The Five Evolution

『"You will never break the chain..."』

The Five found themselves in a schoolyard on a late afternoon. Three boys had a smaller child backed against a chain-link fence.

A short distance away stood a white-haired boy watching with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Kai," the Book said. "Ten years old."

"You getting a bad feeling about this?" Raj said quietly.

Sophia scoffed. "He’s ten. What’s he going to do?"

The three bullies hadn’t noticed the white-haired boy. Their attention remained fixed on the smaller child, whose tears had finally begun to spill.

"Oh, look. He’s crying," the largest of the three said as he shoved the boy into the fence. He pulled back his fist about to strike the boy when he was interrupted by a calm voice.

"Are you powerful Gregory?" Kai asked as he walked over at a comfortable pace, stopping beside the crying child.

The bully about to throw a punch turned. "What?"

His other two companions began to whisper amongst themselves.

"Dude, he knows your name."

"Do you know this shrimp?"

Gregory lowered his hand, the other still holding on to the kid he was bullying. "Who the hell are you?"

"A witness," Kai said pleasantly. "I find it helps, sometimes, to have one."

The bully blinked. He hadn’t expected that. "...Get lost."

Kai took another step forward. "Are you powerful?" He tilted his head up, looking Gregory in the eyes. "Or are you one of those who mistake cruelty for power?"

"I-I..." Gregory’s eyes drifted to his friends beside him, the sound of their confused murmurs adding to his. "...how bout I show you how powerful my fist is?!"

His friends nodded approvingly as they jeered at the white-haired boy.

"I’ve come to learn." Kai lifted one hand to his chest in a gesture. "Power requires no audience." He looked at Gregory’s friends. "Especially not from those who mistake obedience for respect."

Gregory shoved the kid he was about to punch onto the fence and stepped forward. "Say that again—"

"I have no desire to repeat myself." Kai interrupted.

"Oh yeah?" Gregory punched him in the face, knocking Kai to the ground. Kai got back up and rubbed his cheek once, but his expression remained completely neutral.

A strange silence settled over the schoolyard. The three bullies exchanged glances. They were bigger. They were three. And somehow, none of that felt like it mattered.

One of the boys realized he’d taken half a step backward. "Weird alert."

"What a freak," Gregory said as he noticed his friends slowly backing away. "Let’s get out of here guys."

"Sure..." one of them said quietly.

"He’s not worth our time!" the other proclaimed loudly even though he was already farther away than the rest of them.

"None of them understood why, but every instinct told them to leave," the Book narrated.

Amara looked up at the Book, then back at the white-haired boy. "For as terrible as they were..." She folded her arms. "Their instincts were probably spot on."

The white-haired boy looked at each of them in turn as they walked away.

"Josh. Darryl. Gregory," he said, almost gently. "I hope your choices between now and then make you happy."

"Freak!" one of them shouted from a distance.

Kai looked at the crying child beside him, held out his hand, and waited.

After a moment, the child took it.

"He just happens to know the names of the other two kids as well?" Hiro asked.

Raj stroked his chin. "It’s a small neighborhood."

Kai stood beside the crying boy, watching the bullies retreat. Then he bent down and picked up a pebble from the ground.

"Here, Milo," Kai said, pressing it into the smaller boy’s palm. "Keep it in your left pocket. It will remind you to have strength."

The boy, Milo, nodded through his tears and ran.

Hiro stretched out his hands toward the scene as they watched. "Oh, and he also knows this kid’s name as well."

Amara groaned through a sigh. "Give it a rest, Hiro."

"No." Hiro shook his head. "I don’t think I will."

Flip.

***

"March, four days later," the Book narrated.

Milo’s pebble stayed in his left pocket. It made a small bulge that his mother noticed while doing laundry.

"What’s this?" she asked, holding it up to the kitchen light.

"A boy gave it to me."

"What boy?"

"The white-haired boy. He said it was important."

Patricia, Milo’s mom, slipped the pebble into her jewelry box while she finished the laundry.

"She meant to give it back," the Book said. "...She forgot."

The five of them watched it all play out, and Raj raised a hand. "Why do we care about Milo and his mom again?" he asked.

Ethan nodded. "You know, I was wondering the same thing."

Amara, along with Hiro and Sophia murmured, "same."

