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    Eight Years Ago


    Casey was supposed to sit in the sandbox and wait for her new friend to come back outside with the phone, so she could call 911. Perched there, huddling in on herself as her body shook uncontrollably, the five-year-old blonde girl couldn''t stop whimpering. The front of her shirt was still covered in the remains of what had been in her stomach when she walked into the house, only to find her mother… her mother hurt very bad. Gone. Murdered. Even at that age, Casey knew what murdered meant, and her mother was very that. Her mother would never be waking up again, would never talk to her, never tell her stories or--


    Before she knew what she was doing, the little girl was already on her feet. She had to move. She couldn''t sit there. It felt like she was going to throw up again. Her stomach was flipping over on itself. Tears streamed down her face once more as she stumbled away from the sandbox, almost falling over. Her mouth kept moving, the word, ‘Mama’, silent yet visible on her lips.


    Within a few steps, her blind wandering took the girl close to the spot where her new friend had taken the bad man. She could see the shattered glass where he had been thrown through the window, along with an imprint in the grass where he had been laying. The grass itself was scorched in his vague outline. Seeing that, though she had no idea what it meant, the girl still physically recoiled and spun away. Unfortunately, she slipped on a pool of blood that had dripped from Jones’s soaked pants and shoes as she had stood over the man. With a yelp, Casey fell. Her hand came away sticky, and she looked at it to find the palm and fingers coated in the same blood she had just slipped in. The sight made her give another silent whimper, before she hurriedly scrambled up to race back the way she had come. Suddenly, she couldn''t get back to the sandbox fast enough. She just wanted to be back there playing.


    Dropping her small form into the sand, Casey stared at her own palm and fingers, sticky as they were with blood. A flash of memory went through the girl’s mind. In the room, in… in the place where her mother had died, where all that blood had been, the bad man had a knife. When Jones had picked him up, dragging him away from Casey, he had driven the knife into her leg. She took it away, and had barely seemed to notice the attack at all. She acted like it didn''t hurt. Like she was a real strong ninja turtle. She even made the knife disappear like a ninja would. Or a wizard. Or a magic pony.


    Either way, Casey’s friend was stabbed, and she acted like she didn’t feel it at all. But Casey had seen blood. It was all mixed with her mother’s, and now it was on the grass. And on her hand. Staring at that hand, the girl gave a low whimper. Blood. She wanted it gone. She wanted it off. Looking around, ghe tried to wipe it off on the grass. But that didn''t work. Taking her other hand to her mouth, the girl licked her fingers and started to rub at the blood on her opposite palm. A low, keening sound escaped the child as she scrubbed her hands together, licked her fingers again, and continued to try to get the blood off. Soon she had blood on both hands and was rubbing them together against themselves, her pants, and the grass. Licking her fingers in an attempt to continue cleaning them essentially managed little more than to shove blood in her mouth, which tasted funny. Not as bad as throwing up, but still not like cookies.


    The squeak of the sliding door made her gaze snap that way. It was Jones. It was her new friend. Seeing her, Casey whimpered to herself. She didn''t want to make her friend mad, so she didn''t tell her about moving away from the sandbox when she had been told to stay. She stayed perfectly still as the older girl approached to put the box of cookies next to her, and the cordless phone in her hand.


    Phone. Call. Belatedly, Casey remembered what she was supposed to be doing. With a deep shudder, she pressed the three important buttons on the phone. Then she held it up to her ear.


    “Hello? You need to come please.


    “My mama died.”


    ******


    Six Years Ago


    “You really have the Technodrome!?” Seven-year-old Casey blurted out loud as she and an assortment of other children stood in line leading up to the spot on the baseball field where their teacher was rolling the kickball for each child to take a turn running up to, well, kick it. The other second-grader class at the school in this new city (well, sort of new, as Casey had been moved there almost immediately after the funeral for her mother two years earlier by her adoptive parents) were all along the field, waiting to catch the ball and try to hit the runner with it. This was their recess, and the teachers had insisted that everyone needed to kick the ball at least once before they could go off and do their own thing.


