Hugs

A door slammed. Tendrils made their way down the hall and into the room that used to be his new children's mother's room, but before his psychic appendages found them, Kard knew they were scared?

An hour ago this might have upset him, but the Yogan gave him a gem that had taught him moods can be controlled, molded, and made to conform to proper norms. The children only required an adjustment, a mental fixing.

“Children, my kiddies, please,” he begged to them. He tried to sound reassuring and comforting as he walked down the all. “Everything is find and dandy. You'll see.”

He read their emotions, and with each foot fall they had grown more fearful. His tendrils touched them ever so lightly reaching for their emotional center. He passed to them a trick he had learned from the hospital. When something was upsetting, know that it was not real. Know it to your core. A nightmare to be forgotten, and you will never have to dream that again. “It's not real. This dream will get better. I always gets better. And when you wake, you'll be happy in bed. With your new father.”

The children hesitated at the thought of their “new” father, but let it go when Kard sent pleasant thoughts of bubbles and happy sea creatures. Their apprehension dimmed the more he changed the patterns of emotional stimuli, but for all his trials, the image of their mother falling to the floor broke through and threatened to disrupt their new happy family.

At that moment he felt a sense of destiny. Some higher purpose was coming into play, and it would be he that caused a dawning of a new age. His tendrils lost their strength, and he was having a difficult time keeping the children in his thoughts. They were distant, and very hard to read. His stomach cramped, and what was clear a few seconds ago, was not even a memory now.

He clutched his belly to stave off the pain, but it was overwhelming his senses. “I can't give up on my children,” he said on his way to laying on the floor. He stopped his tendril's probing, and brought them inside. He turned his thoughts inward to find the pain. The pain battered him, and made him weak. He found it, but did not know how to make it stop. His tendril's slashed and hammered a the pain, but that only made it worse. He heard a creaking sound, but didn't know what that meant. Was he old and creaking now? No, that made no sense. He pulled his tendrils back into himself and tried to remember what the Yogan gems were. Caressing the mind, coaxing it to do as it should, cut the the parts that harmed you, and that made it stop.

Kard could not move. He was helpless on the ground. The cut he had made must have been important to him. He tried to speak, but the dribble from his mouth was incoherent to his own ears. He began to panic, but it did no good. Panic required an outlet that he had just blocked.

He reached out with his tendrils to check on the children. They had the door slightly ajar, peering at him. With their eyes he could see the man on the floor was flopping around, not unlike a fish.

“Well, I'm not completely helpless,” he sent his thoughts to them.

“What's wrong Mr.?” Tony asked.

“Don't talk to him,” Kelly scolded her younger brother. “He's a stranger.”

Kard projected the images from the vast ocean and happy shark.

Tony objected, “he's not a stranger. He's the Happy Shark.”

Kard lightly touched their minds. Stubborn Kelly refused to believe the floppy man was the happy shark.

Kard sent pictures of the Happy Shark flopping on a deck.

Kelly giggled, and scrunched up her face. “No,” she resounded.

“What can I do to make you believe I am not threat?” He asked her pointedly.

“Ah,” she either did not understand the question, or was truly take aback by the exasperated voice in her head.

It didn't matter, Kard had decided. His body was broken. Somehow he had broken it. He didn't know how to fix it. He used a tendril to prop himself up, but the effort unbalanced him and he fell face first toward the ground, only catching himself at the last moment with a telekinetic push. He laid his useless body to lean up against the wall.

“I should call the cops,” she told her brother.

“No, no,” Tony yelled at her. “They'll take away our Happy Shark.”

She turned on him and screamed, “He is not a Happy Shark. He is a bad man.”

Kard couldn't take it anymore. A tendril seized the little girl and pulled her life into his. Before it was done, he had a flash of inspiration, and stopped. She laid down on the floor, shivering. Kard heard her say something but was too busy with the matter at hand that he failed to notice what she said.

Tony yelled a him, “Mr. Shark! My sister! Help her!”

Kard felt a twinge of hope for the girls survival, almost like he was watching a movie and the girl was in a scene and about to die. He always hoped she would survive, but knew that she was one of the victims, and that was how they played out in the movies. Sometimes they made everything alright, but you were on the edge of your seat, waiting to find out what happened next. He wanted her to live, because she was special. She was going to make it. She was going to pull through.

Kard poured his strength into her body. The effort was a struggle, and the more he sent her way the harder it was to maintain his doings. He needed more strength, so he stole a little from her. With one tendril he projected himself, and with the other he pulled on her strength.

This went on for a little while, but it got easier and easier to help the girl. Then it stopped. Tony was patting him on the shoulder saying, “she's going to be O.K.”

During the giving and taking of life forces, there came a point when Kard could not longer see. He lost his hearing, as well. His only touch with the world around him had been the boy, Tony. He was a good boy to stick by his new father, and he told Tony as much.

Feeling came back into Kard's hands and legs, and then the rest of him. It was still dark, but he was starting to feel good.

He inhaled deeply and Tony gave him a big hug. “Kelly! You're O.K.” He yelled into Kard's ear.

Kard could no longer feel Kelly's presence. Tony had a very strong presence, but Kelly's was nowhere to be found. He searched with his mind. Funny. “She's gone,” he thought. He tried to see. Tried to open his eyes, but it was difficult. He felt dizzy and something pulled on his head. He touched his scalp, only to find he had grown hair. Not just a little bit, but a whole heads worth, and long.

His eyes eventually did open. Much effort went into focusing. He had turned around somehow, facing the living room and not the bedroom door. His eyes adjusted and then he could see his body laying propped up against the wall ten feet away and down the hallway.

Kard could feel that Tony was still hugging him.