Getting Lost

            The big search for Highway 117 was not an easy one. Soaring high above the parade of never ending roads just made it impossible to determine which way to take, so Tony found it reasonable to steal a map in some isolated convenience store. Road maps, which were invented to make one’s life easier, only made things even more complicated for one boy who had never listened in class when it was time to learn about it, and another other boy who had never seen a map in his whole life. There were big buildings everywhere, covered with hundreds of windows, some with shiny mirrors and catchy logos, and the big Toys R’ Us store was just standing there between all the forking roads that intertwined as if the whole place was a huge pretzel and the thousands of cars rolling on it were the grains of salt.  It was an impressive view for the two boys, who had both rarely, if ever, seen this kind of setting. Val-d’Or was not nearly close to this organized chaos, and to Pascal, all the commotion was quite unsettling compared to the serenity of Brazin Island. From time to time the heroes subtly went down to the surface to take a look at the street signs and ensure that they were following the right road. Sometimes it helped and encouraged them, and other times it just increased their despair and made them feel like they were even farther from their objective.

            A day had passed now since they left off from Brazin Island. They had slept on the top of a building they camped on to rest for the night. The next day, the boys descended from the skies after having taken several routes at random and having no idea if they were going at the right place. As the boys dispiritedly tottered along the endless array of beeping, zooming automobiles, they raised their desperate little noggins to see a shiny green metal street sign affirming the white letters and numbers “Highway 117” with an arrow pointing below the viaduct it was nailed to. The youngsters got their hopes up once more, and with excitement they quickly turned their heads left and right to see if any upcoming car would notice their launch, and they then flexed their knees simultaneously, ready to pounce in the air. As soon as there was a little break in the traffic, they jumped upwards to tackle the clouds once more. Surprised, Tony landed back on his feet to his original position, but he had time to drag Pascal down by the leg.

“Let’s reconsider. If we blindly travel by air again, we’ll just get lost once more. Don’t you think we could walk a little while, and follow the signs?” Tony asked his friend, looking at the endless road ahead.

            “Aww… it’s gonna be a long walk.... But yeah, I guess you’re right.” Pascal answered with a sigh. Knowing how to fly certainly gets you lazy pretty fast.

The viaduct was still five minutes away by walk, and there was no place to run in the tight little space they had between the traffic and the stone structure that separated the two parallel highways. It made Tony stressed to feel the air of every car zipping beside him, especially that the traffic came from behind them so he could not see them approaching, but he could hear them honking at him.

“We should’ve landed on the side of the highway, not in the middle of it!” Tony complained, but it was too late to do anything; it was simply too dangerous to cross the street and if they were to fly away they’d probably be in the first page of the newspaper on the next day. The space between them and the rushing cars that were obviously over the speed limit was vastly unsafe. Tony was a little more aware of the consequences of getting hit by a speeding automobile than Pascal was. Pascal kept trying to put his foot in front of a car so the car would roll on it, and Tony pulled him out of the way every time to convince him that there was nothing funny to it, but Pascal was not satisfied with that explanation.

            “I’d assume you’ve got a good balance, am I right?” Tony asked.

            “You practice a lot of stuff in the woods, buddy. Sometimes it gets pretty damn lame.” Pascal said.

            “Good. I understand my mom now when she worried that I walked too close to the edge of the sidewalk. You’re gonna get hit soon if you keep on, so let’s hop up on that cement thingy and walk to the tunnel. We’re gonna be at a safer distance from the cars on this thing.”

            “Except that if we fall then we get hit badly from either side ey? But it doesn’t seem to hurt that much to get in the way of a car. I mean, I can fly a lot faster than them and I’m not even able to tackle through a tree. I’ve tried and I don’t recommend it. Hey, did you already try hopping from one car to another?”

            “You’d be the only one dumb enough to do that!” Tony uttered while hopping on the cement edging. He wiggled a bit but he steadied himself by raising his arms up to trapezoid height, and then he gazed back to give Pascal the signal to hop on too.

