Aaron Cyrus February 20th,20XX

“So you can fly?”

Tillo, who had eventually chosen to keep the dress on, dug into the delivered food in a decidedly unfeminine way. Kaja took the lead in questioning me, but from the speed at which she dug into her food, I could tell she wasn’t on guard anymore.

“Slow down! And don’t choke on your food! We can always order more.”

Although I reproached them, it wasn’t like I was doing any better. I ate just as violently as they did and only answered when I refilled my plate. I wasn’t that hungry, but at the speed they ate I feared they would soon clear the table and leave me hungry.

The setting awakened my long-buried instincts of sharing food with my teammates, and I ate like I wouldn’t eat again for another week.

“Answer the question.”

Tillo finally came up for air and backed up his twin’s attempt to get me talking so I would stop eating. I debated unlocking my ultimate form and sweeping away the rest of the food on the table, but I decided to have mercy on the teenagers. Besides, my month break was almost up and I’d gained more weight than would be easy to lose in a week. While I could have just fudged my weight on the scale when my manager came over to measure me, the camera rarely ever lied.

“I can get up into the air, but it’s related to gravity; I can also do this.”

Again, I showed off in front of the twins and extended my arm out towards an empty can I’d purposefully left out on the counter. I flicked my wrist downwards and hid a grin as I squashed it into a perfect circle. That was a party trick I’d practised to various degrees of perfection, but it had worked pretty well this time.

Kaja choked on her food in surprise, and Tillo had to take a reluctant break from eating to pat her back and get her some water.

“The cups are in the left cabinet. Anyway, what can you two do? I heard you could shape-shift, but is that it?”

Kaja shook her head while she drank water, but Tillo was the one to respond.

“We can also change other things.”

He lifted an arm to his right ear and reached out to the table mat with his other. The mat turned from the light blue colour it was into a deep red, and the cheap plastic covering morphed into a fancy-looking lace.

“Some transformations last forever unless we purposefully undo them, but others only last temporarily and we have to renew them. The transformations also can’t be too different from their original form. They also have to be things we’re familiar with, so no, we can’t turn lead into gold.”

The regretful way he spoke made it obvious that they’d tried.

“Yeah, Tillo is better at changing colours and textures though.”

“But Kaja is good at changing sizes of things.”

To demonstrate, the girl in the pink dress put the cup she’d just drained empty onto the floor. She scooted her chair backwards to get a proper view of it and then raised her right hand to her left ear and tapped the cup with her left hand.

The cup suddenly expanded in size until it was about as large as the chairs we sat on. Kaja sat back with a pleased expression on her face, but it quickly melted as it kept growing. Tillo jumped up off his chair and pushed her toward the quickly growing cup. If I could still call it a cup.

“Turn it back, Kaja!”

To her credit she tried her best, but she was too panicked and no matter how much she tried to get it under control it kept growing.

By now it was about the size of the table and showed no signs of stopping. I got up as it encroached on my space and thought fast.

“Hey, does it keep growing if it's broken?”

Tillo and Kaja looked confused at the sudden question, but Kaja snapped out of it faster.

“I’m not sure but it shouldn’t.”

I quickly grabbed the two of them by the arm and took us into the air, temporarily ignoring the surprised yelps they let out. We were on the second floor, and I wasn’t sure how much control I could exercise under such pressure.

Saying a silent apology to Joyce, I materialized an invisible wall of weight above the ceramic cup and slammed it down. The wooden floors cracked under the sudden weight but thankfully didn’t break.

I squashed the cup into giant ceramic fragments that took up most of the walking space on the floor. Taking care to watch my weight, I left the twins in the air and sank down to the floor first.

The floor creaked as I landed and slightly bounced up and down to test the integrity of the floor. I stood still for a few more seconds before grabbing the large garbage bin from the side of the room and putting the remains of the giant cup into it.

They were pretty heavy, but I didn’t use my powers to make them lighter. Keeping the kids in the air took up a lot of my attention and energy, but I also hadn’t worked in for a while and this seemed like a convenient enough way to get a small workout in.

“Hey! Can you let us down?!”

The twins had initially stayed quiet from the shocking feeling of sudden weightlessness and had played around in the air, but Tillo came back to his senses first and grasped the hem of the dress together between his legs. He had to glare at Kaja to do the same, though.

I realized the problem and rose in the air, then herded them out of the room and set them down in the living room. While I did so, I realized that even if I made others weightless, they couldn’t move around as freely as I could. But now wasn’t the time to run experiments on that.

I didn’t have a good grasp on their initial weight so I tried to set them down as softly as I could and completely removed my control of gravity around them, but readjusting was difficult, and they quickly crumpled to their knees.

“Woah! Are you guys okay?”

I ended up shouting out of concern, but they got up quickly and nodded in response to my question. Still, I looked them over one more time to make sure they weren’t hurt.

I pointed up the stairs and tried to sound as stern as I could.

“Don’t come into the kitchen until I’m done cleaning up. The shards are sharp, so I don’t want you guys getting hurt. Tillo, you can borrow some of my clothes if the dress is too uncomfortable to sleep in… you too Kaja. My room is the first one you see on the left. After that pick, a room and try to get some sleep. There’s someone I want you two to meet.”

At first, they were calm and still under the awe of being weightless, but as soon as I mentioned introducing them to someone else, they panicked. I realized how it sounded and quickly explained myself.

“Didn’t you guys come here to see Joyce? She’ll be over here in a bit so you can talk to her then.”

Kaja caught on to what I was saying quicker than Tillo and put on a somewhat hopeful but also doubtful expression.

“Does she know about?….”

She used her hands to gesticulate flying and had an awkward expression on her face. It was as if she hoped she did, but also prayed that she didn’t.

“She knows about my abilities, she’s also the one that found out about yours as well.”

“What?! H-how?!”

Honestly, I didn’t know either, so I couldn’t answer the question. But it wasn’t like I could reveal my lack of knowledge on what my girlfriend did with her free time, so I started ushering them over to the stairs.

“I’m sure she’ll answer all your questions when she gets here, but for now get upstairs and grab some sleep. Can’t imagine you’ve been sleeping properly as runaways.”

I waited for the two to get upstairs and into bed before making a call to Joyce. It was already midnight, and she still wasn’t here. She had already warned me she might not make it, but I needed to make sure she was okay.