped, however, they didn't catch themselves. Zayne was about to get up to go help but stopped as the hooded kid jumped up with almost inhuman speeds and caught the person, standing them back up and apologizing profusely. It was confirmed now, maybe not for anyone else, but for Zayne it was proven in that moment. That kid had something to do with the Forces. Zayne slowly rested back in his seat and continued watching from afar. As the tripped student walked away the hooded kid slowly sank back down and put his earphones back in. He turned the volume of his forest ambiance really high, but this time he didn't close his eyes. No matter what he did now he just looked like the same stressed out, scared out of his mind kid Zayne had first seen.

It was obvious now to Zayne that the hooded kid was scared of himself, perhaps for the same reasons as Zayne was. Perhaps he couldn't control his power. While Zayne was less so worried, he had an explanation as to why this was happening now. As far as he knew, the hooded kid didn't even know why he was the way he was. Zayne looked into his own hands, mirroring the kid's actions. Instead of giving them a fearful look, Zayne gave them a confident nod. He gripped them into tight balls and resolved in himself his goal. He was going to train his powers, not just for saving people, but for personally exacting his revenge on Arachnid.

----------

Zayne slipped into the car and immediately slid off his bandages on his leg. Giving a very loud and relieved sigh he slumped into his chair as he buckled up his seatbelt. Ver gave him a weak smile and started driving off.

"I see you've healed up fully," she noted.

"For the most part," Zayne replied, "It still kinda hurts if I move it too much."

"Well that's good," Ver almost blankly sighed.

Zayne caught the empty speech and got curious.

"What's wrong?" He asked as he sat up straight in his chair.

Ver let out a long breath and seemed to deflate drastically, "We've gotten a lead on the case I'm working on. I've gotta go to work, as does Keith."

Zayne deflated a bit as well. He'd planned to tell Ver that he wanted to train his skills today, but apparently that wasn't meant to happen now. He would have to wait till tomorrow to tell her it seemed. As they turned down a long street towards their home Zayne thought about something. There was someone in the house he wasn't sure knew about everything. Curiosity welled up.

"Does Damien know about all of this?" He asked.

Ver sighed. She kept her focus on the road ahead but slowed down the car considerably as they turned into a neighborhood for a shortcut. Zayne saw homes and people passing by slowly as they crawled across the street. He knew what the drastic speed decrease meant. She was going to be explaining something important, and it was going to take a hot minute.

"Damien has known about all of this since he was born like you were supposed to. He just, well, doesn't feel comfortable talking about it or even accepting it as his reality," Ver began.

Zayne nodded in agreement. He well knew the feeling. Despite his own choice to accept the truth and act on it, he could easily understand Damien's stance. Like Zayne, Damien had lost much in the past. Ver continued.

"Damien's dad, my brother, was of the Dragon Force as well. His mother was a Mystic, born and raised under the Elemental category. She used Ice and Water, as did Vik, who was an Ice Dragon," Ver continued.

Whereas before that information would've seemed ridiculous, knowing the circumstances and true reality of his world the information made more sense than ever before. Damien's love of cold and ice was more understandable now. Zayne had always joked that he was an abominable snowman in a human body, but honestly, that might not be such an unbelievable joke anymore. Maybe that was why Damien never laughed about it. Ver elaborated more on the story.

"You know just as well as me that Damien's parents died in an explosion at the factory they worked at. The people there knew that they had strange abilities. That was why they were allowed to work there in the first place. They could help keep workers and machined cooled down. But one day a Mythic showed up on the scene, hunting down Dragon and Mystic forces. Although the workers didn't know what was happening exactly, they knew that all they could do was run and allow Vik and his wife to fight back."

Zayne took in the information. He knew the story well, from the police's perspective. Two members of the factory had stayed behind to try and delay the explosion in the machinery from occurring, allowing everyone else a chance to escape. The police were told by the workers that the machines were overheating and overloading too quickly and they couldn't have possibly attempted to stop it, but Vik and his wife stayed behind, knowing full well the end result, to try and save everyone else. Many called them cold hearted since they had a child, but many others hailed them as heroes. Perhaps they were more heroes than anyone had anticipated.

"The Mythic was Fire based, so he began overloading the machines to try and get everyone else to leave. When they did, he emerged to engage his true enemies. They fought back, but in the end they had to use the Mythic's own weapon against him. The explosion took all three of them out. Damien was never the same again," Ver mumbled.

"He seems so happy and innocent," Zayne noted.

"He tries to forget his past and his reality. He hates Mythic, but he has a similar feeling towards Dragon and Mystic Forces too. His parents raised him with his natural gift, and they tried to raise him with a heroes' spirit. In the end, Damien blames that hero spirit for his parent's death. If they hadn't been so willing to risk their lives for everyone else then they would still be alive today he argues," Ver stopped.

Zayne looked over to see Ver on the verge of tears. He'd been thinking about this from his own outside perspective. He'd seen things as he viewed them. But when he saw her face he came to another sad realization. To Ver, Vik was her brother, now dead. To Ver, Vanessa, his mom, was missing, presumed dead. Now Ver had to raise both of her sibling's children, one of which didn't even know about any of this secret underground war until now. Thinking about it now, Zayne fully understood just how much stress and loss that Ver had to deal with in such short time. After all, Damien did just lose his parents three months ago.

"So now I have the son of my brother who hates the reality he lives in, and I have the son of my sister who has uncontrollable Dragon powers, who didn't even know he had them until just yesterday," Ver choked up, her focus redirecting to her driving. She began speeding up to get through the shortcut.

Zayne slumped down and deflated in his seat. The weight of the situation was suddenly pressing down on him heavily. The sound of his aunt sobbing quietly made him remember those moments of him running. Running away from the fight between Arachnid and his dad instead of staying to help. His dad was dead now. His mom was missing, most likely dead as well. He himself began to tear up. He wished he had never heard about any of this. He wished he'd never found the Dragon's Heart. He closed his eyes and hoped. He wished and begged to himself to wake up. He wanted so much to wake up from this horrible loop of a dream and realize that it was all fake. Nothing happened.

Several minutes later they pulled into the driveway of their home. Ver stopped the car and wiped the tears away. She sniffled loudly and let go of the driver's wheel to open the car door. As she reached over she suddenly felt Zayne wrapping his arms around her tightly, his head resting on her shoulder. He had been crying too, which only made her feel worse for losing it earlier. Zayne was hugging her tightly, not wanting to let go. Ver returned the squeeze and rested her head on top of Zayne's. She noticed that she felt warmer somehow. As if her own body temperature was rising slowly. It felt comfortable.

Then she noticed Zayne's body just barely glowing orange within his veins. He was softly glowing as he heated up his own body to just the perfect temperature to feel comfortable. Ver smiled warmly as she embraced Zayne tighter. Even though it didn't fix the stress of her life, it made her feel loved and assured that she wasn't being overlooked.

"I want to learn to use the Dragon's Heart," Zayne mumbled as he wiped away his own tears.

Ver felt a wave of joy come over her, for a moment relieving her anxieties, then she replied, "I was hoping you'd say that. When do you want to start?"

"Tomorrow," Zayne replied quickly, "can't really start today can we?"

Ver let go a small chuckle. She let go of Zayne and Zayne backed away from his aunt, a strained smile contrasting the tears in his eyes. Ver set a hand on his shoulder and started massaging it.

"Tomorrow it is then."