I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am.

Birdhouse in your Soul - They Might Be Giants.

Six-year-old Mohammed Abdul had not set the tablecloth on fire, that much he knew.

He stared at the smoking piece of fabric in confusion as his mother frantically put out what was left of the dying flames. Her eyes were wide with fear as she knelt down before him and carefully inspected his arms and face for burned skin. Abdul saw tears glisten in her them and felt a stab of guilt for making her worry so much. It had been a long, uneventful day and he had spent it at home, sick with chickenpox and unbelievably bored. His friends had all been instructed to keep their distance until he got better so for the last hour, he had been trying desperately to get his busy mother to stop chopping vegetables and come to play with him. He never meant to use such drastic measures though, the fire had appeared on its own, twisting and bending in the air like a djinn from the fairy tales she read to him every night. Sure, it had seemed a bit out of control at first but somehow, Abdul knew that it was not dangerous at all. It probably was one of the good djinn, the kind that granted wishes to brave adventurers and didn't make them go awry on purpose.

It was then when he caught something moving under the table and saw a small red-feathered hawk huddling in fear in the furthest, darkest corner of the room. Big orange eyes broke their terrified hold on the charred tablecloth, then turned to gaze at him unblinking as if the small creature was trying to imprint his image on its bottomless pupils. Abdul gazed back, intrigued, watching the bird hesitantly make its way out of the corner and into the light, stumbling like a baby taking its first steps. He thought of newborn animals in cartoons and how they tended to label the first thing they saw as their mother and wondered if that was the reason behind the orange eyes suddenly losing their wild, panicked shine and softening with recognition. Finally, the bird swayed on small wobbly feet and staggered clumsily towards him, leaving no prints on the soot scattered over the floor.

Abdul clicked his tongue at it covertly and tried to shoo it away to no avail. He was sure his mother would chase the animal out of the house the moment she laid her eyes on it. He was ready to hide it behind his back but she seemed not to notice the hawk at all, not even when he threw his arms around its tiny body to convince himself that it was indeed real. Soft red feathers tickled his face, warm like embers wrapped in cloth. He sneezed and as he opened his eyes again, he glimpsed a fiery ring bloom around them.

For a while Abdul stared fascinated as the fire licked his unharmed skin. He had seen fire-jugglers and other self-proclaimed magicians pull out a similar trick very convincingly but even they seemed wary of the flaming tongues dancing before them, and they always seemed to smell of liniment and burnt hair. Watching the bright orange ribbons coil around his fingers, he wondered whether they were just using the wrong kind of fire. This one whispered to him, melted into his very soul and flowed within his veins. It would never dream of harming him or anyone he cared about.

He looked at the hawk in his arms again, studied it closely and then pressed it tighter against his chest. If there was indeed magic in the world, this was exactly what it should feel like.

Iggy had always been a firm believer in the fact that if you had special powers, you should make sure no one ever found out.

He really wanted to add "and pray you're the only one with them" but he already suspected that could not be true. It would be indeed strange that out of all the semi-intelligent creatures that roamed the world, he was the only one that had the insane luck to conjure up an invisible monster made of out sand that only he could see. The idea that he shouldn't be the only one with those powers never crossed his mind; he just found it highly unlikely and therefore, spent most of his life looking over his shoulder for the inevitable confrontation. He couldn't help but feel strangely disappointed when it never came.

The stray dogs in New York had been way too easy to take over. They did his bidding without hesitation and were all, without exception, terrified of him. Even so, there were nights when he lay awake, wondering whether one of them had secretly caught on to his ace in the hole and was waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Some nights, he almost wished that it would happen already, just to save him the pointless wait and finally provide him with a fight that wasn't won before the first blow even fell. Having clawed his way out of the gutter, he was no stranger to violence.

It was at that point when his treacherous mind was quick to remind him that if he had clawed his way out of anything, it was out of a big fluffy doggy bed with cute pink paw prints, bought by a very rich family that was clearly hoping for a female puppy. He had willfully chosen the gutter, the mud and the rain because he couldn't stand the humans that had chosen him, or any other humans to begin with. Whenever they cooed at him when he walked by and happily attempted to pet his head he snapped and growled and tore out their hair if they got too close. There was something in that high pitch every human voice acquired in his presence that made his blood boil and his body shake with rage. His breed had the misfortune of being considered cute and desirable and there was nothing in the world that got under his skin more, especially since his true self, the one clad in metal and rubber and coarse sand, walked beside him every day and was a constant reminder of the fact that no living creature would ever think of him as anything more than an adorable and occasionally yappy decoration. He had spent most of his life trying to inspire quite the opposite reaction, to the puzzled bewilderment of other much less fortunate dogs with scary looking jaws and hair falling out in patches that he had come across in the slums of the Big Apple. Some of his closest allies even dared to insinuate that he had been a fool to pass up his chance at a carefree life, but Iggy just rolled his eyes at their envious expressions and walked away.

