Excerpt: Captain Spark and the Land of the Real

"Captain! The fires are spreading!"
Milo ran to the wall and looked into the distance, fires coming toward them quickly. The ground shook and the wind blew hot toward them.
"They're carpet bombing us!"
"Evacuate the town! I'll take care of the bombers!" Milo screamed to his assistant, Sariya, "GO!"
Sariya ran to the guards to announce their new perogative. Milo watched as the shockwaves of the bombs levelled trees up to a mile away from the city walls. The king would not like this. He jumped down from the wall and ran toward the line of standing trees. The closer they got, the more trees would be effected, but with the trees in the way, there was no way Milo would be able to take them down. He ran forward and felt the tingling of radiation on his skin. What was this mad science that had been brought down upon them? He reached the last standing trees and stood between them, his leather armored arm raised in front of his face to block the burn.
Another row of bombs errupted in the distance and Milo knelt down to the ground, covering his head. He felt the shockwave push him back an inch. When he looked up, he found the trees gone for a meter behind him. He stood and pulled out his wand. There was no way he would let those monsters get closer to the castle. His king, and his love, were kept up inside.
The ground shook from the force of his lighting. He thrust pure thunder at the blimps dropping bombs on their land. The sparks set fire against the melted shell of gas and erupted into flames, Errupting every bomb in one place.
Milo lifted his wand again and held it up, bubbling his energy around the blimps, holding the fire and force of the explosions within. When the flames extinguished and the heavy metals had fallen to the ground, Milo fell to his knees, releasing the area to more air. The hot radiation hit him lightly, making his skin burn. He lay there in wait for his assistant, his men, to come get him. The castle was safe, the people were evacuated, and the enemy was destroyed.
"Captain, Captain!" Sariya screamed, running toward him. She grabbed him and pulled him back, behind the line of trees. He could feel the fabric of his clothes melting and burning off of him. He looked up at her and saw pure terror in her face. "What is it?"
"Your eyes..." She said.
When they were safely away from the air that tingled and burned, she opened her pouch and pulled out the hand mirror that women always seemed to have. She aimed it at him and he saw for the first time the effects of the bombs. His eyes had changed. Where there had once been dark brown, there was now a vibrant green, where there had been black, there was a very dark blue. The white of his eyes glowed like lightning against the ash that had covered his face.
"I can still see..." Milo said, touching his face and wiping off a small amount of ash near his eye.
"But you've been infected..." Sariya cried, "How long will that last?"
"The others went blind instantly." Milo said, "I didn't."
Sariya still looked resistant, but lifted him to his feet and helped him walk back to the city. She looked even more resistant when he refused to go to the medical office, back in the castle. He left her there, where seh would not step a foot farther from the doctors, insisting that he go there with her. Instead, he had stood on his own two legs and walked away from her, up toward the throne room where he was expected to give report to his majesty.
Milo lay in the bed, his eyes wrapped in bandages. He listened to Sariya talking to the nurse.
"He just fell over." Sariya cried, "What's wrong with him?"
"He's infected." Nurse May said, "You know that already. Radiation can do different things to different people."
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Wait."
"For me to wake up?" Milo asked.
Sariya tripped in her rush to the bed and fell immediately on him. He had never felt such pain. His chest burned as though his flesh were melting off of him. He could feel his lungs calapsing under her weight. He gasped for air and felt her remove herself and take his hand, spitting apologies at him. Did she not realize she was peeling muscle from bone in the fingertips she so tightly clutched? He screamed and ripped his hand away, hoping that he would not leave flesh behind.
"Samantha!" Someone called, "Samantha!"
Sam sighed as she looked at the headboard of her bed, her pillow clutched against her chest. She closed her eyes again, not answering. She muttered to herself, "Captain..."
Sariya whispered in despair, "Captain..."
"Samantha!" someone called, knocking on the door to her room.
Sam got up and answered the door grudgingly. Her aunt May stood in the doorway, frowning. "Your Mom's been calling you."
"What's she want?"
"She needs your help with something." May walked back down the stairs and out of sight. Sam sighed and grabbed her jeans, throwing them before heading down the stairs. She stopped at the bottom nad looked expectantly at her mother and aunt.
"Sam, could you take the trash out?" his mother said.
Sam grumbled as she went to the kitchen. She looked at the overflowing bag and yelled, "Why is it overflowing!?"
"Because you didn't take it out when it got full!" her mother called back.
"Surely you could pull the bag out of the trash can and put a new bag in!" she shouted, "Do I have to do everything around here?"
Sam grabbed a walmart bag and picked up the trash that had overflowed, tying the bag up and putting it aside. She pulled the main bag out of the trash and tied it up. She grabbed the walmart bag and carried both out the backdoor and to the dumpster at the corner.
