+ Month of Blood

They say that when my mother was pregnant with me, the nurse on duty tried her hardest to get her into labor; and later, tried to stop it from coming, all so I wouldn't be born 'unlucky'. But despite her efforts, I was born 12:01 PM on February the 29th, 1984. That makes me, legally, four years old. I'm a child prodigy. What other 4 year olds that you know about are in high school?

Still, it's a very touchy subject for me. Every year in Elementary and Jr. High, when they made us arrange ourselves by our birthdays, there was always a kid who would poke fun at me due to it. I'm often being called a big baby, but then, most four-year-olds aren't six-foot-one, either.
When I was growing up, I always thought it was my fault. My parents... well, they didn't entirely shun me, but they didn't spoil me much, either. It was more an ignoring relationship, I think. Later, I learned they were slightly more anal retentive than I had thought, and their morbid distant state was not changed until my little brother, Thomas, was born. It was then that I learned my parents had been dissappointed in my lack of resemblance to them. While Thomas had my mother's curls mixed with my father's deep black, my hair was brown and almost stringy. Thomas had mom's intoxicating blue eyes, I had a hazel neither parent possessed. Indeed, if you stood me between my parents, you could almost think I was a friend of the family, and not really a part.

Except for one thing. One thing alone set me as part of the O'Kade family: I had inherited my father's teeth.

As the only thing, other than my DNA, that marked me as an O'kade, and the one thing little Thomas did not possess, I treasured my teeth, almost obsessively at times, until I realized just how much of a fool I was being. I joined the chess club and the GSA instead of the wrestling or football teams, because of the fear of losing any of my precious teeth (it was only later that I realized the meetings of the chess club were more bloody than both the latter teams by tenfold).

Most of the girls at my school, despite adoring my perfect manners (and teeth), were much more inclined to the muscular blockheads known for their steriod-laced football exploits, than to an awkwards-looking setback like me. That was fine with me, though, because not only was I not into the 'screw 'em and leave 'em' way of dating, but none of them interested me. Not that I was gay, mind you, because I have yet to see a guy who turns me on. Rather, it was more the girls at my school were only intelligent-sounding when you asked them about their shoes. Make-up, too, but mostly shoes. Maybe hairspray. Maybe.

All in all, though, I was your average, teenage boy-geek. I had a few close friends, though very few distant ones, a couple enemies, and more than one jock whose fists constantly hungered for my face.

I tried to ignore the circumstances surrounding my birth, and it helped immensely that only two other students knew I was born one day earlier than I had convinced the office staff and my teachers that I was truly born on. However, it would always be there, nagging at my soul, this tugging, pulling sensation, strongest in February.

I suppose, now, that I'm the poster child for superhero geeks, but I'm really not. I'm just a guy who got mixed up in some stuff that ended up preventing some destructive... other stuff. Nothing too special, people do it all the time when they decide not to do drugs, or have sex, or play some prank.

Except that usually, the stuff doesn't involve two warring Embodiments.

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