He would gladly be a fool on the street than a slobbering, pampered plaything in a cage.

His silent companion bared its invisible teeth in the dark and let out a low growl of agreement.

Joseph Joestar was not known to dwell on the past.

He was acutely aware that this made him somewhat of an exception among the people his age. He had been in countless meetings with gray-haired foreign investors that usually ended in some bar where they all recounted their glory days over overpriced drinks. Joseph's strategy for dealing with that was to shake their hands and pat their backs amidst bouts of roaring laughter and just keep their glasses full because happy inebriated people made rash decisions that they would later be too ashamed to pull back on. As far as he was concerned, it was not trickery as long as they got something out of it too, that is to glorify their past selves and dream about what could have been if only they had chosen a different career path or hadn't gotten married or hadn't done this or that. He listened to them intently, trying to catch information that could later prove useful and in his mind, pitied them. He did not miss his brash, chaotic youth at all, only the people he had shared it with and who were taken from him too soon. As long as he could keep the people who remained by his side safe and happy, he didn't care what happened five or ten or twenty years ago. He had a future to think of while the past would always be there, frozen in time like a butterfly encased in amber, beautiful and forever changeless.

It would take him a few years to discover that the past could also be a thorn in his side.

He never mentioned any of his deepest fears to Suzie, not even when the presence of the purple vines became impossible to ignore. For the longest time, he had just thought of them as a clever and nasty trick played on him by his deceased mother if he ever neglected his Ripple training. He had comforted himself with that idea because it brought back happy memories of her and Caesar, training together, playing pranks on one another and laughing their heart out even when they were at the receiving end. Laughter made everything easier back then, it prevented them from thinking about Santana and Cars and all of the terrible things that would happen if they failed to bring them down. The irony that he was using the same memories to drown himself in denial was not lost on him and yet, he still found himself fearful of looking deeper into his newly acquired power. Once he lifted up the curtain of ignorant bliss, he would be forced to play his part and he wasn't sure if he even remembered the script anymore.

Thankfully, one day, his thorny companion grew tired of waiting and did it for him.

He sat in his office playing absentmindedly with a pair of cracked clackers as he watched the smoke of his cigarette spiral in a thin grey trail towards the ceiling. Lisa Lisa always disapproved of him smoking; she claimed it messed with his breathing so he only did it when he wanted to spite her or when he needed something to calm his nerves. He leaned forward to stub out the butt in his increasingly full ashtray and saw the ashes slowly crawl out of their glass prison and converge in front of him forming an unmistakable picture of a coffin.

Joseph nearly wanted to laugh at this way too ominous warning before he glimpsed the three letters written on its side and felt his heart sink. There in front of him was the truth he had been so afraid to face, laid bare like an open challenge, a threat to everyone he ever knew and loved. He thought of Holly and her son, of blissfully oblivious Suzie and, for a moment, the memory of dark brown eyes, warm as chocolate and just as sweet, pecked at his guilty heart. He had been an idiot to indirectly drag Tomoko into this hot mess but there was nothing he could do about that now. Now he had a responsibility to all of them, to wield the power of the past he had wanted to keep buried for so long and to end the Joestar curse once and for all.

Jean Pierre Polnareff had a guardian angel.

Or at least, that was what Sherry had always claimed whenever he got off with only a few scratches after fighting much stronger people or when he was about to fall flat on his face, only to recover his balance in the nick of time. He used to laugh and reply that if life continued this way, he would definitely need one but the truth was that he did feel a presence watching over him sometimes. The priest at their local church had insisted that it was their mother, keeping an eye on them from Heaven. Polnareff had just scoffed at those words, carefully hiding his reaction from his sister's starry eyes. He had never believed in God or understood half of the words the congregation repeated in a droning monotone every Sunday. His mother, however, had faith for both of them and had always insisted on bringing him along since he was the gift she was the most thankful for. Sitting next to her on a wooden bench as she quietly closed her eyes in prayer was a memory that he intended to treasure and pass on to Sherry, even if she could barely remember her face.