    The boy she was talking to, a tall, red-haired figure with thick freckles, gave a quick, almost violent nod. “Uh huh, uh huh! The big one that opens up so you can put toys inside it! Then it closes and makes all these lights and sounds and stuff.”


    “Hey, that sounds cool, Wayne.” The boy speaking, a quite tall (for a second-grader, anyway), quite thin figure with long black hair and a pinched face, put his arm around him. “Maybe you should bring it in so we can all play with it. Like, take turns.”


    “Leave him alone, Chad,” Casey demanded, eyes narrowing. “He doesn’t have to bring his toy in. You’ll just take it from him like you did the space shuttle.”


    “Nobody asked you, Spacey,” Chad snapped, using the name that he and other kids had so cunningly developed to refer to the times when she stared off into space, thinking about that day two years earlier. “So why don’t you mind your own beeswax?”


    Thinking about not only ninja turtles, but other superheroes, and about the mysterious woman who had helped her so much that day, Casey squared her shoulders and stared at the boy. “I said, leave him alone.”


    For a brief moment, it looked as though the two young children would come to blows. But their intense staring contest was interrupted as the teacher on the mound blew her whistle and called Chad’s name, waving him over. He, in turn, sneered at Casey before walking over to take his turn. When the ball came, his lanky legs carried him forward before the boy punted the ball further than any other student had that day. Whooping along with his friends, the boy ran the bases before any of the students from the other class could collect it, and made it back to home plate. His gaze was on the girl who had annoyed him so much. “Tell you what, Spacey. Kick the ball further than me, and I''ll leave you and Wayne alone for the rest of the school year. And I’ll find his dumb shuttle so he can have it back.”


    Of course, the very thought of the girl kicking a ball further than he did made him snicker, which started a wave of laughter through other students. Which only made Casey’s expression darken even more, a deep flush crossing her face as she gave a soft huffing sound.


    Then it was her turn. Chad was really playing it up, amusing the class by visibly shivering and acting as though he was afraid she would actually beat his record. He kept alternating between that and teasing her by calling out ‘tips’ as though he was actually trying to help. But the tips amounted to, ‘Don’t fall on your butt and fart.’ He even pantomimed attempting to kick a ball and wildly sprawling, making a farting noise with a palm against his mouth. That one had the class in stitches.


    Casey wanted to put him in stitches. But she controlled herself, marching to what would have been the batter''s box if they were playing baseball, facing their teacher as the woman reared back to send the ball rolling toward her.


    “Ninja Turtle,” Casey whispered to herself, watching that ball bouncing her way. “Ninja Turtle. Jones. Please.” Her eyes closed briefly, then opened. The ball was almost right there. Letting out a heavy breath, the girl took one step, then a second. Her foot swung back before kicking forward, while a shout tore its way from her lips.


    Her foot collided with the ball, and it erupted up and away. In an instant, the ball cleared the heads of everyone on the field, sailed over the rest of the playground, and bounced a couple times on the roof of the main school building over a hundred yards away.


    For a few moments, there was no reaction at all. Both classes, their teachers, and the other students on the playground who had noticed, even a janitor who had been pushing a wheeled garbage bin along the pavement, stared that way. It was as though seeing a seven-year-old girl kick a ball that high and that far had completely broken them and left their minds rebooting for a good ten seconds.


    “Okay, people, where’s the ball?!” That was their teacher, her voice abruptly snapping Casey’s attention away from the roof far in the distance. Mrs. Pehtersvin was clapping her hands, looking around expectantly. “We just had it a second ago, who ran off with it?” She looked at Casey then, offering the girl an encouraging (and very confusing) smile. “Don’t worry, Case, you’ll get a chance to kick in just a minute. As soon as we… now where did it go?”


    Everyone over on the rest of the playground had gone back to what they were doing. Meanwhile, Casey’s classmates were looking around, asking each other where the ball was. None of them even glanced off toward the school building, where the girl herself could still see the thing lying on the very edge of the roof. It was caught against the raingutter.


