Natural Enemy 3

Chapter 3

There was no killing.

Nobody seemed to want anything bad to happen to him.

That same night, the older lady with the heavy boobs walked him over to a small hut that was apparently all for him, and for the first time in a long time, Kai slept like a baby.

He woke up the next morning, confused and worried, but again… nothing.

He ate as much as he wanted, he talked with people that smiled at him, and he walked around the weird little island he found himself on.

The first few weeks were all like that, just a confusing blur where Kai was unsure where exactly he was and what exactly these people wanted.

The answer to the second question was… nothing, weird enough. Not sure what to do with that, though. He really wasn’t. Who just takes in some random stranger? Even if this was Hawaii, he heard the island got really messed up after Cole’s Bomb killed a chunk of the people there and pretty much tanked tourism with nobody wanting to travel and planes grounded worldwide for a long while. 

Wherever this was, it was way too happy to be Hawaii.

He got an answer to that the first few days, though. The chief of the island, this huge guy that Kai swore had to be some kind of Conduit — seriously, he was seven feet tall and with arms as thick as truck tires — explained that the island was called Kaihua.

When that didn’t really clear anything up (and Kai said as much), the chief scratched his thick mane of black hair and explained it was just a small island in the West Blue. 

West Blue of what, was the question Kai had.

Asking that was pointless though because it just led to more answers that left him like ten steps behind where he started and turned all the way around.

So, Ken just decided to stop asking and go with the flow. No point in acting like a weirdo. He just ate when they offered food, kept his powers locked down tight, and didn’t talk much unless someone asked him a straight-up question. 

He just watched, listened, and waited for someone to slip up and show the trick they were hiding.

A month went by and no trick showed up.

No cops, no sirens, no nothing. Hell, these people didn’t even have TV or a phone to watch the news or call anyone. He was kinda surprised this place had running water, even, and that was no joke.

Finally, after weeks of looking over his shoulder, Kai finally worked up the courage to just ask somebody before he snapped from nerves. One of the younger guys was his best bet, one of those who seemed to understand his accent a little better, so he went to the first one he could find that day.

“Hey, uhh, you guys ever get uh… patrols from the DUP?”

All he got was a blank stare back, the other kid silent for a few seconds until, finally, “Doo-pah?”

“N-no,” Kai blinked at him, the bright sun still harsh on his eyes. “I’m talkin’ bout the D. U. P.  Y’know, the Department of Unified Protection.”

All he got back was a frown and a scrunched up face.

“Okay, uh…” Kai’s mouth hung open for a second longer than he meant it to, unsure what else to say. “Cole… uh… Cole MacGrath? The Electric Man?” Nothing. “The Beast? Anything ringin’ a bell, man?”

After a few seconds, the kid just laughed, the sound making Kai’s shoulders tense up in a way that had nothing to do with the sound.. “You speak funny words, spirit boy.”

Spirit boy. They’d started calling him that after they’d found him on the beach. 

One more try. He hated the word, hated the taste of it in his own mouth, but he had to know.

“What about… Conduits?”

“…Con-doo-eet? That a fish?”

Yeah, okay… they didn’t know a damn thing.

At least, not about Conduits.

He couldn’t imagine how they didn’t know but he had to deal with that first before he tried to handle anything else. The idea that they possibly couldn’t know about the whole situation that killed off over five percent of people on the whole damn planet. 

That just… that didn’t fit in his head. What the hell, man?

To make things even more weird, they knew about powers.

They had people with powers.

Not in the village, no, but they knew of them.

Apparently, they were called Devil Fruit users or whatever, but Conduits? Bioterrorists? Freaks?

None of that existed wherever here was.

It wasn’t a paradise, Kai wasn’t gonna let himself believe that. It was just… a place. A place without the government trying to hunt him down for existing. A good place.

A good place, with even better food. 

So much food. Fish and pork roasted in fire pits, fruits he’d never seen before that were so sweet he ate almost as much of them as he did the pork. Which was crazy, cus the pork was melt-in-your-mouth tender and exploding with flavor. 

Whatever it was, they put on his plate, Kai ate. And ate. And ate. 

And ate, until he poked at his stomach one afternoon, a soft, growing little potbelly staring right back at him. If that wasn’t bad enough, he could already feel his shorts getting tight. 

Great. He was getting fat. But Auntie Loa’s roast pork was just too good. Maybe one more plate.

With the fear of starving no longer anything to deal with, a different feeling started to bubble up inside. The last two months, his power had been cooped up without him even touching it once.

That was already too long.