The Book snapped shut. "Maybe I should just stop now. Since you all know better." Around them, the story paused.

"Hey." Sophia looked at the frozen scene. "Don’t be like that."

"Yeah... we apologize," Amara added. "We just can’t see the bigger picture like you can."

The Book’s cover opened up slowly, then it began flipping. "Nice."

"Thank you." Amara grinned softly.

***

The story suddenly fast-forwarded and they found themselves in a different scene.

"December. One year later," the Book said.

On Christmas Eve, Patricia opened the jewelry box to find a pair of earrings, and she spotted the pebble.

"I’ll wrap this up with Milo’s present." She put it in her coat pocket. "I’m sure he’d be excited to see it." She was about to head downstairs to the Christmas tree when her phone rang.

It was a call from her sister. She was at the hospital in Cincinnati.

Patricia immediately rushed out to her car and drove through freezing rain, the pebble in her coat pocket.

At a rest stop outside Wilmington, she reached for her credit card and the pebble fell from her pocket. It rolled under the bathroom stall door, coming to rest against the base of the toilet in the adjacent stall.

Patricia never noticed.

The Book’s pages flipped, and the world blurred around them. When it settled, snow covered the parking lot.

"January," the Book resumed its narration. "The rest stop bathroom was cleaned by a woman named Gloria every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:00 AM."

Amara watched as Gloria found the pebble while mopping and almost threw it away. But it was smooth, almost intentionally so, and her grandson collected rocks.

She put it in her apron pocket. At the end of her shift, she drove to her daughter’s house. Her grandson, David, was eight and obsessed with geology.

"Found this for you, little man." She handed it over to her grandkid.

"Awesome!" David took the pebble, hugged Gloria and rushed into his room.

He immediately placed it in his rock tumbler that night, along with a handful of quartz he’d gathered from the creek behind their house, and the machine began polishing.

When David eventually removed it, the pebble was slightly smaller and smoother. He decided then he was going to take it to show-and-tell at Mena Elementary.

Flip.

***

David’s show-and-tell was on a Friday.

His teacher, Mr. Harrow, looked irritable, rubbing circles against the side of his head as though nursing a migraine.

"Alright David, pass it around the class," Mr. Harrow said.

David passed the pebble around. When it got to Josh, who attended the same class as David, he rolled it on his palm.

"Lame!" he yelled before tossing it out the window.

"Josh! Detention! Friday after school!" Mr. Harrow snapped. "You know, for someone who’s been held back twice, you’re not really doing yourself any favors."

Raj pointed. "Hey, it’s one of those bullies."

"Gotta hand it to the kid." Sophia rubbed under her nose with an index finger. "He’s consistent."

"Yeah, a consistent jerk." Amara narrowed her eyes at him even though he couldn’t see her. "Poor David."

Meanwhile, the pebble sailed through the open window.

Thunk.

"Ow!"

A boy crossing the road clutched the back of his head. He suddenly stopped and looked down, picking up the cause of his pain. "A pebble?"

An incoming truck driver immediately slammed into the breaks as the truck swerved to avoid the kid in the middle of the road, taking out a fire hydrant by an alley instead.

Water geysered forty feet into the air and flooded the street.

Two months passed, the broken fire hydrant was replaced but it still leaked slightly, creating a permanent puddle that never dried.

Flip.

***

Time accelerated, and they found themselves two years after the fire hydrant incident.

The cracked pipe beneath the replaced hydrant widened, leaking out more water which led to the erosion of the ground.

Eventually, this ended up developing into a sinkhole no wider than a manhole cover. The city patched it with asphalt and some warning cones.

"Hold up!" Hiro yelled, and the story immediately stopped around them. "Where’s this going?" he asked. "Is this some final destination shit?"

Raj shrugged. "I don’t know... I’m kind of invested now."

"Yeah?" Amara smiled, bumping her shoulder into his. "I’m kind of curious to see where this is going."

The Book’s pages fluttered impatiently. "Finished?!" It tilted toward Hiro. "Or do you want to continue for us?"

Hiro chuckled, raising both hands. "Carry on."

The story immediately resumed.

The warning cones were stolen by teenagers on a Friday night. Then it was used it to block the driveway of a house where they knew a party was happening, as a prank.

"You guys remember the twerp called Gregory right?" the Book asked rhetorically. "Well the party was at his house," the Book said.