Charise was panting lightly as she trod down the road. The last streaks of orange were fading from the surprisingly warm fall evening. She was on her way home from marching band practice. She played tenor sax, but she was in the colorguard, or flaggers, as they called themselves, for marching band. A gust of wind flicking across her ebony cheek made her look up at the sky as it became a soft purple velvet unblemished by any wisp of cloud. She stopped to marvel at how something as ordinary, as ever present as the sky could still be so breathtaking. Another gust of wind brought her attention back to the ground and she turned back, quickening her pace so that she would arrive home before the full dark of night took hold.
There was a bridge three blocks from the school, and her house was two in on the other side. She was gently humming "El Gato Triste" by Chuck Mangione when she heard a car approaching from behind. Charise stepped up onto the curb and thought nothing of it until there was a screech and a loud crack. She jumped at the sound and turned around to find a tan car with a light pole crashed down on top of it. The door pushed open and a man stumbled out.
Charise ran over, "Are you ok?"
He pulled a two foot metal bar out of his jacket and thrust it at her. "Hide it!" "What?"
"It’s a top secret military weapon, but it’s not finished yet. You can't let them have it!"
Charise looked skeptically at the pipe, it was nothing out of the ordinary. She figured that he was either delirious from the crash or on drugs. Either way, she thought she'd humor him. She set her backpack down and reached her hand out to him.
“Do you have someone I could call for you? Any family… 911?” He didn’t answer, only pushed the pipe toward her. She winced as a sharp edge nicked her hand.
The man collapsed and began to vomit up blood. She was about to scream for help when three black armored trucks rounded the corner and hit the gas. Charise didn't know what was going on, but she was starting to believe the guy. She began to sprint. A glance over her shoulder revealed that one of the trucks had stopped by the crashed car, but the other two were still gunning it for her. The vehicles were nearly upon her when someone jumped out into the middle of the road. He thrust his hands out toward the trucks. Immediately the trucks slowed down, though their tires began to squeal as they slipped on the ground. At the same time, it was as though a blast had hit the person, as he started to slide backward over the ground. Charise stopped and stared at him. He had some kind of metal looking stuff on his arms and head. It was arranged in an odd pattern on his skin and glinted in the light of the street lamps that had popped on a few second prior. He turned to face her, revealing chilling eyes of complete, flawless silver. He blinked and then turned back to the trucks.
“Get over the bridge!”
She didn't wait a moment. The guy had been pushed onto the bridge and was tiring from the strain. Charise watched from the other side as he fell forward and the trucks were released from his restraining force. Their tires ceased their squealing and the trucks lurched forward. They were seconds away from hitting him when he brought his hands forward and then violently to the side. Both trucks were pushed off the side of the bridge. There was a tremendous crash as they broke through the side rails and then a horrible silence before they splashed into the river.
Charise turned and ran to the driveway of her house. Once there, she glanced back to find the guy gone. She turned to go in, and was met by his face. She would have screamed but he placed a hand gently, but firmly over her mouth and whispered,
“Shhh. May I have that?"
Charise didn't say anything, just held out her hand. He took a quick glance at it and stuck it in his pocket.
"Don't tell anyone about this, say you were just going in when you heard the crash, and only if you are asked about it. Meet me outside of the band room tomorrow after school." He turned to leave, then stopped.
“And here’s you backpack.”
"Uh, who are you?"
The guy closed his eyes and the metal stuff on his face seemed to melt and trickle down to his neck. He opened his eyes and looked at her.
Charise gasped and quickly got a hand over her own mouth before she could laugh out loud. After a moment she removed it and allowed herself a fast ‘huh.”
"You’re… you’re the tuba guy from marching band!" she exclaimed.
“It's a sousaphone, but yes. Remember, keep quiet and we'll talk about this tomorrow."
He again closed his eyes and the metal returned to its former position. He signaled farewell with a nod of his head, then darted off into the night.
Charise didn’t know what to think. The whole thing was like a dream. She stood gazing at nothing until you mother called through the open door.
“Char baby, what happened?”
“Uh, oh, uh, there was a car crash mom. A truck ran off the bridge.”
“Oh my heaves! Are you ok?”
“Yes mom, I’m fine. I was on my way up the driveway when it happened.”
“Then get inside honey, I’m gonna call 911.”
Charise walked into the kitchen and navigated around the phone to give her mom a kiss on the cheek. She could hear her mom talking as she walked up the stairs.
