The Never Ending Tails
Fresh as Water

Plain City is one of those little towns in Ohio where nothing ever happens. The city is mainly composed of suburb houses almost all similar one to the other, and the downtown is ridiculously small. Almost all the people living there have simple lives, and care more about the next softball game than anything from the outside. But there was one exception in the lot; a young girl that was destined for an extraordinary life…

Faith was born and spent nearly all her life in Plain City; she never really wanted that simple life and was always dreaming of traveling around the world. She was feeling that she had a lot to offer, and her life in Plain City was only a waste of her potential and an obstacle to her dreams. But things didn’t stay that way for too long.

Faith left Plain city for College and successfully graduated in Journalism, She then moved to New York and got a job as an investigative reporter for the New York Times. When she first got to New York, she felt that a new life was beginning for her with new perspectives and opportunities, and she wasn’t wrong about it. Her life did change as she was the subject of a quite strange phenomenon.

During this period of the beginning of the 21st century, some parts of the human population were experiencing strange mutations. The phenomenon was still quite limited at the time, and Faith was one of those early mutants. It all happened in the first week when she moved to New York.

She was then living in a small apartment in Queens and was still searching for a job. One night she was taking a shower when she felt that the water’s contact with her skin was odd so she stopped the shower. She saw all the water on her body melting with her skin, being absorbed. She didn’t really understand and didn’t give to the phenomenon any attention, but something even stranger happened the next day.

When she woke up, she directly went to take a glass of water, but when she opened the tap, the water refused to go into the glass; instead, it started to float into the air, going in the direction of Faith’s sight.

She dropped the glass and freaked out. Her quick and strong surprise made her body react in a weird way; she started to liquefy. In no time, she completely turned into water; it was the strangest feeling ever for Faith, like being born again and feeling all the surrounding in every little drop of her new being. She was able to move with ease and to float in the air. Being near water made her sense it and she absorbed it feeling each new drop as a new extension of herself. But it didn’t last long and she quickly switched back to her original form.

Once back to the flesh, she understood how to do it; it was like a new motor skill that she was able to perform as easily as walking or moving her arms. She didn’t really understand why it happened but she just acknowledged it. Being able to completely transform into water gave her a brand new perspective of what she was able to perform and she just accepted it as anyone would accept to walk or to talk. She decided that she didn’t have to tell anybody about it, unless in case of a real emergency.

Few months after she started working at the New York Time, she was assigned to investigate a series of abductions that were simultaneously performed in New York, and many other major cities all around the United States. The abductions were various, the people targeted weren’t similar or following a specific pattern; the only common denominator between all the cases was the culprits themselves.

Many witnesses have confirmed that those people were publicly kidnapped in random areas by masked people wearing black clothes with a red X on the left shoulder. But the kidnappings were all done in far apart areas where the police weren’t present. those kidnappings started years ago and were still ongoing at the time.

The frequency between each kidnapping wasn’t consistent and the kidnappers didn’t leave any traces behind them which made it impossible for the police, the FBI or the CIA to catch them. They were ghosts, appearing quickly to abduct and disappearing without leaving any trace. The FBI called them the Red Cross Ghosts, and recently their activities became more frequent.

Faith started her investigation in New York but one month later, the reports showed that the activity of the Red Cross Ghosts dramatically increased in LA. Faith convinced her superiors to go investigate there, and two days later she was in a plane for LA.

Faith was really happy to have such a case for her first report, and she was really enjoying the travel that it involved. Since she was a kid, she always wanted to visit the city of Angels, and she was finally there. But her joy quickly turned sour when she saw the Red Cross Ghosts. They were coming for her.

Everything became clear in her head few seconds before it was too late. It was people like her that they were kidnapping, people with those new abilities. The Red Cross Ghosts took her and put a bag on her head. They moved to a dark alley, but quickly noticed they weren’t alone. Something started moving on the walls, a shadow that approached the ghosts. It didn’t take them long to notice the presence and one of them pulled out a gun and started shooting at the shadow. He missed it. The shadow moved fast and went directly under him. Once the shadow was under his feet, he fell into it, absorbed.

The ghost that was holding faith threw her aside and with the remaining ghosts shot the shadow as well, but they quickly ended up like their teammate, absorbed into the darkness. The shadow moved then to a wall, expending, then took a multidimensional shape completely turning into a young man with long black hair. The shadow man got the bag off Faith’s head.

“Who are you?” Faith asked. “Where are the Red Cross Ghosts?”

“I go by Nightmare, You’ll understand that someone who could get rid of governmental task forces can’t reveal his true name, or at least not for the moment.”

“Governmental task forces?! You mean that the Red Cross Ghosts work for the government? That’s insane! The police, the FBI and the CIA are tracking them!”

“I can understand that it’s hard to believe, but just think. They were active for years, and never did even one of them get caught.”

“But they leave no trace!”

“They were kidnapping people in public, in broad day light, with witnesses around. They were never caught because they were never meant to be caught. Like an urban legend, striking and leaving rumors. You might know by now who they are targeting.”

Faith chocked, everything in the man’s discourse was insane, but she started getting used to the bizarre after discovering her abilities.

“Do you know why we have those powers?” Faith asked.

“We are mutants. Our DNA is different from the majority of the other humans. The reasons of those alterations are still unknown to me as well.”

“How do you know all those details?”

Nightmare stayed silent for a moment before answering:

“I know because they kidnapped me, a very long time ago. At the time I was only six. Many of us escaped recently. That’s why they are more active than ever. They are trying to get all of us before we become too strong, but too bad for them, the revolution is already on.”

“Will they come again for me?” Faith asked.

“They won’t leave any of us alone, and as long as we are by our own, we are vulnerable…”

Faith started to think quickly. She didn’t know the man, what if he was also with them?

“Show me what you can do.”

Nightmare smiled and moved to the wall of the alley. His right hand turned completely black as it touched the wall. The black of his hand went into the wall and formed a large circle nearly two meters in diameter.

“Well this is… interesting” Faith said.

“It’s not all, this is a portal. Another one similar is now on the wall of our Headquarter. So what do you think? Do you want to join the revolution? You can’t hide alone much longer anyway.”

Faith closed her eyes and went into the dark disk. Nightmare followed after her. The black disk vanished soon after.