    “Um.” Casey’s mouth opened, then shut, as the girl shifted her weight, head tilting sideways to continue staring at the ball.


    “What?”


    ******


    Four Years Ago


    People didn’t remember. Casey had realized that quite soon. Whenever she did something she shouldn’t have been able to do, they forgot about it within seconds. Kicking a ball a hundred yards, lifting Chad himself and throwing the annoying boy into the nearest tree, jumping from the grass to the roof of her adoptive parents’ home, even throwing a baseball through the wooden fence surrounding the yard right in front of half a dozen people. They forgot about it. They couldn’t remember what happened longer than a few seconds. And if she tried to explain it, they either thought she was making up stories, or forgot what she said as soon as they started to believe it.


    And it was more than just physical stuff. Now nine-years-old, she should have been in fourth grade. But she liked to read, and remembered almost everything that she had read, so the school had skipped her forward two grades. They might have skipped her all the way to junior high, but she had quickly realized that standing out too much would be a bad idea. Besides, she was already the freak nine-year-old in sixth grade. No way did she want to be the freak nine-year-old in seventh grade. Or worse, high school. So, despite knowing the answers to most things she was being asked, Casey carefully stopped herself from answering too much. And she certainly didn’t go around picking up older boys and throwing them into trees.


    Well, okay, not that often at least. Certainly less than they deserved.


    It wasn’t just the things she did that everyone else forgot or didn’t notice, either. There were… people who didn’t look like people. Casey had seen them now and then, around town. They were aliens or… or something. They looked different, but nobody acted like they did. They couldn’t see them. At first she had thought they were monsters, but they didn’t behave like monsters. They were just doing ordinary people things. It was weird. And whenever she started to try to talk to them, they ran away. So she couldn’t get any answers.


    All of this had to do with Jones, the woman she had met on the day that her mother had been murdered. Casey knew that much for sure, even if she didn’t know… basically anything else. Jones had called herself a Reaper, even though she sure didn’t look like what Casey thought a Reaper was supposed to be. Though she was pretty sure she kept mixing up Reapers and the Dementors from Harry Potter.


    Either way, all this new stuff that Casey could see and do was definitely related to Jones. She just… couldn’t figure out how. Even in the past couple years of figuring out as much as she could (which wasn’t much) about what was going on hadn’t led to any answers about what Reapers were. She’d looked them up in the library and online, but there was just… nothing useful. And a lot of it was conflicting. Had Jones been there to escort her mother to heaven or something? That was just… she didn’t know.


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    What Casey did know was that she was stronger, faster, and overall physically better than she should have been. Not to mention how easy it was for her to recall anything she read or looked at. She remembered things, but she also comprehended them more easily than her classmates. It was strange, and made her feel funny inside. She wanted to understand everything that had been happening to her, but she was pretty sure the only person who could explain it was Jones, and she had no way of finding the woman. The ‘Reaper’ had disappeared after that single night, and as far as Casey knew, no one else had even seen her. Which made the whole thing just… impossible. How was she supposed to find Jones?


    She had no idea. Which meant all she could do, for now, was keep pretending to be as normal as possible while searching for answers in books, or hoping that one of the not-humans she saw would stop running away whenever she went to ask questions.


    At the moment, part of ‘playing normal’ involved going along on this field trip that her sixth-grade class was taking to a bottling plant. Everyone on the bus had been talking excitedly amongst themselves for the entire hour-long drive, while Casey sat in the back, alternating her attention between watching the road and reading an old Grimm’s fairy tales book she had found in the back of the library. It was one of the heaviest and thickest books she had ever read, but she was enjoying it. Even if it didn’t actually give her any answers.


    On the other hand, she might not have gotten any hints from the book she was reading, but looking out the window as the bus pulled into a truck stop to get gas was another story. Her wandering gaze happened to catch sight of a tall, silver-skinned woman with little spikes all along her body. She was easily seven-feet in height, with long purple hair and arms that reached all the way to the ground. As Casey’s gaze locked onto her, a gasp escaping her, she could see the woman cuff another figure upside the head. That one was an orange-skinned fat man with tusks, who was holding an ordinary-looking man by the arm. At the smack from the tall, silver woman, the orange man yanked the other man with him, and all three disappeared behind the gas station.