After dumping her stuff in her room she stumbled into the bathroom and almost collapsed, using the sink for support. She turned the water on and leaned into the sink, splashing water in her face to try and… she didn’t really know why. Charise looked at her hands and found them shaking. She slowly raised her head until she met her reflection in the mirror. It surprised her how shaken she looked. Her head quivered slightly with every quick breath and the tremors in her hands only added more to her unnerved appearance. She focused on her own dark eyes, trying to find something in them that would calm her down. All she could find was fear and confusion and… something else.
Her breathing slowed and she relaxed as she discovered it was amazement. She was amazed that of all the people in Goose Creek that car had to crash next to her, and of all the people in Goose Creek, the one that saved her was the goofy tuba kind covered in some kind of metal that apparently gave him the ability to chuck truck over bridges.
Charise sat down on the toilet and laid her head down on the counter. Things like this don’t happen in Goose Creek, it’s a small town, there aren’t crazy military weapons or, what’s the word… telekinetic tubists. She thought to herself. And these things diffidently don’t happen around me. She began to breathe quickly in shallow breaths and soon became lightheaded.
She took some slow deep breaths and breathed out while tonguing and fingering along to her band music. When she felt better, she crept to her room and collapsed on her bed.
For a long time she lay there, her mind racing but unable to catch what was running through it. Finally she curled up into a ball and cried softly until her eyes were read and empty. She pulled the sheets down and slid under the covers, still in her clothes and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
***
Zeke sprinted across the street, through two yards, across another street and jumped over a fence. He sat there, engulfed in shadow and tried to collect himself. He closed his eyes, but it didn’t matter, either way he say everything in a shades of grey. Everything near him was light and stuff got darker as it got further away. The dark didn’t matter, neither did the fact that some objects were behind others, he saw everything. Zeke focused and pulled the metal out of his eyes. He opened them and saw the world as most people do. He closed them again, this time for a while. Zeke thought back to how lucky he was been that evening.
It had begun like many nights. He was out on a jog, using his dinucleic vision to see in the dwindling light. He wouldn’t have been kept running past the girl walking on the curb if a car hadn’t almost hit her. She was not hit and looked as though she was taking care of the accident and Zeke had started to run off, but the sound of three trucks gunning it caught his attention. When he saw the trucks running her down, he knew he had to do something, but he didn’t know what. He ran along the sidewalk, he was closer to the bridge and thought maybe he could dash across the road and pull her out of the way before the trucks got to her. He jumped out and realized that there wasn’t enough time to get the rest of the way across. Zeke instinctively thrust his hands out at the trucks and was surprised that his actions had an effect. He felt a terrible drain and knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long.
He shouted at the girl to move and tried to hold the trucks back while he began sliding against the road. Finally the strain was too much and he collapsed. Zeke picked his head up to see the trucks on top of him. Again he acted instinctively and pushed the trucks off of the bridge.
Zeke could really feel the drain now and he knew he needed to get this taken care of before he was too tired. He grabbed her bag and met her at the door of her house. All the while he was explaining and retrieving the metal pipe, it took all his focus just to stay awake. Now he was safe and hidden and didn’t need to be saving anyone.
The exhaustion of his efforts finally hit him full force and he slipped out of consciousness right there in a stranger’s yard. His last thought was a flicker of happiness knowing that he had saved someone.
December 31, 2006
December 30, 2006
Basics
Charise was standing outside the band room waiting for the tuba kid after school. If he hadn’t arrived a few minutes later, she would have left.
"What took you so long?"
"Sorry, I was helping someone with physics."
"Ok, so what now?"
"Do you have time to take a walk?"
"Sure, my parents don't get home until five." Charise hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, but the boy grabbed her saxophone case before she could.
"Thank you."
He led the way around the corner to the parking lot.
"You’re welcome." They came to the sidewalk and took a right.
"So, where are we going?"
"The town park."
"Really? Why?"
"I have a base there."
"Ha ha, very funny... I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"My name's Ezekiel, but everyone calls me Zeke."
They arrived at the park and Zeke walked over to the giant oak tree in the middle of the park. "Here it is, the entrance to my base."
"What? The tree?"
"Well, actually the plaque in front of it. Here I’ll show you." There was a plaque by the tree that stated that the tree was over two hundred years old and was planted to commemorate the founding of the town. Zeke reached into his backpack and pulled out a jar filled with a metallic liquid.
"What's that?"
"Well, it’s called dinuclecium - mercury with two nuclei. I can manipulate it."
"What?"