She walked back in and toward the stairs as quickly as he could.
"Did you put a new bag in?" Her mother insisted.
Sam growled as she went back into the kitchen and put a new bag in the trash can. When she was done, she went back upstairs and slammed her door behind her. Lazy hag can't do anything! She moved the mouse on her computer and opened up media player. She turned on her playlist called "angry" and played it loudly, hoping to spread word of her ire to the entire house.
Sam layed back down on her bed and grumbled to herself for a while, listening for anyone else coming up to bother her. After several moments, her tension released and she sighed, burying her face in the pillows. Things would be so much better if she could just get out of that place.
She rolled over in bed and pulled the blanket up over herself. She closed her eyes and listened. She muttered softly to herself, "Is he okay? What happened? He's sick..."
"He's sick..." Nero said, adjusting his glasses. "We'll have to take care of him."
"I can see that." The nurse said, frowning, "What were his sympoms before this?"
"We don't know. We found him like this." Nero said, sounding worried, "Is there anything you can do to find out?"
"All his symptoms are right now is unconsciousness." The nurse said, "I can't work well with that. We have to wait for him to wake up, if he does."
"If?"
"If he's in a coma, he won't wake for a long time. I don't have the equipment to test for that, and we don't know if anything is wron gwith him, so we can't move him."
"So we wait?"
"We wait."
Sam sighed and rolled over in bed, pulling the pillow under her chin. She sighed and closed her eyes, listening. Her eyebrows creased in concentration as she listened for the cue, the start of the next escape. She needed a new escape, a more permanant escape, a more safe escape. Where no one could catch her.
She sighed and relaxed, going limp in her bed, propped up on a pillow and facing the headboard. The music boomed angrily as she relaxed, confident that no one could hear her.
"Professor?" Harry gasped, looking at the dark figure standing in the doorway. Snape looked down his prominent nose at the student before walking to the table and taking a seat.
"I suppose you're surprised to see me here." Severus Snape said, frowning slightly, "And I'll admit I'm surprised to see you."
"I've been in on this for years. Since I was little."
"And what use could you possibly be to these people?" Snape growled, "You're more of a danger than a help, really."
"What makes you think that?" Harry snapped, "I've done lots to help them! I just want to pay them back for all the things they've done for me."
"How do you know about them?"
"Mr. Hiro used to teach in my elementary school. He wanted to keep Katsu safe and still have a normal life. He stayed at the school while Katsu attended, to make sure nothing happened. When Katsu and I became friends, Mr. Hiro started taking me in as well."
"I'm sure Mr. Hiro knew of you as well. He is a wizard, after all."
"I know..." Harry said, hsi fist clenched, "It's not something I'm happy for."
"You should be. He was there because he knew you."
"He lied to me. Used me." Harry frowned, "He didn't believe in me because he believed in me, he belived in me cause I'm Harry Bloody Potter."
"Do I note a bit of venom, there?"
Harry growled and stormed out of the room, leaving his school professor sitting unphased at the kitchen table. How dare he treat him like that? Harry didn't ask for this! He continued his storm up the stairs and into the room he occasionally shared with Katsu. He went in and fell heavily on the bed.
"What's wrong?" Katsu asked, looking up.
"Nothing." Harry sighed.
"Nothing you can tell me?" Katsu frowned.
"You know... Secret stuff..."
"Wizard stuff." Katsu sighed, "Sensei's the same way."
"You know I don't mean to keep things from you." Harry said, looking up at Katsu for the first time since he'd entered the room.
"Apology accepted." Katsu said, opening his book once more and diving in.
Harry watched his roommate read for a few moments before he rolled over and took a moment to calm himself down. He would have to face this eventually, he knew that. If the people who cared for him were always going to be wizards or squibs in disguise, he would have to learn to accept them as friends regardless.
He would have to learn to accept that, as himself, he had no friends.
"Katsu?"
"No, I didn't know until the first time we ended up on the roof."
Harry felt the force of the chuckle shake the bed as his childhood friend caught sight of Harry's face. Harry smiled and watched his friend shake his head and adjust his thick framed glasses. "We didn't get beat up..."
"We got beat up twice as bad the next day." Katsu said, smiling and returning to his book.
Harry sighed and rolled off the bed and onto the floor, getting to his feet with a little less grace than usual. For once, in that room, grace didn't matter. His appearance didn't matter. Only who he was: the orphaned kid who got beat up a lot in elementary school; The orphaned kid who became Tsuka's friend.
"Would you quit making so much noise, I'm trying to read!" Katsu complained, throwing a pillow at Harry.
Harry threw the pillow back at the spectacled Asian and swiftly ducked from the room.