    By that point, the bus had pulled to a stop. Students were getting off while the teacher and chaperone shouted out not to go very far and that they would do a headcount. Several specific students were specifically called out by name. Meanwhile, Casey slipped out of the bus (being smaller than her classmates thanks to being a couple years younger finally came in handy), and went running off. Instead of heading for the shop to buy candy or chips, or to the restroom, she slipped around the building the way she had seen the other three go.


    There wasn’t much room behind the building. Within thirty feet or so was a steep drop leading down to a rocky, almost empty riverbed at least a hundred feet down. But when Casey got there, she couldn’t see the human that had been dragged back there. The other two, the tall woman and fat man, were right at the edge, looking down with their backs to her. Casey crouched, trying to see what was going on.


    Unfortunately, she had barely found a spot at the edge of the building before the fat man raised his head. His voice was a snarl. “Spy.” And before Casey could even hope to move, a long, thick tentacle shot from the back of the man’s head. It wrapped around her wrists, trapping them together while hauling her over to the pair while she yelped out loud.


    And just like that, Casey was being held, suspended in the air in front of the two by the tentacle holding her wrists. A tentacle that simply formed out of the back of the man’s head. It was… it was… her first chance to get answers.


    “Do you know Jones?!” Casey demanded while dangling there. “The Reaper, do you know Jones the Reaper?!”


    Her question made the pair look at each other, before the tall, silver woman leaned in close. “Listen to me, little Heretic girl. You are very far away from your tree, aren’t you?”


    Before Casey could ask what tree they were even talking about, the fat man yanked her closer. “Ain’t no other Heretics here. Lemme munch on her, please? I always wanted to taste a Heretic and they’re usually impossible to grab like this. She’s so young and tender.”


    Eyes widening, Casey jerked violently against the creature’s grip. “S-stop it! Let me go! Let me go! Let--” Her foot lashed out, colliding against his face with as much force as she could muster.


    It was enough to make him jerk back with a cry, the tentacle releasing her to fall back to the ground.


    As she dropped, stumbling, the tall woman was right in her face. The mouth opened to reveal three rows of sharp teeth, even as she grabbed Casey’s hands with both of hers. As she did so, the younger girl saw a layer of ice immediately begin to form around her skin. The sight along with the feeling of sharp cold made her squeal, jerking her hands free. The quickly-forming ice shattered, before she shoved the woman as hard as she could. “Leave me alone!”


    The shove was too hard. It sent the woman stumbling backward, colliding with the fat man who had been right on the edge of the dropoff. With a pair of screams, both went flying over it and fell far, far below.


    Seeing that, Casey cried out, lunging that way. She fell to her knees right at the edge, staring over in time to see three figures lying motionless down there against the rocks. Two were the pair that she herself had just shoved over in her desperate flailing. The third was the human guy she had seen them--


    It was a good thing she was already kneeling, because Casey would have collapsed if she had been standing up. A sudden rush of… of everything went through the girl. She felt power, strength, and most importantly, knowledge flood into her.


    She knew what Heretics were. She knew what the fat man had been called. His name was Tumdun and he was known as an Icklor. The woman’s name was Vanehda (vuh-nay-duh) and she was part of a species known as Ylsiena (ill-see-ay-naw). Both of them were drug runners and the man they had just killed moments earlier was one of their mules who tried to steal from them.


    Casey knew their names, their species, and what had happened just now. But it was more than that. She knew everything about them. She knew how they grew up, she knew the people they knew. She knew their entire lives. Everything, all of it, the memories were just there in her head.


    And it didn’t stop there, it wasn’t just their lives. It was what they knew. Heretics. She knew what Heretics were, both the regular sort and the Boscher kind. She knew about the Bystander Effect, which really explained a lot. And Reapers, she knew what they were too, even though Jones didn’t really fit what these two knew about them. She knew… she knew all of that. All of it.