"Just watch." He opened the jar and stuck his hand in it. The metal slid up his arm and under his sleeve. It then went up his neck and over his face and head. He turned to the plaque and raised his hand. The plaque lifted off the ground. Attached to the bottom was a large glob of metal. Underneath was a small tunnel.
"In we go."
As they climbed in, the metal on the bottom flowed back into the cracks that it had previously occupied. There was momentary darkness until a light glow started to emanate from the walls.
"Where is the light coming from?"
"The walls have bio luminescent cells in them."
"What?"
"Cells that produce light."
"Oh."
"Just follow me and don’t touch anything."
They continued down the small hall that soon opened into a large room. It was rather well lit and two other tunnels leading out of it.
"How did you make this place?"
"Mike is a florapath, we think it’s some form of magic, but we’re not certain."
"So he grew this place?"
"Pretty much."
"Wait, Mike, as in saxophone Mike."
"The one and only."
"Dude, he can do that? I didn’t know."
"Well duh, it’s not something we just tell people. Come on." He pointed to one of the tunnels. "That leads to the central hub. The other leads to a storage room." The passed through the tunnel and into a larger room. There was a couch and a table in the corner. "This is the way to the work room, and this is to the galley, and that goes to the sewers, and that leads to the personal rooms."
"Zeke, why are you showing me this?"
"Because that rod you got yesterday is very special."
"Yeah, the guy that gave it to me said that it was a top secret military weapon."
"I don’t doubt that… it’s a very interesting piece of technology. I tried to activate it, but it was not responsive. I think that it has been coded to your DNA."
"So what, you brought me here so that you can play with your new toy."
"Well yes, but also so that we could explain what happened."
Zeke motioned for her to sit down by the workbench the rod was on. He handed it to her and she took it. The rod emitted a small beep, but otherwise made no indication that anything had changed. Zeke opened the jar of dinuclecium and covered the rod in it. The di receded and there was small crack lengthwise down the rod.
"Did you just break it?"
"No, but the unlocking mechanism was rather hard to locate, I’m surprised that the people working on it could find it."
He grabbed a screwdriver and pried it the rest of the way open. The inside was rather empty. There were a few chips and wires, and a large mass of metal.
"I think that we should have Mike come and take a look at it, he’s good a tech stuff."
They arrived in a small round area. There was a weird thing on the wall that looked like a whole bunch of skin that was just attached to it. There was also a large metal rectangle. Zeke walked over and knocked on a bare spot of the wall.
"Mike!"
Nothing happened for a moment, then a section of the wall turned grayish and crumbled into dust. A rather tall kid emerged holding a small bonsai tree. He had dark brown hair, like Zeke’s, that had the bangs gelled up. He nearly dropped the tree when he saw Charise.
"What is she doing here?"
"She was involved is some military stuff and… well, we need your help with what she found."
Zeke and Michael started down the hall. Mike casually waved his hand behind him and the hole in the wall grew back together. Charise watched as the two of them worked on the rod. She had to keep in contact with it or it would shut down.
"I’m sure that the chunks are nanobots that have coded themselves to her DNA. I think that everything else is working, but I can’t do anything with the bots. Rachael might be able to help us."
"K, you go get her and I’ll keep trying to figure the bots out."
Charise watched as Zeke pulsed the di over the rod. His eyes silvered over and he was focusing closely on the rod.
"What’s with the silver eyes?"
"When I arrange di…"
"Di?"
"Dinuclecium, that’s what I call it for short. As I was saying, when I arrange di in my eyes in such a way, I can see gravity and di in a different way. It’s really hard to explain."
"Does it hurt?"
"Not really, it’s kind of like wearing contacts. Now if you don’t mind, it’s not very easy to do this, and silence would help some."
Charise sat and watched. It was hard for her to believe that this kind of thing could exist that people she knew had strange powers, and that she was now tangled in it. Mike returned with a smiling girl. She was about five and a half feet tall and appeared to be a bit heavier. She had dirty blond hair and dark green eyes.
"Mike, you always make me feel so short." But as she said this, Charise noticed that she had started to stretch upward. Her hair became a lighter blond and her eyes turned bright blue.
"Rachael!"
"Hey, Charise, what are you doing here?"
"Some kind of tangle with the military or something. So you’re in with them too?"
"Of course! Who else would make sure that they clean their rooms?"
"So, what can you do?"
"Well, I'm either a metamorph or a genopath or something like that… the point is that I can alter my body at the cellular level and make my, uh… well, I don't remember that much from biology, even though I should because I have a unique perspective on it."
