BEN BRIAR

I was focused on beating Val in this struggle for power, but I couldn't help listening to my father. He sounded exactly like he used to. The red fishes were frisked away by the threat of a shark which was hiding in the hauntingly beautiful coral on the seabed.

Valery said, "Yes that was quite an insight, thank you for that Earl." I almost stopped and looked around to see why he had said that and why in that manner. He was at gunpoint and he still showed bravery to stand up to the big man. "But has Molly told you how I achieved it? It is quite a power isn't it. In fact I could do it to you right now. Turn you into a child which blabbers and drools. Oh wait, you can't blabber because I'll rid you of your tongue and voice. And then you'll serve me. And me only."

I could tell he was trying to get my father worked up.

"Father, don't listen to him. He is as deceiving as a tangled web." I looked back for a second. His hand holding the otherworldly gun was shaking as it pressed against Valery's head. "What's the plan here father? Are we really going to leave them for dead?"

"Don't," Jennifer spoke up.

"Jennifer, you don't know what you're talking about."

"I do. Valery - is it - he saved my life. He was holding that tube, while you were watching behind him."

"That's only because I wouldn't know how to administer it if I wanted to," I said. "I'm the one who brought you to this place."

"And you say I'm the lying bastard," Valery cut in.

"Shut up!" my father shouted. "The plan is..." Everyone was on edge and I could hear their breathing. Val's bag fell off his shoulder, making a loud thud. Molly took a step back. "We switch partners!"

A blast of ice hits Val in the chest and he goes flying backwards. As soon as he's down, I regain control of the water and draw it back to me. I barely have time to touch it before I throw the liquid spear at Valery on his knees.

Valery leans back onto his heels and dodges the spear by the length of a nail. He doesn't go for the spear because he knows he cannot mold it or even grasp it without losing its form, so he reaches up for the gun in my father's hand.

My father struggles to keep hold of it as I draw my water back. He looks at me unable to simmer his mood when speaking to me.

"Ben! What are you? A dullard? Get this man off me!" Valery whips his helmet off. A small bubble in comparison to the one he had summoned from his mouth before, flew off Valery's tongue and caught my father's hand with the gun in it.

He could have easily popped it, and I could have popped it if I threw my aqua spear again, but all of us just stared. Stared until something occurred within the bubble. And it was magical and extraordinary. Limited with wonder but unlimited in power.

In a world where people walk on water and live underwater; and I can control water, this was by far the ultimate pearl of the Seven Seas.

The gun fell to the ground as my father yelped in pain. Even Valery was surprised at himself. There is the moment. Danger cannot be perceived by this act, but trouble may follow at the persecution of such a magnificent power.

I felt, the most important individual in the room was now Valery. It was a performance and it deserved attention. The performance lacked skill and refinement and practice, but it was still the utter epitome of evolution.

The gun on the floor was hellish with embers encrusted in the model. It sizzled against the ground until a black charred spot appeared around it.

Valery could make anything a variant of itself, but only in the confines of the bubble. The glorified bubble of the Lord himself. Or the Son, risen from the tomb to bestow upon the two worlds I have dwindled my foot in, a glamorous new understanding of true ability.

Val tackled me to the floor from behind before I could do anything. The water splashed unceremoniously on the floor next to me. My father's hand was burnt and it was almost as if it had dried up all of the perspiration on it. It grew redder and redder and his palm swelled.

He held his hand in his other, screaming his lungs out. Valery stood to his feet and bore down on him, an unnerving stare. Molly stood between them to protect my father.

"Please don't," Molly pleaded, "you've hurt my boy enough."

"Do it Valery!" Val shouted, burying my face into the ground. "Punch his lights out!"

"Have I hurt your boy enough?" Valery pondered. "He is no longer a boy, so he can answer that for himself. No, he can't answer because he is too distant in this conversation to reply. He is too busy screaming in pain, if you even call that a scream. It should be more like this: HAARK! See, put more oomph into it. Some gumption will do the vocal cords good. Actually, why don't I give them a warm up?"