    She also knew what had happened to her. The blood. She had tasted Jones’ blood. It made her… it made her a Reaper-Heretic. Which was super rare or something. Except not, because there was Eden’s Garden and Crossroads, which were--


    Oh. Oh. It was a lot. It was so much. So very much. As she laid there, Casey saw one of her hands clutch the ground, spreading a thick layer of ice against the grass. Meanwhile, her other hand stretched out to about twice its normal length. Their powers. Their… the things they could do. She had absorbed that as well as their knowledge. She… she…


    Oh…


    Oh crap.


    *******


    Two Years Ago


    “That’s a really big tree.” Voice filled with awe, eleven-year-old Casey tilted her head back to stare up and up and up at the skyscraper-sized thing in front of her. Even from this spot somewhere on one of the gigantic branches (big enough to have a road and buildings along it), she could still barely see the top. It was staggering. Even bigger than Tumdun and Vanehda had assumed.


    “It is, isn’t it?” With a broad smile, the Heretic who had brought Casey here gestured upward. He was a short-ish man, barely five and a half feet, with graying hair and a muscular form. His name was Klinge. “And there’s a lot more to see. And people to meet. You know, if you’re interested.” He was clearly teasing the girl. “You wanna go meet the rest of the new recruits?”


    New recruits. As far as Klinge knew, Casey was simply an ordinary girl who had attracted their attention by being just good enough at sports to stand out. She had been very careful to make herself an attractive candidate without being too obvious about it. And now here she was, standing in Eden’s Garden. They would feed her one of their apples, not knowing that she was already a full Natural Heretic. Not knowing that she already knew most of what they brought her here to teach. And certainly not knowing the real reason she was here, which certainly wasn’t to believe the crazy nonsense they kept going on about.


    “Can we visit all the tribes?” Casey asked, carefully trying to sound overwhelmed. It wasn’t that hard.


    “Oh yeah, don’t you worry,” Klinge assured her. “We’ll be seeing all of them. You have the list we gave you, right? Any sound interesting?”


    After a brief pause, the girl answered simply. “The Reapers tribe.


    “I really wanna know more about those guys.”


    ********


    Seven Months Ago


    “Casey, come on!” Standing at the edge of the branch, one of the now-thirteen-year-old girl’s fellow Reapers tribe recruits, a girl named Bethany, impatiently beckoned. “Are you staying or going? You’ve gotta decide!”


    The two girls were in a corner of one of the giant branches. In the distance, everyone was running around, shouting and fighting. But right here, in this spot, it was quieter and private. An assortment of enormous leaves mostly hid them from view. Nearby, a glowing portal shimmered. A portal that would take them away from the tree. It was one of dozens that had been scattered throughout the tree. Several other students had already gone through it in this rush to escape, leaving just these two here for the moment.


    With the sudden magical revelation of the rebellion that had been erased decades earlier, Eden’s Garden was in chaos. Several tribes were leaving, while the Reapers, Casey’s tribe, were actually splitting in half. One of the Victors, Quevias Quarter, was staying right here. The other Victor, Aniyah Keita, was leaving. And now Casey had to decide if her own quest, to find Jones, was more likely to succeed here or there.


    Except… except was that really the choice she would be making? For years she had been trying to both find a friend and answers about what actually happened that night. And answers to a lot more. But wasn’t the real decision she was making right now more akin to which mattered more, her quest or actually helping everyone else? Because she did know, full well, that what Eden’s Garden preached was a bunch of lies.


    In the end, it wasn’t about whether staying or going was better for her quest. It was about which mattered more, doing the right thing or following her own desire for answers and to find her friend.


    And in the end, there really was only one choice.


    “I’m going,” she abruptly announced.


    And yet, even as she said that, Casey felt… something terrible. A cold certainty that the girl in front of her was in horrific danger. Instinctively, she lunged forward to shove Bethany hard, sending the surprised girl falling through the nearby portal.


