Yep, I've gone crazy (Open)

[felix]

At age fourteen, Felix Spurling found himself going insane.

There was no other explanation for what had been happening to him as of late. The random surges of electricity had started around mid-November last year. Back then, they had been barely noticeable; easily dismissed as static buildup. Over time, though, it became obvious that there was something odd going on with the young teen.

After all, a string of Christmas lights does not, under most circumstances, explode when touched. If Felix had not been so shaken from the ordeal, he would have thanked his lucky stars that at least they had not been on the tree when all the bulbs simultaneously burst from electric overload, leaving fragments of brightly colored glass strewn all over the living room floor. Nearly four months later they were still trying de-glass the carpet. His parents chalked up the accident to the fact that the lights were as old as their marriage – going on twenty years – and that it was surprising that nothing had happened before. Felix, of course, knew better. Knew, because he had actually felt the spike coming before it happened, but had still been powerless to stop it. Knew, because all it took was one touch from him to blow the whole string. It wasn’t even plugged in for Christ’s sake!

The teen fought to suppress a shiver at the thought of what might have happen if someone had walked in the room at that moment and witnessed the incident, if his parents or Marie had caught a glimpse of the spontaneous explosion he created. That was when it had really sunk in: there was something strange going on with him. Something abnormal. The incidents that followed had only cemented his belief; shocking one of his classmates during gym when they accidentally ran into each other during a dodge ball game was one of the more memorable ones. The guy had been pissed and accused him of sneaking a taser into class. Which everyone in the class knew was impossible. Thankfully Derek was well-known for having the I.Q. of a turnip, so no one paid much attention to his accusation. Except Felix. Still, when nothing major had happened for about a month, he was starting to believe that maybe the whole thing had just been the product of a warped imagination.

Then the other day in a fit of anger at his laptop for losing a paper he had been working on for three freaking days, he blew it up. Now literally “blew it up;” there was no big explosion, no fire. Just a slightly smoking laptop that refused to turn on again. Yesterday he had taken it in to the local repair guy and waited several hours in the small, boring store just to find out that something had completely fried the hardware. He had wanted to kill his laptop, and if the guy was to be believed, he did.

This brought him to where he currently was, wasting his Sunday at the local library, seated at one of their archaic PCs, scouring the internet for answers to why reason, not to mention the laws of physics, had suddenly departed from his life.

Click. Went the mouse as he tried yet another link off of Ye Olde Search Engine. Another site, another complex jumble of terms he could never hope to comprehend with his ninth-grade knowledge of physics. Green eyes scanned line after line of gibberish, trying to make sense of it. Trying to make sense of the weirdness ordinary life had given way to. Still nothing. Sighing, the boy clicked the “back” arrow at the top of the browser, found another link, and repeated the whole process. This one, a page about weak electric fishes and electric eels was a bit more helpful inasmuch that it stated living things could indeed create electric charges.

Of course, it wasn’t that helpful considering that Felix was human, not an eel.

Sighing, the boy leaned back in his chair, so that only two of its legs touched the floor. This was going nowhere. All that he had come up with in his search for answers were a ton of university-level articles on the properties and application of electricity, a page on eels, and several weird role-play sites (vaguely, he remembered his sister being addicted to those). Nothing that could possibly tell him what was going on with the weird electric pulses he seemed to be experiencing. ‘Looks like this unsolved mystery is gonna remain just that; unsolved.’ He mused silently. Well, he had had enough of fruitless searching for one day. In one motion he stood and stretched, working out the stiffness that had built up from a morning spent sitting in front of a computer screen. If he went home now, he could still catch some reading time before dinner. Normally, that was his gaming time, but after what had happened to his laptop he was determined to stay away from his gameboy lest it meet a similar fate. At least until he figured out what in hell’s name was happening to him.

The trek to the door was a short one. Before he exited, though….

“Hey mom, I’m leaving!” He called out, one hand on the door as he gazed back at the front desk. His mother, a woman in her forties with hair nearly as blond as his own, nodded back.

“Are you going over to Michael’s house?” She asked, putting down the book she had been reading. Sundays at the library were pretty slow.

“No, they left on vacation Friday. You know, starting Spring Break a few days early?” Felix replied, a soft smile spreading across his face. Sure it was lonely without his friend around, but Michael was finally getting along with his step-father. Not that long ago he had hated the man who had abruptly taken hid dead father's place. I guess we both have changed since entering high school. He’s gotten more mature, and I-I’ve turned into a freak.

