Over the next few weeks, I met Daniel and Beth. We all four became friends at once, like it was destiny. Knowing Ed it probably was. I tended to call him Ed instead of Edward mainly because I am to lazy to say the whole word. I also called Daniel, Danny. There I go with laziness. We mainly practiced together, on how to fight.

The main plan was, Beth would transport Nick, Danny and herself behind the bad guy/girl. I would distract him or her by letting them hurt me and I would then heal in front of their eyes. I would then point and he or she would turn around and we would beat the crap out of them. It sounds really horrific but Nick, Beth and Danny found that most people they tired to stop from doing something, wouldn’t really listen. So we resorted to violence. But not all the time. We worked really well as a team with Ed as our leader.

We set up a room which we record and monitor events going on the world. It was really useful. Many things happened but I wasn’t ready to fight yet. My first act came when Beth saw someone being mugged and killed in New York. He was seen with a gun, so we thought best if I came along. Beth then transported us there to help the victim. We all thought it would be easy and it was. Well, a little bit. Well, for them that was. But of course not so much for me. Why is it never easy for me?

When we got there, we found the alley that Beth saw and waited. At about 9 ‘o’clock in the night he came. He was a classic killer, black sock over his head and everything. I was nervous about the gun but in training we tried defeating someone with a gun and it had worked. That’s not to say that it wouldn’t hurt now.

We saw the victim was a women with an expensive necklace.

“Hey, pretty woman” said the murder “Wanna give me the necklace now or later?”
“Never” stated the woman, quite cooly.

“Well, thats just to bad.” The murder pulled out a gun and thats when we acted.

He fired the gun and I flew out in front of the victim to save her just in time. I hated being shot. It tickled a little bit but it didn’t hurt. Which made it annoying and everyone around me always turns green. I made the bullets fly out of my body through my stomach, making the woman turn green. Of course. I am pretty sure the murder did too but I couldn’t see his face. The faces, I could see though, were my friends and they looked like they were about to be sick.

He looked at me and stammered “What…how…who” and so on.

I then pointed and said “You have bigger things to worry about then me. Well, and me but whatever.” He turned around and Nick gave a roundhouse to the face (God he is cute!). We all attacked him. When we had finished, he was alive but Danny was furious with me. I am not supposed to let myself be shot but I couldn’t let the woman die!

“I don’t know how I can thank you!” the woman said.

“You can by not telling anyone about this. We have to stay a secret.” said Beth.
“Of course!” said the woman and went on her way while muttering “Such brave kids. Wonder how the girl can do that…With the healing and all… The others are nice but she is a freak!” Great. So nice that people think so much of me.

“Lara…” Danny started but I didn’t let him finnish.

“Look, I know I shouldn’t let myself be shot but what was I supposed to do! And isn’t that why I came along?” I said.

“Yeah Danny, she was protecting that woman. If she had been a second later, the woman would have died.” said Nick, surprisingly siding with me. No one stood up to Danny. Not that he wasn’t a nice guy but he found some way to win you over, so there was no point. Maybe it was the eyes. They were blue. Huh. It doesn’t work with me and my eyes are blue. Whatever.
“I’m sorry Lara” apologized Danny. “Its okay Danny” I said. “Anyway, Ed is gonna give me hell for it later anyway he said not to go out in front of a gun for my first time, so we should be getting back. And lets get this guy back to the station where he can spend a long time in jail.”

We decided to take a plane back because it makes us tired to use our powers and Beth didn’t have enough energy to teleport us back. We were also covered in bruises and that didn’t help.

Apparently when you are a crystal child you had loads of money. I asked Beth why and she said because people feel the need to repay us. So slowly over the years, they had gotten lots of money. Plus it turned out that Ed used to be a journalist, and did a huge story about a Wall Street scandal, so he had got lots of money from that.

We had to get online tickets and when we got to the airport we found that we couldn’t sit together. Nick and I sat further up the plane and Beth and Daniel sat at the back. This is how we always sat on transport because we were paired the best together. But the problem was that we all decided to get first class seats so, the paring was kind of pointless.