    In the next instant, a knife went flying through the space where the other girl had been, just before a hand caught Casey tightly by the arm. “Hey!”


    It was a seventeen-year-old student called Caver, a tall, Latino figure who towered over Casey by a couple feet. “Okay, you’re not going anywhere!”


    “A kn-knife,” Casey stammered, still comprehending what had just happened. “You threw a knife at her.”


    “She’s a traitor,” Caver snapped. “And apparently so are you. Traitors get what they deserve. Would’ve gotten credit for both of you, but… well, one in the hand. If you behave yourself. If not, maybe I’ll give you a toss off the branch and say you struggled. What do you think?”


    “Let me go, Caver,” Casey demanded. “Before I make you.”


    “Look, kid, you’re not even old enough to have a Tribe name yet,” Caver retorted. “You might think you’re hot shit because you’re decent in training, but we both know the only powers you’ve picked up is a little regeneration, a tiny bit of wind control, and you can sort of make things fall a little slower. That’s it. So unless you really do want to take that quick trip off the branch, don’t-”


    Without warning, Casey abruptly jerked her arm free and shoved the older boy backward a step. He caught himself with a curse, hand already snapping down to grab the sword handle at his belt. But before he could pull it, her hand snapped out to catch his. Instantly, a thick layer of ice formed over his hand and the weapon’s sheathe, trapping it there.


    “Hey--what the fu--” Caver started, yanking hard at his suddenly frozen hand.


    Before he could finish cursing, Casey pursed her lips and blew out hard suddenly. The gust of wind was enough to send the full grown boy flying a good twenty feet, until he was clear off the edge of the branch. He started to fall, before Casey’s arm lashed out, extending the entire length of distance between them in a long tentacle that wrapped around his waist.


    Suspended there, the boy instantly focused on the girl who was holding him. A beam of white-purple burning light shot from his eyes. But Casey simply held a hand up, and the beam struck her palm without seeming to do much of anything.


    Caver was staring in bewilderment. The chaos nearby was still audible, yet they were out of sight. No one could see the small confrontation happening right here in this small corner of the branch, hidden by giant leaves. “You… how… what--”


    “Shhhh.” Casey held one finger to her lips, while continuing to keep her other, extended tentacle-turned arm wrapped around him. Despite the distance between them, he could hear the voice as she expertly sent it along the wind. “A long time ago, a friend saved me from a monster. She made sure he could never hurt anyone else, you know? Not the way he hurt my mom. Not the way he was going to hurt me. She stopped the monster for good. And Caver, you were gonna kill Bethany.”


    “You… you listen to me, you little--”


    Before Caver could finish speaking, Casey froze him. His entire body was encased in ice, frozen over. She could see his eyes moving, the heat forming at both hands as well as his eyes. She saw the laser beam punch its way through from that optical blast, freeing part of his face, while the ice around his arms slowly began to melt.


    Too slowly. Casey let go, allowing the mostly-ice-covered boy to fall. He managed to free enough of his face to scream out loud about halfway down… and then… then he was gone.


    A new rush of memories filled her mind. Casey saw… everything. His entire life. She saw his mistakes, his triumphs, his bad and his good. She saw the powers he had gained throughout his time with Eden’s Garden, and she saw… his eagerness to kill and collect more of them. She saw his blind hatred of Alters, and every thought he’d ever had about them. She saw it all.


    His memories were hers, as were his powers. Casey retracted her tentacle back into a normal arm, staring at it as the arm lit up with the same fire that Caver had used in an attempt to break out of the ice. Turning slightly, she focused on the nearby tree trunk. Instantly, a pair of white-purple laser beams shot from her eyes, as she burned a letter C into the wood there. C for Casey, or C for Caver, she wasn’t sure which.


    Nothing else was here. No one else was around. Casey paused, listened to the people in the distance while absorbing every thought that Caver had ever had. It would take a long time to sort through them. But for now… for now she knew what to do.


    She turned her arm back to normal, and stepped through the portal.


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