"Rachael, I need your help, there is some kind of genetic coding involved with this device."
"Well then, you may most certainly have my help!" She walked over to Zeke and placed her hand on his shoulder, and after a moment, it looked like it held melted into it. Rachael closed her eyes while Zeke continued to work. The two continued for a moment until Zeke stopped and Rachael turned and motioned for Charise with her free arm to move closer.
"This may take a while." She muttered. "Oh, Zeke, try to jiggle that little thing there…"
Zeke moved and did as he was told, but nothing noticeable happened.
"Now the other one, Zeke. And the third," she mumbled. Suddenly, a small notch appeared above where Charise's thumb was. Rachael detached herself from Zeke's shoulder and opened her eyes.
"Ah, there we go. Zeke, get out of there. This is where Charise gets to have some fun."
Zeke removed all the di and the rod closed itself back up. It looked the same as it had before, minus the button. The other three backed up as Charise wielded her pipe in the center of the room. She looked rather comical. She looked at it, then at Rachael.
"Go on, push the button!" she encouraged.
Charise looked tentatively at it, and then did so. She waited, but nothing happened. She looked at Rachael, who stared confidently back. Mike and Zeke's eyes were met with furrowed brows.
Charise clutched the staff tightly, as she was about to bring it up over her head and hit the workbench with it, when it suddenly grew.
Out of one side of the pipe grew 3 rods. They extended up and braided around each other until they were about a foot long, and then they joined together at the end into a sharp chockram type disc. The other end braided for about a foot, as well, but then joined together to form a short, jagged, scythe. Charise reached out and gingerly touched it. It was quite firm and sturdy, and surprisingly cool to the touch.
"How did it do that?" she asked.
"The staff was filled with nanobots. I would guess that everything that just came out was made out of them."
The four stared at Charise's staff inquisitively.
"Very cool, Charise, but…what's it do?" Mike asked.
Charise shook her head. "You're asking the wrong person."
"Try to do something spectacular with it. The government wouldn't want it so bad if it was just a pipe and didn't do anything." Rachael suggested.
Charise tried everything she knew. She tried a few colorguard moves, swinging it around, poking stuff with it, but no matter what she did, nothing happened.
"Ergh, this is so… frustrating!"
Charise brought the staff about her head, and then full force downwards, to the point where it was parallel to the ground. A bright flash of light, and then Zeke went flying and fell to the floor directly in front of Charise. The di that had covered his body was now dripping off his skin like water, and lay seeping in a puddle around him. He tried to get up, but fell back to the floor, one hand on the ground for support and the other clutching his chest, a pained expression written all over his face. Rachael ran over to him.
"Zeke!"
"What just happened?" Charise asked, very confused.
"Well, it looked like you shot a freaking lightning bolt at him."
"A…what?"
Rachael looked horrified as the di dripped off Zeke’s arm and revealed red marks.
"Zeke, are you ok? What's happening to your di?"
"I think I'm ok, but I can't control the di."
Rachael helped Zeke pull his shirt off, only to reveal a huge red mark that stretched from his shoulder to his hip. Charise stared, awed at what she done.
"Oh, Zeke, I'm so sorry, I didn't know…"
He managed to wave her off as Rachael spoke for him. "No worries, he'll be as right as rain when I'm done with it! No problem, piece of cake!"
"Just make sure she doesn't fry the rest of your cake with another thing from her stick." Mike said crossly. "You better learn how to control that thing of yours, or might kill us all."
"Well, it's not my fault! It's not like I did it on purpose–"
"You could've aimed it at something else, and then we would've known about it before you went off and hurt Zeke–"
"Like I could've known that a lightning bolt was going to come flying out of the end of it!"
"Well at least you could've had the sense not to point that thing at anyone!"
"Quit sounding like you're referring to my staff as a monster!"
"Enough!"
Mike and Charise turned to find Zeke on his feet, the mark slowly fading as Rachael stood behind him, her eyes closed and her hand melted into his shoulder.
"No more fighting. Got it? It was no one's fault. Only my own for standing directly in front of it in the first place. Now if you don't mind, I suggest we all go to bed before we try killing each other."
With that, Zeke turned on his heel and went to his room.
"What took you so long?"
"Sorry, I was helping someone with physics."
"Ok, so what now?"
"Do you have time to take a walk?"
"Sure, my parents don't get home until five." Charise hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, but the boy grabbed her saxophone case before she could.
