Chapter 3: The Discovering

I went back upstairs and reached out with my mind. The boys were still watching MTV and they were both trying real hard to ignore the fact that they each had homework they were ignoring. I explored their beliefs about school and education and found that they believed pretty much the same as I had at their age. School was mainly a social function and classes were a waste of time. The stuff they were learning was useless as far as they were concerned. School wasn't so much difficult as it was boring.

Well, they were going to end up with a job with their name on their shirt just like their old man with that attitude. But I could fix that.

From now on they considered school to be a very important stepping stone on their life path. They would believe that they needed to do the best they could at everything assigned to them. Neither one of them had any thoughts about what to do after high school, but now college was the main goal. They would start examining their skills, likes and values to help them decide on an eventual career path.

Since we lived hand to mouth, the first thing Craig was going to do the next day at school would be to visit the counselor to get information on ways to pay for college, they both also believed they should get jobs and start saving. I also instilled in them a strong belief in themselves and their own abilities.

As I walked into the living room Tim was just switching off the TV and Craig already had his history book open. I was no longer worried about their futures. I would, however like to start putting some money away for their educations. I wanted to be a super hero, not a super villain, so stealing money was not the way I would go.

But then again, what if I simply confiscated the ill-gotten gains of those I brought to justice?

It took an hour of cruising the part of town I normally wouldn't be in after dark before I found my target - a crack house. I scanned the guy out front and found the layout of the house, and more importantly, where the money was.

I parked my car about a block away. Walking back to the house I looked a little deeper into the mind of the guy out front. He was definitely a bad guy. He had participated in a few killings, a couple of rapes and uncountable beatings. I had no remorse about taking this guy down the way I had planned. I simply made him believe that I belonged there and walked right by him.

Inside I did a quick scan and made everyone believe I belonged there. The guys running the place were just as bad as the one outside. I tried making them believe that I wasn't there and they went from being mildly interested in me to completely ignoring me. The room where they kept all the money was in an area of the house blocked by a locked door. Since all the bad guys were behind that door I made one of them believe he should go check on the one out front.

When he opened the hall door I slipped by him and into the back of the house. I went to what would have been a bedroom when this was a residence but was now the money room. There were 5's, 10's and 20-dollar bills bundled and stacked on a table. I had no time to actually count it but there had to be thousands. ($7,635... I found out later).

I made the two guys in here as well as the other four including the one outside believe that everything was fine in the money room and that there was no reason to be in here. They all became much more interested in keeping track of what was going on in the area where they conducted business.

Once they were gone I started gathering up the money. I found an old bag that once carried newspapers lying in the closet and filled it up. It barely held all the money. I left the room, found the back door and went out, leaving it unlocked behind me.

You probably think I was letting these hoods off easy. But I wasn't.

I knew I was condemning those guys to at least severe beatings and probably execution from their gang once the money was discovered missing with no explanation, but they were the types who were quick to mete out that sort of justice to others and now they would get some of what they had been giving.

Driving back to my home I decided that I would continue paying all my bills out of my paycheck and this money would go for things like groceries, gas and other things normally paid for in cash. The last thing I needed to do was draw attention to myself by suddenly paying off a bunch of credit cards.

It had dawned on me that, since magic existed, there was a good chance the government or some equally powerful entity would also be aware of it and would be on the lookout for guys like me. I had to be careful not to make dramatic changes that might make me interesting to those types.

While I was driving and thinking I suddenly sensed incredible fear. Two elderly folks were being mugged somewhere. I was able to pin point it - the alley to my right. I stopped my car at the mouth of the alley and ran into it. There were 2 perps holding knives and threatening an old man and an old woman. They had already given over everything they had but the muggers were insisting that they were holding out and telling them that they were going to cut them if they didn't fork over whatever it was they were hiding. The couple was terrified. I scanned the muggers and found that they knew the old folks had given everything and found it fun to scare them.

They heard me approaching and they turned.

"Back off man, this ain't your business."

"I'm afraid it is." I answered.

He started to lung at me and suddenly he seemed to be moving slowly. When I taught hand-to-hand combat we would have called it a "walking pace" for practicing moves. His right hand with the knife was out in front of him so I grabbed it inside the wrist with my left hand, stepped to my right bringing my right arm under his now straight right arm. I brought the inside of my right wrist up to meet the outside of his elbow and pulled it toward me while pushing with my left.

His elbow snapped backwards and before he could react I slammed my right elbow into the soft spot under his armpit, I clamped his upper arm inside my elbow and twisted to my left. Normally this would lay your opponent out in front of you for a deathblow but with my new strength and the speed at which I was moving, it threw him a good 10-15 feet away from me. I turned to see what his friend was doing and he was just starting to react by moving towards me. He also had his knife in his right hand so I stepped to my left and snapped a quick back fist into his knife hand. My knuckles hit square on the center of the back of his hand and I could feel the bones break. His knife fell in slow motion. His eyes were growing wide as the pain began to register and, since my right hand was already balled into a fist I brought it up and tagged him with an upper cut. He fell at normal speed, which I took to mean that any threat to me was over.