Fabula, sed vera Ch. 01

Since then, Star Wars has become part of family tradition and there're many words and expressions from the film that are now a part of the family language. Like 'Using the Force' as an expression for use of psychic powers or 'disturbance' for sensing the use of physic powers (As in 'I feel a disturbance in the Force'). The younger generation also uses the expression 'Vis exsisto vobis', meaning 'the Force be with you' as a goodbye. Even the word 'Sith' is used to describe an egocentric person while a 'Sith Lord' is a psychic that uses psychic powers for his own gain without thinking about others.

The sound of Leo's voice disturbed my thoughts. "Hello there, Jimmy. You look deep in thought."

I looked up at him with a smile and then motioned towards the empty chair. "Hey Leo. Have a seat."

He sat and a waiter appeared to take our orders and then walked away.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I was just pondering the family history and thinking about Star Wars... and you dressed up as Yoda."

Leo chuckled. "Oh, that was fun... Especially the look on Grandma's face when I wriggled the fake ears."

I laughed at the memory and then added. "Oh, your brother wasn't bad as a storm-trooper either, though perhaps he should have made better looking holes in that mask. Then he wouldn't have smashed your mother's vase with that big plastic gun of his."

"Oh yeah, that was a sight!" He laughed and accepted a cup of coffee from the waiter, before turning back towards me. "While we're at the subject: Are you coming to the party this year?"

I drank some more of the coffee, before answering. "I don't know, but I will do my best to be there, unless my work takes me elsewhere."

He nodded. "As it is with all of us."

"Exactly." I said with a nod and changed the subject as the waiter arrived with the food. The restaurant wasn't a safe place to talk business.

So, we talked about family things. Like my vacation at Leo's place in Hong Kong a year ago and what to give the family for the various birthdays and anniversaries.

Of course, I had to tease Leo with him scoring on Miss Clarence. But as I didn't have an official girlfriend at the moment, I was too easy a target for counter-teasing, so I quickly gave it up.

When the dinner was over we paid and walked outside, where there were chairs and tables, so that we could sit and smoke, while drinking the traditional cup of cappuccino.

As usual I lit a cigar while Leo lit a cigarette and then asked. "So, when are you going back to Hong Kong?"

"In a few hours." He said, blowing smoke towards a mosquito.

"Sorry to hear that." I said and meant it. Leonardo had done most of his work from Hong Kong and had only been in London for four weeks due to the Clarence deal, so I knew that he had to go back to Hong Kong at some point. I just wished that he could have stayed another week. It was nice to have someone from the family to talk with again. "But have a good trip."

"Will do."

"Thanks." I drank some cappuccino. "What about Miss Clarence? Does she know that you are leaving?"

Leo smiled widely. "Yes. She is coming with me... After all, there's not much that keeps her here and I would like to see more of her."

I lifted an eyebrow. It was rare that Leo spends more than a few nights with the same woman and for him to take her with him to Hong Kong was something extraordinary.

On the other hand, Leo is a powerful telepath, and he has no problem with using someone that was trying to use him, like the gold-diggers that wanted to catch a good-looking and rich young businessman.

However, it is close to impossible to fool a telepath like Leo, so usually he just enjoys them for a few days before he discards them.

"She must be quite a lady." I concluded with a smile. "I wish you luck, my friend."

"Thanks." He looked thoughtful into the air as he stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray. "I hope that it works out well, because I like her a lot."

I nodded, as I felt his restlessness. "And there are places that you would rather be right now."

"You know me too well." A smile appeared on his face as he stood. "In fact, she is waiting for me at the airport, so if you don't mind, I will have to cut this a bit short."

I laughed as I stood and gave him a hug. "Go see her, fool. I'll see you later."

He hugged back and flipped a wave in his usual fashion. "See you later, Jimmy."

"Have a safe trip." I switched to Latin. "Vis exsisto vobis." (Latin: the Force be with you')

"Vis exsisto vobis." he answered with a smile and walked away.

I drank the rest of the coffee before I took my cane and started to walk back towards the parking house where I left my car.

The sun had gone down while Leo and I had been eating, there were fewer people on the streets now and the dark alleys that lead back to the parking house were even darker and less inviting than before.

