Megumi's Path めぐみの軌跡

Chapter Seven A Sad Meeting

Chapter Seven

A Sad Meeting

Heading upstairs to my room, I flopped onto my bed, my brain reeling from everything that happened today. This really wasn't going to be a good week. With two more days until the weekend, I'd have to be almost intuitively in tune with the pager. It would be the first thing I'd need to reach out and connect with. But it wasn't as simple. It would take me a while to find the damn thing. Pagers were obsolete; they may not have any juice and could pose a problem. That was one of my weaknesses. While I could control electricity through the earth, air and cables, if there was something I couldn't physically see that had no battery life, it was like searching through a hundred batteries trying to find the one with one charged electrolyte with rubber gloves on. Being in her office, I could just about sense it, but the further away I was, the more difficult it would become to find. And difficulty meant needing time, and this had to be an instant detection.

I needed to practice and had an idea of what I needed in the garage.

Situated beside the house, the garage was used yet again for more storage, such as camping equipment, an old sofa and a TV that Dad watched baseball on, and some unused gym equipment. But what my parents didn't know what that there was a jar full of old used batteries. When I was younger, I started to drain any battery that came into the house and practised re-charging them. It took a while, but I finally mastered it by the time I was ten. Batteries were my gateway to the good life, pure electricity.

I sound like a total junkie, but a single jolt of electricity made me hyper when I was little. Of course, I'm used to it, and ten million volts cursing through me felt normal.

I found the jar of old batteries and sensed that a few of them were partly charged, one was nearly empty, and that's the one I wanted. Taking it out, I found an old tape recorder and placed it on Dad's sofa. Walking out of the garage, I concentrated on the opposite side of the house. After a few seconds, I found it. It was quick, but then I got the impression of where it would be. I needed a mother to move it around the house, and I had to try to sense it from the back garden or the street. Retrieving it, I went to the kitchen and found the rice cooking and vegetables steaming in pots.

"You alright, dear?" She asked from the sofa. She was watching one of her soaps.

I handed her the tape recorder. "Yes, I need a favour, please?"

Tearing her eyes away from the soap, she stared at me, then frowned at the tape recorder. "What do you want? To tape my soap?"

I laughed. "No. Could you put this somewhere in the house, please? I want to test something."

Her eyes narrowed. "Test what?"

I sat on the chair opposite her. "You know I can sense batteries," she nodded, "but I want to see if I can sense them with a very low charge and at a distance."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "More control over my power."

She turned the old, black tape recorder in her hands and asked, "What about homework?"

I figured she wanted to ensure that I had nothing better to do than do homework. But it was a shock for her; I had all done last night. "Done it all. Please?"

The soap ended and turned to commercials about sage-flavoured toothpaste. "Fine, but just this once."

"Thank you." I headed towards the front door.

"Wait! Where are you going?" She called, a slight panic in her voice.

"Up the street. I may see you where you put it from the back garden." Shoving my shoes on, I headed right and went towards the park. I used to go there a lot when I was younger but stopped when I went into high school. It seemed uncool to go to a kid's park.