Pascal, instead of following, took the signal as an opportunity to do exactly what he wanted to do the whole time they were walking. With an evil child’s grin, he hurried his left foot in front of a speeding blue car. The right-front wheel of the blue car rolled directly over Pascal’s foot, and his smile immediately swapped to a wide-open gasp and he screamed “AAHH!” The instant after the first wheel squashed past his foot he urgently lifted his leg as a reflex and accidently gave a powerful kick under the base of the blue car, tipping it on its wheels from the opposite side. The car remained tilted on its two left wheels for a second or two, still advancing forward through the traffic and slightly curving left, approaching the cement edge opposite of the two boys. The car finally fell back on its four wheels, and then zigzagged in a loss of control, crashed its front on the rear bumper of another car, making it spin continuously until its side collided with the left cement edging, creating a loud, destructive noise. The car was interposed in the opposite direction of the traffic. One car made a direct face-to-face with the blue car and three other cars piled up behind. Another car tried to steer out of harm’s way, but its turn was too brusque and it made the car topple and then barrel a couple of times before it halted, wheels pointing to the sky, and then it caught on fire.

Tony stood there, jaw-dropped, while Pascal was also immobile, but staring at his foot. The sound of sirens was already coming closer and Tony immediately barked, “Holy s**t go, go! We’ve gotta hide under that viaduct!”

Pascal jumped forward and soared over the cars and in direction for the viaduct, and Tony tried to do the same. He did jump forward, but instead of flying he landed as hard as a rock, face first on the road like any human would when diving into pavement. Pascal soon heard his name, and without question he turned around and grabbed his powerless friend to then go hide under the viaduct. Dozens of people were staring out their car windows to look at the flying children as they waited in the just recently created traffic jam.

 

 

 

***

 

“Holy smokes…Inspector Robin, we’ve got a f*****g mess here. Call at least three ambulances and get this place cleaned up and closed. Over.” Officer Roger said through his transmitter. “Hmm…what could have happened here?” He mumbled to himself, while finishing the doughnut he had bought two minutes ago when he was still peacefully sipping on his coffee, but then got interrupted by an urgent report. No urgency would make him throw away his doughnut though.

“It’s a kid!” He heard from behind. It was one of the many people that were in their cars, waiting behind the flashing police cars that blocked the road.

 “No it was two kids! One of the kids threw a bomb on the street and it hurled the car and that’s when they flew off in that direction!” Another one said.

“Terrorists!”

“ISIS!”

“Illuminati!”

 “It wasn’t a bomb.” A man affirmed, this one waiting outside his car. “The kid kicked the car and it flung up to there! I saw it with my own eyes!”

 “Oh wow…” Roger muttered, “Now I totally understand the situation here.”

 

***

 

The heroes were now hiding through the beams and pillars of the viaduct’s ceiling. They climbed their way across the metal posts to get to the other end of the road that they were scrambling under. They could then climb over it and take a breather while admiring the view of the highway below them, the highway that they were destined to follow. They took a ten minute break to brush away the stress and get some strength back before pressing forward. Pascal rested on a horizontal beam, his back pressed against a perpendicular pillar, head rested in his palms and eyes closed. Tony was sitting on another beam while hugging a pillar beside him to decrease the chances of falling, splatting on the ground, and having a disgusting death.

Pascal let out a big sigh, looked upwards and asked, “What’s it like over there in Val-d’Or, your house and all?”

Tony, who was not really as relaxed as he usually was because of his awkward rigid posture on top of the beam, and also because of his fear of heights, was able to say, “…It’s really different from here. Val-d’Or’s a small city, with no highways and big roads on top of each other like here. It’s peaceful and you get to know it by heart after a while. I know a lot of places over there, like shops and stuff. I even know some of my friends’ houses. I also know where my school is, of course, I usually go every day…except for the week-ends. People don’t have school on week-ends.” He sighed and closed his eyes in discouragement. “I had a lot of friends over there. And my mom, my dad…my family… I miss them a lot too.” Tears welled up in his eyes and he started sniffing to keep what was in his nose to stay in his nose. He looked at the hustling cars passing under him, some going slower, some faster, some changing lanes every second to slither past the traffic, while one was going extremely slow with a long chain of cars honking behind him. Tony then got an angry face and said, “But not my brother. I don’t miss my brother.”