I ignored the drug dealers and kept on walking, until I heard a muffled scream coming from a side alley. Sighing to myself, I turned and walked into the alley. It had been a woman screaming and I dislike women being mistreated.

As I entered the relative darkness of the alley, I levitated slightly to get my feet of the ground to avoid making too much noise and then slowly hovered down the alley, until I came to a big container and could see the source of the screams. A young woman was being held down by a blond man with a lot of piercings in his face, while a skinhead had his pants down and was raping her.

I considered calling the cops, but they would never be here on time, so instead I landed on the ground and took a step into the alley.

I looked at the woman, gritted my teeth and extended my thoughts to find hers, but she was too far away for my limited Telepathic reach, so there was no way I could make her fall unconscious.

Telekinesis was an entirely other matter. So, I turned my attention to the man instead and discovered that the angle gave me a view of the man's balls as he screwed the terrified woman mercilessly.

I could have told him that you did not dangle your balls in front of a pissed off telekinetic psychic, but instead I made a grabbing motion with my hand at the same time as I activated my telekinetic powers.

The man shrieked a high-pitched scream, as his balls were squeezed with enormous power. Then I used my grip to lift him off the girl and throw him into a wall.

That stopped the screaming and since the other guy was busy looking at his friend, I took a few steps forward and reached out with my thoughts, trying to make contact with him, so I could stun him and wipe his memory. There was no need to kill people I didn't have to. To my surprise my thought probe bounced off his mind like a stone skipping on water.

Suddenly I realized that the piercings acted as a mental shield for him. For some unknown reason I can't use any psychic powers at all when my head is covered with something hard, which is rather inconvenient from time to time and as far as telepathy goes, I run into problems when people I'm trying to use it on wear something hard on their heads, like a motorcycle helmet.

Earrings or nose rings isn't normally a problem, but this guy had two piercings in his eyebrows and, more importantly, three piercings inserted in his forehead and the effect of all that metal was evidently more than my telepathy could overcome. It must be because the piercings were in contact with the cranium or something like that, but whatever the reasons; I couldn't use telepathy against him.

The guy had clearly seen me by now, while I had been trying to stun him, he had taken out a gun from his jacket.

I am the most powerful telekinetic in my family and I have trained in this for a long time, but the fact is that any idiot with enough money to spare on a gun and a week to train in, can easily kill me, so I reached out with my thoughts, felt the air next to my body and made a shield around me.

As always it did take a lot of energy, but I did it just in time. The guy fired at me, missed with the first shot, while the second shot bounced off the shield.

So much for sparing his life, I thought as I looked at a piece of scrap metal someone had thrown on the ground and made a small gesture with my right hand. It rocketed through the air and slammed into his chest. He hit the ground right in front of the shocked woman.

Taking two steps forward, I extended my thoughts again and connected with hers before I sent a surge of power at the sleep centre of her brain. She went limp as she fell asleep.

Shaking slightly from exhaustion, I stood still for a moment. Telepathy has its good sides but affecting other people's minds with the thoughts alone simply takes a lot of energy, even when it doesn't work. The same goes for telekinetic shields and grabbing people with that power, and even with all the training I had been through, I wasn't exactly in prime condition.

I walked over to the guy with the piercings and examined him. He was dead. The metal piece had hit him in the chest, crushing the ribcage and forcing bone splinters into his heart.

Maybe I should have felt something besides satisfaction when looking at the man that I had killed, but I didn't and since medical school, I haven't been freaked out by the sight of dead people. That doesn't mean that I like killing people, because I hate the thought of it, but some people are just better off being dead and these two clearly belonged in that category.

Using telekinesis, I lifted the two bodies as well as the gun into a container one at the time, covered them with trash from a smaller trash can that was standing next to the container and then closed the lid. With just a little luck, they wouldn't be found for quite a while, if ever.

Then I walked over to the woman and concentrated for about a minute until I could see her aura. It's a trick I learned from my mother Cecilia: As auras are a reflection on the person, it is possible to see the status of a person's health and see if a person has hidden injuries just by looking at the aura... which is a great help when you're examining them, which I did.

