Chapter One
Freakish Five Year Old
The phone rang obnoxiously through the house. A five year old girl approached the phone and pressed a button. The girl had chocolate brown hair and soft lavender eyes.
I am that girl. My name is Kibo Tomodachi. I lived with my parents in Kobe, Japan. Katai? She and I were best friends! Now, back to the story.
Another five year old girl appeared on the phone screen. She had large violet eyes, and long ebony hair held back in pigtails. She smiled as she spoke to me. �Konban wa [1], Kibo!� she said excitedly.
�Katai! Konban wa!� I cried, smiling as well. The girl was my next door neighbor, Katai Kagaku.
�Hi! Do you wanna come over?� she asked, jumping up and down a bit.
�Now?� I asked, a bit confused.
�Of course, silly! My Mamma says you can. My Papa�s working late again tonight.� Her father worked with human performance enhancers, and often worked late. He was very dedicated to his work and often chose it over his family. Nothing seemed to deter him from working in this field. In fact, two weeks into Katai�s mother�s pregnancy, he and his wife were in an explosion. Being exposed to the radiation had caused Katai to be different than other little girls through genetic mutations, so to speak.
�Okay! I�ll come over! And I�ll bring Aisuru, okay?� I cried excitedly. Aisuru was my seven year old brother. He had buzzed rich brown hair and baby blue eyes. He was about a head taller than me, which didn�t take much as I was not too tall of a child, and everyone considered him to be the cutest kid around.
�Yeah! Okay! Sayonara [2]!� she called.
�Sayonara!�
Aisuru and I ran over to her house. The three of us were pretty much inseparable. We did everything together. The three of us played around in Katai�s backyard until we collapsed in the lush grass.
Now, as I mentioned before, Katai is not like other little girls. Her mother was exposed to radiation very early into her pregnancy and Katai was changed through genetic alteration. As I continue the story, you will find out what made her so special.
�Hey, Katai?� I called over to where she was lying, a few feet away.
�Yeah?�
�Will you make me an ice princess statue?� I requested, turning over to my stomach. Now, as you know, this would be impossible for any normal girl to accomplish. But not to Katai. No one knew how she did the things she did, but she did them with ease.
�Sure!� Katai smiled, excited that she had the ability to use her abilities. She put her hands together, palm to palm, like she was praying. A white light glowed inside her small hands and as she pulled them apart, a tall three-D cylinder of ice appeared. She then balanced the ice block on her left palm and ran her right index finger down the side of the cylinder. As she did this, the ice took shape. It took the shape of a regal and elegant princess. It wasn�t too big, but I loved it.
She handed it to me and assured me that it would never melt. She had made it special. But it would always be cold. I thought it was incredible that I had a friend that could control the elements like Katai could, so I never questioned why she did what she did. However, her abilities were kept secret except for her immediate family, and mine.
Aisuru requested that she do something for him. Katai laughed and used air and wind to send him into the sky and fly him around. He laughed in delight as he did a few figure eights and then went upside down.
I turned to Katai, who was looking pretty lazy. She had one hand pillowing her head, and the other was just pointed at the sky, guiding Aisuru through the air.
�Katai?� I asked quietly.
�Hmmm?� Katai didn�t take her eyes off my brother. If she didn�t concentrate on him, he would fall.
�How do you do that?�
�I dunno. I just do it.�
�Can your mamma do it?�
�No.�
�Papa?�
�No. Otosan [3] says it�s something in my jeans or something.� The two of us had had this conversation so many times before, but we never got tired of it.
�Really?! Then I want jeans like yours!�
�You can�t. Otosan also says that it�s jeans that are inside of me.�
�Really?� I was confused. �What are you eating?�
�Nevermind. I can�t tell you. I don�t get it either.�
�Oh. Okay.� I laid back down.
Little did we know that Katai�s father had come home and was staring longingly out the window at his daughter. His wife came up behind him and told him the dinner was almost ready. She turned and was about to leave when he stopped her with a request.
He spoke calmly, but he wasn�t calm at all. �Asai. Please let me take the girl. I wouldn�t hurt her. Just some tests.�
�Listen, Nauki, I told you five years ago, when we found out about her special abilities, that I would not allow you to treat her like a science project. I hold to that. She is a child, not a thing to experiment on.� With that, she turned and walked into the kitchen.
Katai lowered Aisuru to the ground as she was called for dinner. �See you guys tomorrow?� she asked.
�Sure!� Aisuru and I took off for our house as Katai waved us off.
That was the last I ever saw of Katai. The next morning, her mother was found dead and Katai and her father were gone.
The autopsy of her mother revealed that she had large amounts of ingestable poison in her blood. It was determined that Nauki put the poison in her food to get rid of her to get a hold of Katai. The police recieved a warrant for his arrest.
Disaster soon struck our haouse as well. Aisuru and I were orphaned in a fire in our home. We were whisked off to an orphanage in Osaka where we were adopted by a single man by the name of Tsumetai Dobutsu. He used to work with Katai�s father, but quit after the explosion and became a police officer. His wife was also involved in the explosion. However, she was not as fortunate as Mrs. Kagaku. Tsumetai�s wife died in the explosion, however the unborn two month old that Mrs. Dobutsu was pregnant with survived and grew to be about six before she disappeared. Tsumetai seemed to want to adopt us to get a second chance at being a father.
It�s been eleven years since Tsumetai adopted us, and no one�s seen hide nor hair of Katai or her father. Most people say they died. What do I think? Personally, I think that it is quite possible that Nauki died, but not Katai. She was just too strong.
I�m now a freshman in highschool[4] and my brother is a senior. We still remember Katai. After she and her father disappeared, Aisuru and I swore not to forget her. Especially on a day like today. Today is the eleventh anniversary of Katai�s disappearance.
Though people call me a fool for believing so, I truly think that Katai is alive. She might be on her way back to us, now. I pray she is.
[1]-Good Evening
[2]-Good-bye (duh!)
[3]-Father, Papa, dad
[4]-A freshman in Japan is the tenth grade
Bye all! Come back for the next chapter!