So, he decided to use his new freedom as he made his way around the island with no one following him. Soon enough, Kai found a place, a little cove hidden by tall rocks, far from the village, but not too far from the beach where he washed up. 

It was a place where he could let it all out.

He wasn’t dumb, though; going crazy was a bad idea. Just because these people didn’t have Conduits didn’t mean they couldn’t get scared of them real quick.

No, just because he could let it out, it didn’t mean he was going to.

So, Kai started small. Pulling water from the air was easy, especially considering this place was way more humid than Florida. Considering he was on an island, Kai was pretty damn sure it’d only be easier if he was on the open ocean and that was a bad idea for… reasons. 

Either way, even without touching the water in the cove, he could play around with water any way he wanted; shaping it, stretching it, making a wobbly ball of it float between his hands. 

Honestly, even weeks later, he couldn’t help the wide grin on his face every time he got to try something new with his powers. It had been… forever.

Soon enough, he got bolder.

And no, not just testing his powers on a boulder. 

One day, he saw a coconut high up on a tree and a random idea hit him like a lightning bolt. Raising one finger and pointing it out like a gun, he cocked his thumb back and focused.

A split second later, a tight hard jet of water shot from his pointer and hit the coconut with a hard loud thwack, knocking the thing clean out of the tree and landing in the sand.

The laugh that spilled out of him was loud and almost crazy-sounding. The laugh that came when he did it again was no different. Or the time after that.

By the sixth shot, he was back to normal though… mostly.

Long story short, he ended up hauling a pile of coconuts back to the village and scurried off before anyone could ask any questions. 

The day after that, he tried to run on the water, pushing himself off the water with jets from his feet to pull off something he’d seen in comics. 

That… that didn’t work.

He’d shoot across the surface of the cove for a few seconds, rocketing himself across the water almost fast enough he thought it would work and then…

Well, he ended up face first with a mouthful of water too many times to keep count by now.

His secret lasted for longer than he expected. Almost a whole year of private practice. A whole year of feeling… almost normal. 

He almost forgot the island was free for anyone to walk around, not just him.

It was just another day of showing off; for himself, for the rocks, the seagulls too, if they felt like watching. Kai stood away from the cove, pulling from the reserve of water inside him and pushing it out and around his arm. 

His right arm.

In a few seconds, he had a bubbling shuddery gauntlet of water around it, the thing solid as long as he kept it swirling. Motion was important with water, especially when he used a lot of it like this.  

With a roar, Kai threw his fist back and yelled. His arm flew forward and all five fingers of his fist slammed right into the base of the palm tree nearest him. Hard.

The tree shuddered and a half-dozen coconuts rained down.

Right. On. His. Head.

“…ow.”

The water gauntlet splashed apart on his feet as the world went wobbly, Kai stumbling back as he rubbed the newest lump on his skull. Man, I’m glad Conduit toughness is a thing. The way his skin bones just seemed to be made of something a good bit stronger than normal people’s was a blessing he didn’t appreciate enough. 

But even still, that shit hurted.

He was just shaking out the last bit of stars from behind his eyes when he looked up.

And saw her.

A girl. Watching him from the edge of the trees.

His blood went cold. The lazy, comfortable feeling evaporated, replaced by the old, familiar fear.

How long has she been there? Every muscle in his body went tight, ready to run, ready to fight. How much did she see?

This was it. The trick. The trap. It had finally sprung. He was just waiting for her to shout, to scream. To turn and run back to the village, pointing, shouting the word he was so sick of hearing. Freak.

Instead, she clapped.

“Wow!” she said, her voice full of… wonder? “How do you do that?”

He just stared at her, his brain halfway to short-circuiting as she walked up closer and started asking more and more questions.

Soon enough, Kai started to talk. Slowly at first, the words feeling rusty in his mouth, but eventually they flowed the same way his powers did. He showed her, making a little ball of water dance in his palm. She laughed, a real, happy sound.

She was the chief’s daughter. Lani Moa. And she didn’t think he was a freak.

Soon, everyone knew. Lani couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it. 

But he wasn’t mad at her, mostly because no one was mad at him. 

Well, maybe the chief was a little iffy, but he didn’t like his daughter hanging around with boys. Everyone else, though, they thought he was the coolest thing ever. Even the old women who said he was blessed by their sea god, Kanarowa, only nodded and took this as an example that they were right the whole time.. They called him the water boy now, more than spirit boy, but he didn’t mind that as much.

It didn’t take long before he started doing stuff the other kids did.

Like surfing.

The first time he stood up on a board, he couldn’t help but grin; a real, actual grin that reached his eyes. And for the first time since he’d heard those sirens, he felt like he was home.