Besides the obvious bruising, a twisted knee, and marks after having been raped and manhandled, she had broken a few ribs and would need medical attention.

I also noticed that she looked Chinese and was quite a beauty; or rather she would be once she wasn't looking beat up. Besides that, there had been something strangely familiar about her mind, when I had made contact with it. Somehow her mind had felt like those of my family.

I decided that I couldn't just leave her here, so I straightened her dress and then lifted her up with telekinetic, making it look like I was supporting her.

Then I looked around in the alley, but besides a torn pair of women's underwear, there wasn't anything in here that indicated that a fight had taken place.

A brief concentration made the panties go up in flames and then I walked towards the streets.

I didn't quite make it.

A trio of young men were walking into the alley, blocking the way out. They were all dressed as badly as the pierced guy in the alley and the one to the left held a baseball bat in his hands, while the others had knives. Due to the limited light in the alley, it took me a few seconds more to notice that they all had the same patterns of three piercings in the forehead.

They relaxed just a bit when they saw the suit and the one with the baseball bat smiled. "Well, hello there, mister Fancy Pants." He waved the bat in my direction. "What the fuck do you think you're doing with my property?"

"Your property?" I asked, trying to get my brain to work again. The problem right now was that I was using my telekinesis to lift the woman, which meant that I couldn't also use it for attack or defence, and with their piercings, I couldn't use telepathy,

He pointed at the Chinese woman: "The bitch is mine. I bought her fair an' square right off the boat; I decide who shags her an' who doesn't."

He shouldn't have mentioned 'shagging' the woman because along with the pain and what I had just witnessed, it made me furious.

Letting go of the woman, I made sure that she didn't hit the ground too hard. Then I did a sweeping motion with my hand and a metal garbage container smashed into the three guys, crushing two of them against the wall, while knocking the third of his feet and into the ground. I turned the hand and obediently the garbage container span around in a circle, smacking the two unfortunate guys against the wall again.

Regaining control of my temper, I let go of the container, which landed on the ground with a 'Bump', followed by two softer bumps from the dead bodies.

This was the reason why I usually keep my temper under tight control, because when I do lose it, the result is usually chaotic and often destructive.

I picked the cane up from the ground and hobbled over to the only guy that was still alive. At least that was what I thought, until I saw that his neck was broken, and the eyes were starring sightless into the night. I cursed again but got a hold of my temper. I did not need more complications right now and losing my control now was certain to bring more.

After checking that the other two were dead as well, I turned to look at the Asian woman and blinked in surprise, when a pair of scared slanted eyes looked back at me. Then it dawned at me, that the fall on the ground must have awakened her and that she had most likely seen it all.

'Right off the boat', the idiot had said. That meant that she was an illegal immigrant that had just been smuggled into the country.

"Do you speak English?" I asked with a sigh. I might as well try that language first.

"S-speak l-l-little, H-Honored Ti Hsien." She stuttered. She had a terrible accent, but at least she did speak English.

She had seen it all, I thought to myself. When I was seven, my parents lived in Hong Kong for a year and I was with them, while my older brothers stayed in Spain. It was a great time, and I learned a lot of Cantonese there, because my nanny was Chinese and she used to read bedtime stories for me each night and I have heard about Ti Hsien many, many times.

Ti Hsien means 'Enlightened Immortals' and is one of the many types of Immortals in Chinese mythology. They have numerous strange powers and a major problem with authority, meaning that they usually manage to insult The Jade Emperor himself and one or more of the ten Yama Kings of Hell during an adventure. All in all, they made for great bedtime stories.

So, calling me 'Ti Hsien', clearly indicated that she had seen me using powers not normal for humans, which again meant that I would have to do something about it, but first things first and I still needed to clean up the mess a bit.

"Good." I said with a smile. "I will not harm you but look the other way."

She nodded shortly, said "Will do, honoured one." and looked away from me.

I waited a few moments to see if she would keep her word, but as she didn't turn around, I lifted the smashed bodies into the container, covered them with garbage and then sent the container into the alley next to the other one. Some sanitation worker would have a shock at some point, but I doubted that it would be around here. As far as I knew, they usually don't look into the containers before emptying them into the truck.