Felix’s smile wavered for a moment, just a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Mrs. Spurling. It was not often her cheerful son was visibly upset. It must have been because Michael was away.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be back by the time Spring Break’s over.” She added one of her own bright smiles for comfort; Felix had to get it from somewhere. “Oh! And be careful when you get home. You know strange things have been going on around the house.”

“I will,” he said quickly before practically running out the door. He could not let her see the guilt on his face. Mrs. Spurling, you see, was a paranormal buff. Paranormal investigation shows were her favorite thing on television and what little space on her bookshelf was not filled with romance novels belonged to several books on ghosts, poltergeists, and other paranormal phenomenon. So when things started breaking/exploding in her house, what was her conclusion?

Mrs. Spurling was convinced there was a poltergeist living in their house.

If he had not been so worried about bring found he would have thought it hilarious. Really? A ghost was in their house breaking stuff? If only. He himself was the root of the problem and the worst part was he had no clue why. Maybe she’s on the right track, the boy thought with a grim smile, nodding to a few passerby as he strolled. One of the advantages to living in a small town was that virtually everything, including home, was within walking distance. Maybe I’m possessed or something, and that’s why this stuff keeps happening to me. Makes about as much sense as being a human eel does. He sad a sudden mental image of a man with an eel’s head and even his current mood could stop him from laughing to himself. Where did that come from?

Suddenly a loud buzzing noise pulled him away from his ridiculous thoughts. He forgot that he had left his cell phone on vibrate while in the library. Momentarily his hand retreated into the pocket of his favorite plaid shorts only to return a few seconds later with his phone. It was a text from Michael, still on his trip. Felix was about to flip the phone open to read it when an elderly man, in leather jacket of all things, walked out of the store he was passing and right into him.

Again he felt the electricity building up before the actual shock came, coursing through his body at the same instant the old guy walked into him. It was…well, if he had to describe it, it was like what happened when someone turned the hair dryer on next to his cat; it jumped in alarm. Then, in a split second, it was over.

“Ah, oh no, are you okay?” Felix asked frantically, looking at the old man. He didn’t appear to be hurt from the shock, but then again, electricity didn’t always leave marks on the skin. Realization dawned on the boy when he realized that the man’s jacket must have significantly blocked the charge. Especially since the aforementioned man was staring at him like he was crazy for being so worried about a little bump.

“Now, son, I may be old, but I’m not fragile. You should watch where you’re going, though.” Felix nodded, feeling admonished. Hopefully this wasn’t going to turn into another “back in my day” (or BIMD as he called it) lecture. Lucky for him it didn’t and the man walked away without another word. The blond boy sighed in relief –

-only to have his widen as he noticed the cell phone in his hand was now smoking. Oh no, oh no, oh hell no!

“Ah, I can’t believe it! First my laptop, and now this!” Felix yelled, looking at what used to be his phone. The smoking subsided within a few seconds and the battery hadn’t exploded, but it was still damaged beyond foreseeable repair. In the space of one weekend he had managed to break not one, but two appliances with those freaky electric shocks.

Yes, Felix was almost certain he was going insane.

(OOC: Sorry if it's needlessly wordy. I have a problem with that. )

[Ϛ Fey DuChance]

The ways in which the Academy located potential Gifted Ones were mostly a mystery even to Fey, an Agent tasked with finding targets and introducing them to the Academy. She had heard many different explanations; Precogs with their minds turned toward potential accidents in futures where potential Gifted Ones hadn't learned to control their powers, Clairvoyants with a knack for zeroing in on supernatural phenomena, Technomancers scouring the Internet, police records and scanners, and governmental files for suspicious happenings, and a few more ridiculous ideas.

Fey suspected that, if anything, it was a mix of these things and others. However, conjecture was neither her job or something she found interesting — whatever they were doing, it was working, and that was all that really mattered to her.

The vast majority of the time she was deployed, it was to introduce confirmed Gifted Ones to the Academy. Not always the easiest job, but straight-forward, and usually interesting. Occasionally, though, she was deployed on surveillance, perhaps because the Academy hadn't been able to gather enough evidence but were nearly certain she could move in, perhaps because the ones who normally did surveillance were unavailable. Felix Spurling was one of the former cases.