“You don’t like your brother?” Pascal asked, astonished. Pascal would have loved to have a little or even a bigger brother to live his adventures with in the wilds.

“When we fight, he always wins because he’s bigger and taller than me, and then he sits in my face and farts. I hate it when he does that!”

“He farts in your face.” Pascal had no clue that the sort of relation between siblings was that way.

“Yeah, sometimes when he gets out of the shower and my parents aren’t there, he runs after me still naked and wet and whips me with his towel.”

“That’s…not fun at all. I’m lucky I don’t have a brother.”

“I used to play 64 with him a lot, it was fun. And in the summer we played tag or hide and seek. Sometimes we soaked ourselves with water guns! The water was freezing!”

“Was that fun?”

“Oh yeah it was! Yeah…I miss my brother.”

“Well, whatever a 64 is, I hope that that when we arrive at your house you can teach me how to play!”

“That’s if we ever make it home. And even if we do, I’ll be in so much trouble and my mom will never believe me. And my friends…will they believe me? I’m sure Sidrik will.”

“Hey, don’t worry, I’m your friend too, and I believe you. I’m your new friend!”

Tony had to smile to this naïve remark, and he felt encouraged by Pascal’s optimism.

“You know what,” Pascal said, taking a more serious tone, “You’re the only friend I have now, so I’ll always stick around, and since sometimes you don’t have powers, I’ll always save you and never let you into trouble.”

“That’s nice. I’d do the same for you.” Tony said, the hope rising back in his eyes. A red and blue flash caught the corner of his eye and he instantly panicked.

“Quick, they found us! We have to�"whoa!” Tony was so in a hurry to displace himself that he lost the grip of the beam and was now falling down.

Pascal sighed comically and said to himself, “I guess I really have to stick around with you.” Pascal dived down and caught Tony like a bride at about mid-height from the ground to the ceiling. The momentum of his dive was too strong for him to fly back up so he just softly landed below on his feet.

“Part-time Birth Powers suck.” Tony exclaimed. Just then the flashing cop car advanced head-on towards them, with the flashing lights blinding Pascal for a moment. He instinctively threw his friend upwards, and the car’s front bumper caught the blond boy right in his abdomen. The impact made the front of the car instantly shrivel up like a spring while the rear of the car slightly sprung in the air and landed harshly back down. The boy stepped back a couple of feet before falling harshly on his back, legs swung in the air. The car was exhaling a thick amount of smoke from its smashed-in bumper and the windshield was cracked everywhere because of the force of impact.

The police officer inside the car rose his head up from the airbag, confused, dizzy and injured from the collision and said “What the f**k?” Before a little boy came down screaming and then making a huge thump on the top of the car, rolling off and tumbling down to his side on the pavement.

“Holy s**t I think I broke an arm!” Tony cried in pain.

“Holy s**t I think I broke an arm!” Pascal shouted in anger.

The blond boy got up and lingered to Tony, grabbed him by the rear collar and then rose up in the air slowly and staggeringly until he was high enough to be hid by the clouds and the sunlight.

“I-Impossible…I was driving at 120 km/h…” The injured Officer Roger muttered in his broken down vehicle. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen the blond boy fly up, because his eyes were locked on the chocolate doughnut that lay in crumbles under his gas pedal. It was the first doughnut he had ever wasted in his life. His whole life…

“Ow, ow, ow, ow…” Pascal kept on saying as he wobbled through the air to find some sort of safe place to rest. Now they were really screwed with each boy missing an arm. Pascal found the roof a nearby building to be a comfortable and safe spot to rest for now.