There was probably something to the old man's wishful thinking because he always sensed that silent comforting presence when things got rough. As the years went by, he began to notice it more and more often. When Sherry died, he could almost feel its invisible hand on his shoulder even if, at the time, he had been numb with grief and oblivious to the strange ritual the people were conducting around him. It was only when her coffin was lowered in the ground and the tearful friends and relatives had gone that he realized he would never hear her voice again. That night, he refused to go home and face the empty space that she left and decided instead to go to the gym and train.

Fencing was like meditating to him, it left his mind a blank space and made his body a precise, fast weapon that got more and more skillful the more he let his muscle memory take over. That night however, it was a vast canvas of red, his mind boiling behind his eyes, hotter that the fires of Hell. The soul crushing despair that he had felt at the funeral was rapidly becoming fury; fury at the man who had taken Sherry away from him and above all, at himself for not preventing it. It was too late for him to spare her the slow agony she had endured before dying but it was not too late to hunt that monster down and tear him apart limb by limb. Maybe then, he could come back to his sister's grave and beg for her forgiveness.

That was when he felt something connect with his weapon and force it down.

A tall, thin shadow stood before him, rapier raised high in a courteous salute. Its silver armor gleamed softly under the buzzing lamps as the look of electric blue eyes pierced him from the depths of a sharp helm. He lunged forward to strike at the unwelcome interruption but stopped himself halfway through as a familiar sensation took hold of him again. He raised his eyes to look at the guardian angel Sherry had once described and felt his breath catch in his throat as the armored knight took a step towards him and bowed.

Jean Pierre Polnareff had never claimed to understand everything the world threw at him but he had learned to recognize an opportunity when it presented itself and to take it without hesitation. It was a valuable skill both in fencing and in life and when he felt those blue eyes set upon him again, he was even more determined. Whatever this mysterious figure was, it understood how he felt, it shared his anger and it would help him carry out his revenge. He lowered his rapier to return the knight's respectful bow and for a second, felt his bitter skepticism about God waver.

It's not that five-year-old Kakyoin didn't like the company, he just wished that they could talk to each other.

At least now he had someone to play Chinese checkers against, though almost all of their games tended to end in a draw or as a disorganized mess on the star-shaped board. He also had to move the other party's pieces himself since the soft green appendages were too weak to hold anything. His parents had been amused at the process and usually offered to play with him when they saw him reach across the board to push the rival pieces into their places. Despite their good intentions, they never had time to complete the game so he eventually learned to decline their offers and rely on his silent companion to point to the piece he wanted to move and its intended position. The way he saw it, he could always find time to play with his parents later but his newfound friend went unseen by everyone in his household so Kakyoin was really the only one he could play with.

Even so, Kakyoin had to admit that his repertoire could get a bit limited. His friend was not strong enough to play marbles or spin spinning tops and there were only so many good hiding spots in the house to play hide and seek. Tag was also not an option since his mother disapproved of him running around the house chasing things that weren't there, no matter how many times he had tried to convince her otherwise. That was why they mostly ended up sitting across the hexagonal board evening after evening while the light seeped away from the sky. Playing against him always felt different than playing against his parents or other kids from the neighborhood. It no longer seemed like a competition of one mind against another. Instead the constellation of pieces on the board became a puzzle being solved from both sides one careful step at a time. The eventual chaos that resulted from their matches was almost like a conversation, the only one they could have since all his efforts to get his invisible friend to speak to him had been in vain. There were times that he had gotten him to trace a crude drawing in in the air but that was as far as he had come. Sometimes, Kakyoin wondered if he could even communicate with words.

When he finally realized he could test that, he felt sheepish for not having thought of it sooner.

On a rainy October night, he pulled out a piece of paper and arranged hiragana characters in a neat table while his invisible friend peeked curiously from behind his shoulder. He had seen some of the kids at kindergarten use something similar to talk to spirits when the teachers looked the other way. For a while, he had been hopeful that it would work and that his invisible friend would finally have more company but the results have been disappointing. Then again, none of those kids could ever decide what they wanted to talk about or which question the spirits should answer first so it must have been very confusing for them. That's why he would start small.

Slowly, he placed a red crayon on the first hiragana of his name and then carefully drew an arrow towards the next ones, stopping at each character for a couple of seconds. When he was done, he sounded out the characters, traced the red arrow with his finger and pointed at himself.

"That's my name" he said and placed the red crayon at his side. He pointed at his companion, whose eyes were intently studying the signs on the sheet of paper and asked "What's your name?"

