Everyone has a sigil on their body that represents powers that were bestowed onto humanity after the rapture of the Milky Way. The bullies at school always pick on you because you never used your power, but you’ve had enough. Now they are going to find out why your sigil is a plain old circle.
This was my third school in two years, and I was getting tired of the pack-unpack-suffer-repack drudgery of being a military brat. Though I was used to the awkwardness of being the new kid at schools, Bratton High was proving to be especially painful to the derriere.
Most schools I've been at impose restrictions on sigil powers during school hours, partly to inculcate discipline, but mostly, well, to avoid liability damages for student safety. But Bratton High is an inner city school; the administration's got ninety-nine problems, and sigil safety is hundredth.
Restrictions or not, I always avoid touching my sigil lest I invoke it. And that became my bane. Mark and friends, the resident bully gang, had been hounding me for weeks now. It started with the morning bus ride to school when he touched his lame-ass hammer sigil and pushed me to the ground. "Great." I grunted, "Your power is the strength of an obese fifth-grader. Well done buddy." Giggles and guffaws erupted, and so did Mark's temper.
"What did you say asshole? What have you got huh?" Mark seethed, his eyes searching and finally spotting the circle on my right wrist.
"What's that, a circle? What are you gonna do nerd boy? Ace geometry?" he smirked, and his goons sniggered.
I guess it was a little funny, sort of. I got up, turned and left with jeers behind me. I wish that were the end of it. But my loud mouth and lack of follow-up power display made me a tasty morsel in the bully buffet. The bus rides to and from school were a rain-down of sigils. Gym classes were for beating me up, recess was for throwing MY food at ME, and walking between classes was for verbal volleys and flooding my locker. It was slowly getting too much to take, but I swore never to touch my circle. Until today.
Today they followed me home. They forced their way in, and started throwing stuff around the house. And then they found my little sister in her crib. With no parents at home, one of the bastards thought it would be a good idea to mishandle a child. I ran towards my sister as he touched his lightning sigil and stretched out his fingers towards her. He gave her a nasty shock before I managed to reach them. He looked at me and laughed, and was reaching to do it again, when I changed my mind.
I closed my eyes and touched the circle. And looked into his eyes. And didn't stop until there was smoke and screams. Mark came running behind to grab me and save his buddy. I looked into his eyes, and he began screaming too. My sigil wasn't a plain old circle. It was a burn ring. Mark's retinas had been marked.
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