Chapter 1

My sister Beth and I, Bob, are twins, and we are almost enough alike to be classified as identical, except for the difference in gender. We were about as normal as it was possible to be up until we were 11 years old. That was when Beth started to change. She slowly started to fill out and no longer looked so much like me, other than what was between our legs, of course.

Beth also started to get what seemed to me to be a bit on the moody side as she would sometimes stare at someone and get a far away look in her eyes. After a few seconds she would shake off the effect and smile at me like my sister of old. This went on for about eight or nine months before I started to get what must have been the same kind of feeling.

We would be walking around in a mall or a store and suddenly I would see a person who would grab my attention and hold me enthralled for a few seconds until I could break loose from the virtual lock up. Beth would look at me and say, “Well, Bob, I see that you are starting to get the same feelings as I do. What in the world could be causing it?”

Several times we would bring up the subject of this effect on us to our parents, but all we would get was a mild but loving brush off as we were told “not to worry about it.” Our parents were convinced that it was just a phase we were passing through upon our entrance into puberty. This was enough to shut us up about the strange reaction to some people, but the feelings never went away.

Later on, maybe a year or so, we started to get the same kind of feelings when we would occasionally touch an inanimate object. The feeling would go away as soon as the physical contact was broken. Okay, this was weird because our parents never seemed to have similar reactions to people or physical items like we did.

I should point out that our father was a security specialist and our mother was a mechanical engineer/inventor. Both of them were very good at what they did, and that was going to have considerable effect on our later lives. However, they were as clueless as every other parent when it came to the foibles and feelings of their offspring. Nevertheless, we could not have asked for more loving or devoted parents, though we did not always realize it at the time.

Dad’s salary and royalties from Mom’s inventions let us live very comfortable lives, and neither Beth nor I were ever going to have to worry about where our next meal was coming from for the rest of our lives. Oh, we both had chores assigned from back when we were about 6 years old, and we learned how to work as did our much less affluent friends. We received an allowance which we were forced to live within, or it seemed that way, at least.

There were an equal number of boys and girls in the neighborhood, and Beth and I had the usual group of friends of our own gender, but we twins did tend to hang together more that was usual for a brother and sister. In fact, we spent more time with each other than we did with other kids, but we never felt anything but good feelings as a result of this. We just fit with each other better than we did with anyone else.

I suppose this was largely fostered by our parents who were “progressive thinkers” for the time. Beth and I were so closely bound that we even shared a bedroom and bathroom without interference from our parents. We often showered together and were able to watch each other change from children to teenagers with the interesting things that were happening to our bodies. In fact, we often fondled each other while in the shower because it felt so good to both of us. As we grew older, we got to the point where we were totally uninterested in any one else of the opposite sex. Of course, our parents noticed this, but did nothing to block our progress in this direction.

By the time we were 15, we were so close to being a man and a woman that we knew all that we needed to know about ourselves and the opposite sex, though we had not done any more than touching each other. The sex education classes in school had made considerable progress since their inception, so we knew what sex was all about, but we had not pushed each other to the ultimate act as yet.

It was a few weeks after our 15^th birthday that we learned what was so unusual about ourselves. We were walking home from the school bus stop and decided to visit a nearby convenience store for a soft drink because the weather was now warm enough to make us sweat just from the short walk in the sun. We walked in and the first thing we saw was a young man walking toward the cashier. We were both immediately struck by our feelings of “wrongness” about this guy, but we did not know what it meant.

We simply stood in the doorway and stared as the man walked up to the cashier and suddenly pulled a knife. He demanded the money from the cash register and threatened the cashier with the knife. Neither one of us had any trouble connecting our feelings with the fact that this man was doing something criminal. We didn’t know what to do, so we just stood where we were.

The cashier did the smart thing and handed over the money, whereupon the crook turned in our direction and ran toward us. He was still holding the knife, so we jumped out of the way. Beth was a little slow to move so the crook waved his knife at her. That was too much for me! As he ran by, I stuck out my foot and tripped him, causing him to fall head first into the glass door. It was tempered glass so that it did not shatter into sharp pieces, but his head hit the glass hard enough to knock him unconscious. He was not harmed directly by the broken glass, but he fell on his knife and stabbed himself in the chest.

The cashier had tripped the silent alarm to call the cops, but I used my cellphone to call 911 for EMS (Emergency Medical Service) for the knife wound. The crook was still breathing, but he was bleeding profusely, so I was worried for his health. I had been told not to disturb someone with a knife wound because that might make it worse, so we just left the wounded man where he was until the medics arrived. Fortunately, they and the cops showed up at the same time, so there was no complications with everybody important to the case seeing what had happened.

The EMS medics took care of the wounded man, and one of them told me that the stab wound had only cut his skin and had not penetrated far enough into his chest to cause any serious damage to his internal organs. That made me feel better because I was not really very bloodthirsty at that young age. However, I was very happy that the crook had been caught and retribution had been taken for his threat aimed at my sister.

We went through a lengthy questioning by the detective who finally showed up, but he did give up on us when he saw the surveillance tape which covered everything that had happened. This was a new system that was fully digital and could play back the recording immediately. We gave our full names as Robert and Elizabeth Bedford, and it was such a slow news day that we wound up on TV with the robbery recording. We had to laugh when we were dubbed the “Killer Bs” by the news staff.

I had called Mom and Dad while we had been waiting for the EMS and cops, so they were there during the whole questioning episode. They took us home, and we were kind of pissed off that we never did get our ginger ales that we had originally stopped for.

That evening, we watched the TV news report of the robbery attempt, and Beth and I were both thrilled all over again by the experience. That brought up the subject that we wanted to enroll in a self defense class because such incidents were becoming more and more common. Mom and Dad were surprisingly easy to convince that we did need some sort of training on the subject, and Dad suggested that we enroll in a Krav Maga class.

Mom said, “But, Honey, that is such a brutal means of fighting. Do the kids really need it?”

“Yes, they do. The streets are getting more and more dangerous on a daily basis, and they might as well learn the best technique while they are about it.”

“Well, Okay, if you think so. But I don’t want my babies to try to fight their way through life.”

I said, “Mom, Dad is right. If we are going to learn to fight, we should learn to do it the best way possible.”

She was finally convinced, and it was planned for Dad to call the dojo to set up training for us as soon as possible. Beth and I were looking forward to the training. We seemed to know even better than our parents just how dangerous school and the streets had become.

Later on, as we were lying in our beds, Beth said, “Bob, did you get more information than usual when you encountered that crook today?”

“Yes, I sure did. I felt like I knew exactly what he had planned for the robbery. The problem was that I didn’t know what to do about it.”