The yellow eyes looked up at him stumped. Kakyoin picked up a green crayon and waited for him to point at the characters like he had done so many times before with the checkers pieces. This time, however, his friend remained still, looking at him in confusion. Eventually, he reached out towards the signs and traced the same path that Kakyoin had drawn, before pointing at himself.

"No, no, that's my name" Kakyoin corrected him and pointed helpfully at the red crayon. "This one" he raised the green one before the slatted eyes, "is for you. What is your name? You do have a name, right?"

His friend's hand just fell still again, hanging over the sheet like an indecisive player over a board. He looked at him, then back at the characters, then gently repeated the path the red crayon had taken. His usually calm face was beginning to look disheartened and Kakyoin felt a stab of guilt as he realized that maybe his friend really had no name. He vaguely remembered a story book his mother had read to them about a little boy that had his name stolen and had to beg a river god to give him a new one. Maybe something similar had happened to his invisible companion and now he was wandering the world, hoping to find someone to help him.

If that was really true, he was determined to do so. He would pick a name that would do him true justice. One that people would remember forever so no one could ever steal it again.

His gaze hovered pensively over the green crayon.

Jotaro Kujo wouldn't admit it, but he was afraid.

In fact, he was nearly approaching terrified when he stumbled out of a dark alleyway, specks of blood drying on his clothes. His breath came out in shallow gasps and hung in front of his face in the cold November air. He took a quick glance around for anyone that could have spotted him but the narrow street was deserted except for a few stray cats that bolted in random directions the moment they saw him approach. Their yellow eyes shined faintly as they followed his every move from the shadows and Jotaro wondered if they could see what he saw. If so, the look of absolute terror and the raised hairs on their backs were more than justified. At least these creatures would see it coming if he decided to attack them unlike the poor bastards he had just left lying in a mangled heap of broken bones. Still, he doubted that being able to see their attacker would have given them an advantage. No human being could stand a chance against something that could punch through solid bricks.

He reached the main street and leaned against a vending machine struggling to control his shaking hands. Luckily, there was no blood on them and no blood meant no proof. Once he got his uniform and his shoes clean, there would be no trace left of today's incident. Even if Ogawa and his goons were brainless enough to contact the authorities, his fingerprints weren't even on the scene. He had never come to touch any of his attackers after all and the thought only made his stomach sink deeper. He could have killed any of them as easily as crushing a paper cup and no police department in the world could pin that on him. He had the power to commit effectively any crime and walk away with impunity.

He hated every second of it.

A sharp intrusive thought cut through his dissipating adrenaline cloud as he felt rage swell in his chest again. He had been an idiot to accept Ogawa's challenge, he had been a bigger idiot to come to this secluded alley to finish what they had started on the school grounds last week. He should have known that it was a trap and when three more figures stepped out of the shadows brandishing knives he could have kicked himself for allowing his pride to overtake his reason. However, when his invisible protector lunged at the four gang members and proceeded to beat them into a bloody pulp, he could not help but feel a burst of immense satisfaction and exhilaration as he saw the smug smile disappear from Ogawa's face and become a frozen rictus instead. Bastard should have played by the rules in the first place. Just because he had connections to the yakuza and could terrorize the school as he pleased, did not mean he could get away with everything. People like him deserved to be taught a lesson every once in a while. Jotaro had every right to kick his entitled ass until it broke in half.

The spirit at the back of his mind stirred restlessly and tensed in anticipation of another fight. Jotaro pushed it back and fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket trying to calm his racing heart. He remembered how good trashing Ogawa's minions had felt, how intoxicating the feeling of absolute power had been and dread washed over him once again. Yes, it would have been so easy to kill them, so frighteningly easy that it made him sick to his stomach. His violent outbursts were famous in his high school which made almost everyone keep away from him whenever possible but he had learned to control his strength and never let it overflow and dominate him. Perhaps his new invisible companion was just an inevitable product of all that pent up anger but if it was, it was much more dangerous than Jotaro himself had ever been. He was not sure he could control it for long, he wasn't even sure if he could do it now.

He took a long tug out of his cigarette and sighed. There was only one way out of this and he did not like it one bit. His mother would be impossible about it but he was willing to deal with that as long as it kept her and everyone else away from him while he figured out a way out of his current predicament.

And so, without letting his mind linger on his actions, he walked into a police station and heard himself say "I want to turn myself in for attempted murder."

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