On the plane, Nick got his laptop and searched all messages from Ed. There was one and the subject was ‘VIP!! VERY IMPORTANT”. We looked at each other with looks of unease. Ed never caps in his writing unless he had to. Even when he was writing letters he didn’t. He only ever uses it when writing his articles, but he gave up being a journalist when he discovered that Nick was a crystal child. He says it is because that gives his writing ‘edge’ but I think he is just weird that way. Then Nick did this really weird thing. He lifted up the computer and checked under it. I looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Extra precaution. For bombs. You know. And stuff.” He answered.

“Yeah whatever, weirdo.” I said.

Before he could protest I said “Hey, Its forwarded from someone. Ed didn’t write this.”

“Why would Dad do that?” Nick said. We opened the email. It read like this:
Dear the Crystal Children,
Yes, we know you exist. Please come to this address at 10 ‘o’ clock, March 4. The government needs your help. The address reads as follows:
114 STAR STREET
QWEENS ROAD EAST
WAN CHAI
HONG KONG
CHINA
ASIA
Thank you
-
General Wiltskin-

“CRAP!!” Nick yelled, startling the whole cabin and earning a cold stare from the waitress.

“Do you think I should go tell Danny and Beth?” I asked.

“I think you better. Then come back, before Danny starts yelling”.

Then to the hostess “Can my friend carry the laptop down the aisle?” The hostess confirmed that I could. Danny had pretty much the same reaction and I was about four aisles away from him at that point, so I wondered how I can still hear him. I think he thought I couldn’t hear him so he proceeded to shout at the top of his lungs. And he didn’t just say crap. He said worse. Much worse. We were in First Class and we had complaints from the Economy class about the noise that he made. And he said it in many different languages so people could have no trouble understanding him. Brilliant. One airline we will never come back to. Just Brilliant.

When we got off the plane, we met up with Danny and Beth. I glared at Danny until he apologized for swearing. A flight attendant came up to us and asked us never to use the airline again. Beth, Nick and I asked why we got kicked out. The flight attendant said that if you go onto a flight, you should know not to swear extremely loudly and in different languages. So we all looked at Danny with death in our eyes.

“I’m sorry! But I was so surprised! Blame Lara. She was who showed it to me!” He protested.
“Well, Nick told me to” I said. We all looked at Nick.
“Dad sent it to me.” He said.
“So its all down to Ed?” Beth asked.
“Yep!” We all said in unison. So we told the flight attendant that it was Ed’s fault. It didn’t help much but it made us feel better.

After the incident with the flight attendant we went to get our luggage and find Ed. He was waiting for us in the Arrival Lounge. When he met us he hugged Nick and said hi to the rest of us. We stood back and glared at Danny.

“By the way, I had a flight banned to Spain and would someone please explain why?” he asked. We all point at Danny and ran to the car. We let Danny explain. It wasn’t pretty. There was yelling involved. Scary.

“So, overall, the trip to America was a success.” Nick concluded.

“Well, apart from the fact that Danny got us kicked of the flight and out of the company. Did you all read the email?” Ed asked. We all looked at him.

“Right. Of course. Anyway, who thinks we should go?” he asked.

“I do”

“I do”

“Maybe”

“No”
Danny was the only one who didn't think we should go. Nick was a maybe, he wasn’t sure if it was safe or not, but Beth and I thought that we should.

“What’s the point? If they found Ed’s email then they can find us, so they will probably just make us go.” Everyone agreed with me. What a big mistake. They should have just listen to Danny. He was right all along.

The car ride home was long and silent. Everyone was staring at Danny and Ed. It was kind of funny to watch Danny try and say something and Ed rebuke him.

“Listen guys, I know you’re all mad at me but I really don’t think we should go. What if these guys are just trying to trick us? I bet they’re just trying to get us into Hong Kong, out of places which we know and just take us? The military will have a field day with us. And that they would. That they would.