Pascal lightly dropped his friend and took off his shirt to look at the condition of his arm. He had a large abrasion on his shoulder and small strips of blood leaked down his triceps and dripped from his elbow. He also felt small scuffs in his back and another little scrape on his elbow. The major pain was from his shoulder blade, where he had principally fell on when he got knocked off the car. The marks of experience were already apparent on the young boy’s surprisingly muscular body. Scars big and small were scattered proportionally around the boy’s upper body from having to survive in the harsh conditions of the island he had once lived on. His tanned skin made the scars on his body and forearms come out even more. His arm was throbbing, but after forcing himself to forget the pain and trying to move it in every direction, he was able to establish that though his arm was aching, he hadn’t broken any bone.

He helped Tony take his blood-stained shirt off so he could take a shot of his arm. Tony’s body was paler, skinnier, and the only noticeable muscles were the boy’s premature six-pack. Old scabs invaded the boy’s back from all the shots he had taken from the helicopter gunman back on the island. Just under the boy’s right palm were three long linear scars that had once been Jaw’s final grasp as Tony had plunged the sword through the reptile’s body. He also had the long curved scar on his chest from one of Jaw’s sword strikes. The most important feature right now was his right arm. There was a little bruise on the forearm and the elbow, but it hadn’t bled that much. It was evident that he had broken his arm, because even though he only had feeble scratches, he felt immense pain and couldn’t move that arm anymore.

“Hopefully you’ll transform back to your nemusian form soon enough, and you’ll be able to heal that arm.” Pascal said, not really assured that Tony would ever transform again. Tony had been whining and crying ever since they had left off from the car accident, and Pascal was starting to forget that Tony was the Hero possibly responsible for saving the world from an extraterrestrial threat.

Pascal left off a little while later to go hunt for food, which was not easy to find in such a big town with little to no forestation at all. Eventually, he came back when it started to get dark with three seagulls, a squirrel, wood and grass, a brown bag and a garbage bag.

“Yuck,” Tony stated as soon as Pascal landed.

“Well then if you don’t want them, I’ll cook ‘em for myself. Instead you’ll have this.” He opened the brown bag and revealed a barrel packed with chicken, a small box with fries and a cup of brown sauce.

 Tony looked at the Colonel’s face on the barrel and said, “It’s still hot…where d’you get that?”

“Some guy walking down the street had this bag and kept pulling out those…things out of it,” He said, pointing at the red cardboard box.

“Fries,” Tony interrupted, “They’re called French fries.”

“French…fries? What the… well anyways he pulled them out of the bag and kept eating some so it had to be food.

“So you stole it.”

“We sure need it more than that guy does, don’t you think?”

“And should I know what’s in the garbage bag?” Tony pointed behind his friend.

“It’s not garbage, it’s clothing! I found plenty hanging around on a rope. Now we’ll travel with many different clothes and we’ll look like everyone else.”

Tony looked at his dirty, torn off clothes and nodded. It actually was a good idea. Okay, he stole them, but…hey, how many times did Tony ever steal candy with Dan at the Val-Senneville corner store? Pascal wasn’t to blame.

            Pascal emptied the contents of the garbage bag to the floor, and instantly Tony was deceived. “You got a woman’s clothesline, haven’t you.” Tony said.

            “Eh what?”

            “Most of it is girls’ clothing.”

            “Really? And so what?”

So the two boys ate their lunch, and then used the clothes as sheets to warm them up for the chilly night. Pascal prepared a fire with the wood and grass he had collected. Luckily, because of his Birth Powers, he was able to simply rub his hands together at such a speed that it created sparks, and it ended up igniting a small fire.

            “So…” Pascal started as they were installed for the night, “How does it work? French people who fry? Fried French people?”

            “No, just don’t mind. It’s French fries, that’s all.” Tony answered, too tired to justify the name. He actually didn’t know himself.

“French fries and garbage bags…wow. What’s next, English muffins?”