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Demon Seed… Unless You Choose to Be - and I Somehow Doubt That's a Course of Action You're Likely to Take." Ness Was Nodding in Agreement

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The Thing stood mere feet away, dwarfing Ness with its immense mass, smiling grotesquely with a hundred mouths, staring fixedly at the youth with twice that many eyes. A sickle moon hung just visibly over the clearing, lightly brushing the top of the surrounding canopy; the faint light of it caught the side of the abhorrence, throwing it into a nauseating image that caused Ness to falter, where a moment before he had stood paralyzed, rooted to the spot. Rooted… the word seemed vaguely hilarious now. Ness chuckled in a detached sort of way as the Thing began to sway slowly and menacingly toward him. CHAPTER 1: The Prince Speaks October so far had been peaceful and still. The air was slightly chill, but there was no breeze to punctuate it, so it was still not jacket weather. The woods surrounding Threed Town were quiet under the night sky, but with their old and deformed trees, they also gave off the spooky sensation that some unfriendly watcher was lurking just out of sight. But the four teenagers who sat in camp chairs around a comfortable fire were unconcerned by the somewhat unsettling atmosphere. They had braved worse things than forest boogeymen… in fact, fairly recently, they had rid the forest of those very boogeymen, and the dangers that had followed afterwards eclipsed the experience so much that it made the ghouls appear cute. There was nothing in these woods that would frighten them now. Ness eased himself deeper into his chair and smiled at his companions. He had seen them on and off over the past year with plenty of ease thanks to a special ability he possessed, but this was the first time in that whole year that they were all together in the same place. Twelve months earlier, Ness and his three friends had faced a danger no ordinary group of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds could have, because this quadruplet was anything but ordinary: Three of them had psychic powers, and the one who didn't was a brilliant prodigy of an inventor. Together, they vanquished a terrible being known as Giygas, a monster who was invading the earth with his alien army. Jolted out of their daily lives, the Chosen Four had hardly dared to believe it when the invasion first caught their individual notice - on the surface, the whole thing had sounded like a bad science fiction movie - but all had taken up the call they felt in their hearts and vowed to protect their Mother Earth from this insane abomination of nature. Now, a year after the war against Giygas, the four friends had been able to relax again and had had fair enough time to deal with the trauma that ensued from their experience of facing the Universal Cosmic Destroyer. They still weren't entirely over it - Ness doubted any of them would ever get over it in this lifetime - but they were now able to put an optimistic face forward and even joke about it occasionally. The nightmares had finally begun to subside, anyway, and Ness had succeeded in crawling back into his niche of peers, although his appearance of an everyday but good-looking boy had aided him there: Shocks of messy black hair protruded at every angle from under the bright red baseball cap he wore askew, and he had always shown remarkable skill in athletics. "So, guys," Ness began, inbetween bites of the frankfurter he had been roasting, as the others had been doing with theirs, "I trust you're all still using your PSI any chance you get, to make sure you don't get rusty? I know I've been trying my best to stay on top of it!" As he spoke, he couldn't help but glance at his girlfriend Paula much more than at the others. She drew his eyes so easily, so naturally… every time he saw her was a tearjerking relief to him: How he could have managed to get into a relationship with this creature of beauty was beyond him, but his incredible good fortune was not something he was likely to take for granted anytime soon. What was more, for the past several months, perhaps as a defense mechanism in response to his recurring nightmares, he had begun to feel something deeper for Paula: A kind of wonderful seizing up of the chest every time he thought of her… no, it was more than that. It was something that made her beauty seem more like a fantastic perk than her best feature. He never spoke aloud his thoughts, but Ness strongly suspected he had fallen in love with her. She sat in another camp chair next to him, with that girlish grin on her face he adored so much, and wearing the old-fashioned pink dress she had somehow managed to survive an entire journey in the year before. It certainly didn't seem to give her any trouble while camping, but Ness didn't let this little enigma bother him: Paula's long, sleek blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail with her charming and familiar crimson bow, her elegant, thick ringlets falling down over her neck, and the image altogether was very distracting. "Well, seeing as how I don't have a trace of psychic power in me at all," the bespectacled boy with the pudding-bowl haircut sitting across from Ness said in response to his question, "I don't exactly have anything to stay on top of… except my mechanical skills, I guess…" Poor Jeff always seemed to feel like the odd man out, being the only one in the group who lacked the ability to perform the seemingly magical feats PSI afforded its users, but to his credit, he almost never spoke aloud his insecurities in a resentful way. Poo, the somber prince of Dalaam, was furthest from the fire, sitting cross-legged on the stump of what must have been a haggard old tree. He had been contemplating his hot dog for a good ten minutes before taking a bite. To his amazement, he had enjoyed it. Sometimes American food surprised him like that. He inclined his head slightly to peer more closely at the others, the firelight reflecting off his bald pate, his black tassel of a ponytail protruding from the high topknot he kept his singular patch of hair in. "Well, in my case," he said, "certainly I've been honing my mastery of PSI. My training is still insufficient for me to be worthy of the Dalaamese throne. Master Yi Szu Qi is putting the thumbscrews to me… and the girls of my country are all batting their eyelashes at me, but I can't start trifling over them until my training is done. It would divert my focus." "What about you, Jeff?" Paula asked. "Are the girls of Winters batting their eyelashes at you?" "Umm… Snow Wood Boarding School isn't co-ed, so there aren't exactly many dating opportunities for me…" Jeff couldn't quite meet Paula's eyes as he spoke. "…Although Tony's been acting kind of funny lately…" he added under his breath. Ness was incredulous. "So the ladies aren't banging your door down? Really? You're one of the Chosen Four!" "Yes, well, you'd be surprised what little difference that makes. Of course, there were a couple of girls who tracked me down right after the news article went out, but I didn't know how to react to them, and completely flubbed my chances." "Ah, don't worry about it. You've come out of that all the wiser now, so when the next opportunity presents itself, you'll know how not to mess it up." "I'm not so sure…" Jeff muttered. "Besides," Ness continued as though he hadn't been interrupted, "best put it off as long as you can. Dating can be a scary, scary thing!" Paula arched an eyebrow at him. "What's that supposed to mean?" Suddenly Ness seemed eager to change the subject. "Aaaaand speaking of scary, this forest is kinda creepy, eh? Of course it might just seem that way because we were clearing out zombies here a year ago… either way, I'm in the mood for a ghost story! Anyone have a good one up their sleeve?" "A ghost story," Paula said with her brow puckered, clearly unimpressed. "Really, Ness, I thought our journey had matured you beyond your years, but I guess fourteen- year old boys will be fourteen-year old boys." "That's right!" Ness responded, undeterred by his girlfriend's tone. "Always take advantage of your youth while you can, I say! Of course, the other kids in the McDonald's Playplace never understand me when I spout words of wisdom…" "Are you sure, after facing Giygas," Jeff chimed in, "that a measly ghost story will frighten you? I mean, not that there aren't scarier things than Giygas, I've found that out myself…" "Well, I won't deny that Giygas sort of -" and here Ness made a face, crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out "- unhinged my taste in horror, but I'm sure if someone weaves the right kind of yarn, it'll get freak-o-points from me." Paula rolled her eyes, her way of indicating she still disapproved, but Ness knew it also meant she was getting ready to yield. "Well, Poo grew up among mystical warriors and even underwent Mu training! I bet he's heard and seen some real hair-raisers in his day!" "Indeed I have," Poo stated, suddenly aware of the three pairs of eyes on him.
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