The Academy, acting on a tip from psychiatric records that someone named "Derek" had claimed to have been shocked by a taser in the face of insurmountable evidence to the contrary, had looked into Felix and found further anecdotal evidence of Electrokinesis in the form of Felix's mother chatting to someone she thought was a neighbour about how faulty Christmas lights could be.

From that point on, they had watched him, but there hadn't been enough evidence to disprove coincidence, and the case had quickly been moved to the backburner. It was only when a red flag came up in the form of a fried computer being taken to a repair shop that the case was re-opened, with Fey being assigned to surveillance. She just needed visual evidence of him using the power and she would be allowed to finally move in.

So it was that she had spent past day and most of the current one following him from a distance, watching for the next time his powers manifested. She was enjoying it so far, the library in particular due to a love of the smell of books, but if it took much longer she would quickly bore. Surveillance was not for her, and most of what she did was cart around the equipment they used to watch him. Her eyes were made useless by the button camera on her jacket, her ears by the recording device in her throat mic.

"He's been researching electricity all day. We've so got him. He's trying to figure out what the hell is happening to him."

The voice spoke directly into Fey's ear, and it might have been unsettling if she wasn't used to that sort of thing. Odji, the voice of an ancient supernatural being, and Fey's good friend, spoke directly to her mind from the scarab pendant she always wore around her neck. This time it was no ancient speaking to her through an artifact she had found in Egypt, though; it was a Technopathic Agent speaking over a communicator, monitoring Felix's computer activity from headquarters.

"Or, he's researching something for school," she whispered, watching Felix from across the room. "We still haven't actually seen him use Electrokinesis."

I do not understand why you refuse to listen to me. He is 'Gifted' just as you are, I can feel it.

Fey sighed. Odji was not one to sit idly by and let her do her job unfettered. She would leave his pendant in her apartment and be done with it, but that always made him cranky, and he occasionally had something useful to say. In fact, he had saved her life on more than one occasion with his observations.

"Yeah, well, the Academy doesn't exactly trust the gut feeling of a pendant that they can't even figure out the inner workings of, so we're going to wait."

"What?"

"Do you look like a pendant, Mike? I was talking to Odji."

"Oh, riiiiight. Your 'talking pendant'." He was clearly a skeptic.

Fey didn't grace him with a response. She didn't think he even deserved one, but more importantly, she had a job to do; Felix was on the move. Placing the book she had been watching him over the cover of onto a table, she made her way out of the building ahead of Felix while he stretched and said goodbye to his mother.

She was standing outside, feigning interest in a notice plastered to the wall, when Felix came outside and bumped into the old man. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the exchange, mostly uninterested.

"Bingo! I just picked up an energy spike. That was way too big to be static."

"The man seems to be fine," Fey whispered, still surveying the scene in her peripherals. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, well, check out the jacket he's wearing. And I'll bet my week's salary those are rubber-soled shoes. He's not grounded, and he's well-insulated. But if you don't believe me, just check out the target's phone."

Fey swivelled her head toward Felix, and behind her enormous sunglasses, her eyes widened with excitement, a smile coming unbidden to her lips. His back was to her, but she could see an unmistakable trail of smoke coming from the boy's cell phone.

That was it. They had him! No more surveillance, she could have jumped for joy.

"You're clear to bring him in, I just got the approval. They're leaving it up to you how to approach it; he's not classified as immediately dangerous. They'd rather you keep his family out of the loop, though; the mother would probably explode if she found out her son was a source of 'paranormal activity'."

Fey nodded. These things were easier with straight-forward orders to follow by the letter, but every once in awhile it was nice to be able to do things whatever way she wanted. Especially since the Academy often chose to worst way possible to do things, for reasons she couldn't fathom.

She sauntered up to Felix, who had proceeded to yell his thoughts out to the world. Fey had to laugh, a light, airy sound; the poor guy was kind of cute, in all his misfortune. "Hey, don't worry about the phone," she said, making her way into his line of sight. "You can always get a new one, right? Maybe the thing even has a warranty."

Her un-asked-for advice came with a bright, friendly smile. The best approach to these things, Fey found, was to be amicable and completely honest. And she would be honest, she would tell him everything, but for the time being, she had to break it to the kid lightly. He probably thought he was going nuts, the last thing she needed to do was make that feeling worse.

"Do you mind if I walk with you? I'd like to talk to you about something."