There wasn't much more I could do to cover up the mess, so I looked at the woman again and reached out with my mind, made contact with hers and then sent energy through it, trying to wipe out the memory of everything that had happened in the last ten minutes. It wasn't a polite thing to do, but I didn't need her to remember what had happened, and I certainly wouldn't want to be known in the Chinese community in London as a Ti Hsien. And to justify the Mind Wipe to myself, she wouldn't remember the rape either with just a little bit of luck.

It was useless speculation as the energy bounced harmlessly off her natural mental shield, leaving her memory untouched.

I felt like sighing, when the failed Mind Wipe once again proved that I wasn't good at telepathy. However, it was also a problem, so I tried again, but with the same result.

Since it looked like psychic power wasn't going to help me, I switched to Cantonese Chinese, hoping that she could understand that, and said "You may look now, but please, no more mentions of Ti Hsien."

Her head turned so fast that it was almost blurred. "You speak Chinese!"

"Well, the Cantonese dialect at least and I am Jim." I said with a smile. "Can you walk?"

Tears started to flow from her eyes. "I don't know."

"Please try." I looked around. "We need to get out of here before anyone comes."

That wasn't a lie. My whole body was shaking slightly from exhaustion and if someone showed up now, I wouldn't even have the energy to make a shield.

She tried to stand up but cried out in pain and then shook her head. "I am terribly sorry, but I can't."

I handed her my cane. "Will this help?"

She took it and struggled to her feet. Her expression told me that it was a painful experience and when she tried to take a step, her legs almost collapsed under her. "I'm sorry, but I can't walk."

"Then hold on to the cane. I will have to carry you."

She nodded and stood still, while I bowed down, placed an arm behind her legs and back and lifted her up in my arms using telekinesis to make her so light that I didn't hurt my back, which would be unfortunate right now.

Then I started to walk towards the parking house. "I have a car parked down this way. We need to get you to a hospital."

"No!" she almost shouted, but then calmed down again and continued. "They will kill my sister if I don't come back!" She looked pleadingly at me. "Please just drive me back to the house and then forget about me."

She started to cry almost silently.

I sighed as I continued to walk. It seemed like I had to rescue her sister as well, since I couldn't let her walk back into hell again. If this continued, I might as well buy myself a freaking superhero costume, complete with cape and all.

"Okay... no hospital, but can you find the way back to the house?"

She nodded with some hesitation "I think so. It is not that far from here."

"Who are those guys you are talking about and how many are there?"

"They are demons!" She hissed. "There are eight of them. All with piercings and dressed in dirty leather clothes. They...."

As she was talking, we had gotten out of the alley and back on more normal streets, and almost immediately a man stepped in front of us, interrupting her. "Excuse me, sir, but do you need a hand?" He looked suspiciously at me. "What happened to her?"

"She fell and hit the ground." I explained with a slight smile. "She must have twisted her knee, because she cannot walk, so I am carrying her to my car."

He ignored me for a moment as he looked at her. "Are you okay, Miss?"

Much to my amazement, she kept cool as she nodded and said. "I'm okay. Fell and hurt leg. Jim carries me to car. Then we go to hospital."

The man's eyes grew a little bigger, but then he nodded and stepped aside, so that we could continue. "Have a good evening, sir."

I smiled at him, said "Thank you." and started walking again.

When we were out of hearing range, I switched to Cantonese again. "That was good thinking."

"I want to go to the house and not the hospital." She said in a way of explaining, sounding calm, but there was a slight trembling in her voice.

"Yes, that much I understood. By the way, what is your name? It might be rather inconvenient if somebody stops us, and I don't know it."

"Oh." She looked at me again. "I'm Yu Nu Tian."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I had to make an effort not to laugh. Yu was the family name, but depending on how you looked at it, Nu Tian meant 'Heavenly Woman', 'Woman of candy' or 'Sweet tasting woman', which would have been an appropriate name for a high-class call-girl in Hong Kong. I turned a corner and could now see the parking house. "I wish the circumstances were better, but it is nice to meet you, Nu Tian."