Help!

In the middle of the hottest day in the summer, jammed packed like sardines in a tiny public transit bus, Brandon sat, in the middle of a town he barely knew. He was pressed up against a batty women who kept screaming at strangers and an overweight male gentlemen, who wrecked of stale vodka and several old days of unwashed clothes. He was faring no better in this heatwave. His clothes adhere to his body as if they were a second flesh. He could feel every bead of sweat trickle down his back, before getting absorbed into his already damp shirt. Not even the air conditioner on the bus could fix the stink, humidity of this day. That is why he preferred Nevada over California any day of the week. Nevada had a dry heat, which felt like a warm blanket covered you from head to toe. Not like this humidity crap, where it felt like you were always in a slip and slide and the only thing keeping him up from sliding off the chair and onto the dirty bus floor was his body pin down by two others. Even though he wasn’t a very judgmental person, he thank all the gods that his stop was here so he did not have to feel entrapped in a prison made of human flesh.

Finally free, he dug into his jean pocket and pulled out a piece of crumple up paper to read the scribbles that Levi left him. It was profusely unreadable. He was surprise he got this far on the note he left. He look down one side of the street than the other. They look similar with assortment of buildings leading into cornucopia of homes. It was impossible to match a street name to one of Levi’s words on the piece of paper. Levi could be somewhat infuriating at times. It was only noon, he was dead on his feet, his head was hurting let alone his body and he had nowhere to go. He finally decided to collapse on the bus stop’s bench and tossed his bag on the open seat next to him. A shirring pain rain up his leg and his harm felt like it was on fire, which it was at one point.

That was why he was here. Not to get set on fire of course, but to help a mutant with the power of pyro kinetics, the power to control fire, after she burned down her apartment building as she was sleeping. It scared her even more so than her foster parents. She was ashamed, so ashamed that she ran away from home, leaving ashes in her wake. He thought he could help so he left Noah with a family friend and packed up what little he had and left. Levi was displease of his choice to go, but he wouldn’t stand in his way, but couldn’t come with him either after the Sally 2.0 incident, he kept ranting about. Now he was on his own, hurt from his training session with Alyona, and now he was afraid that he would lose her forever. She seem so scared and confuse when she ran off in tears, begging for forgiveness. Brandon needed to find her and fast, and he was hoping that one of Levi’s friends could help.

Codenames were all Levi gave him. Nightshade, obviously Levi’s sister’s twisted sense of humor. He gather that much as Levi seem the most content or the most agitated when he speaks of her. Glitch, Ghost and Ember pertain to their powers in one form or another. It did not pertain who they were but what they were: special, unique, one of a kind. On the other hand, Brandon did not hide under a guise of a codename. Yes, he had one long ago, but that chapter had long been closed and best be forgotten. He held back a groan of pain as he shifted his leg slightly.
His burnt flesh rubbing into his damp jeans, inflaming the expose skin even more than what Brandon thought possible. The pain was too much for him, physically and mentally. It felt like a weight was on his chest, forcing him to inhale short breaths as his insides were set on fire and his skin was ripping itself apart like tenderize meat off bone. Let alone the pounding headache with mutants near and far took a piece of him for their own gain. It was getting too much. He promised himself he would quit for Noah’s sake, but it was so hard. He was almost in tears as he reached into his backpack and pulled out a clear white bottle. He uncorked it and toss two blue pills into his mouth, swallowing them whole without a second thought. Even the act of doing it send a calming stimulus down his body, lessening the pain if only slightly. Brandon thought of popping two more pills; the desire for him to make the pain go away faster, he was willing to do anything but knew it would only hinder him and not help him to function.

Even though his pain had yet to subside, he forced himself to his feet with gritted teeth and started moving toward the homes to the right, where the lavish homes were few a far between, which seem like a perfect place of misfit mutants to congregate.