"Thank you."
He led the way around the corner to the parking lot.
"You’re welcome." They came to the sidewalk and took a right.
"So, where are we going?"
"The town park."
"Really? Why?"
"I have a base there."
"Ha ha, very funny... I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"My name's Ezekiel, but everyone calls me Zeke."
They arrived at the park and Zeke walked over to the giant oak tree in the middle of the park. "Here it is, the entrance to my base."
"What? The tree?"
"Well, actually the plaque in front of it. Here I’ll show you." There was a plaque by the tree that stated that the tree was over two hundred years old and was planted to commemorate the founding of the town. Zeke reached into his backpack and pulled out a jar filled with a metallic liquid.
"What's that?"
"Well, it’s called dinuclecium - mercury with two nuclei. I can manipulate it."
"What?"
"Just watch." He opened the jar and stuck his hand in it. The metal slid up his arm and under his sleeve. It then went up his neck and over his face and head. He turned to the plaque and raised his hand. The plaque lifted off the ground. Attached to the bottom was a large glob of metal. Underneath was a small tunnel.
"In we go."
As they climbed in, the metal on the bottom flowed back into the cracks that it had previously occupied. There was momentary darkness until a light glow started to emanate from the walls.
"Where is the light coming from?"
"The walls have bio luminescent cells in them."
"What?"
"Cells that produce light."
"Oh."
"Just follow me and don’t touch anything."
They continued down the small hall that soon opened into a large room. It was rather well lit and two other tunnels leading out of it.
"How did you make this place?"
"Mike is a florapath, we think it’s some form of magic, but we’re not certain."
"So he grew this place?"
"Pretty much."
"Wait, Mike, as in saxophone Mike."
"The one and only."
"Dude, he can do that? I didn’t know."
"Well duh, it’s not something we just tell people. Come on." He pointed to one of the tunnels. "That leads to the central hub. The other leads to a storage room." The passed through the tunnel and into a larger room. There was a couch and a table in the corner. "This is the way to the work room, and this is to the galley, and that goes to the sewers, and that leads to the personal rooms."
"Zeke, why are you showing me this?"
"Because that rod you got yesterday is very special."
"Yeah, the guy that gave it to me said that it was a top secret military weapon."
"I don’t doubt that… it’s a very interesting piece of technology. I tried to activate it, but it was not responsive. I think that it has been coded to your DNA."
"So what, you brought me here so that you can play with your new toy."
"Well yes, but also so that we could explain what happened."
Zeke motioned for her to sit down by the workbench the rod was on. He handed it to her and she took it. The rod emitted a small beep, but otherwise made no indication that anything had changed. Zeke opened the jar of dinuclecium and covered the rod in it. The di receded and there was small crack lengthwise down the rod.
"Did you just break it?"
"No, but the unlocking mechanism was rather hard to locate, I’m surprised that the people working on it could find it."
He grabbed a screwdriver and pried it the rest of the way open. The inside was rather empty. There were a few chips and wires, and a large mass of metal.
"I think that we should have Mike come and take a look at it, he’s good a tech stuff."
They arrived in a small round area. There was a weird thing on the wall that looked like a whole bunch of skin that was just attached to it. There was also a large metal rectangle. Zeke walked over and knocked on a bare spot of the wall.
"Mike!"
Nothing happened for a moment, then a section of the wall turned grayish and crumbled into dust. A rather tall kid emerged holding a small bonsai tree. He had dark brown hair, like Zeke’s, that had the bangs gelled up. He nearly dropped the tree when he saw Charise.
"What is she doing here?"
"She was involved is some military stuff and… well, we need your help with what she found."
Zeke and Michael started down the hall. Mike casually waved his hand behind him and the hole in the wall grew back together. Charise watched as the two of them worked on the rod. She had to keep in contact with it or it would shut down.
"I’m sure that the chunks are nanobots that have coded themselves to her DNA. I think that everything else is working, but I can’t do anything with the bots. Rachael might be able to help us."
"K, you go get her and I’ll keep trying to figure the bots out."
Charise watched as Zeke pulsed the di over the rod. His eyes silvered over and he was focusing closely on the rod.
"What’s with the silver eyes?"
"When I arrange di…"
"Di?"
"Dinuclecium, that’s what I call it for short. As I was saying, when I arrange di in my eyes in such a way, I can see gravity and di in a different way. It’s really hard to explain."
"Does it hurt?"
"Not really, it’s kind of like wearing contacts. Now if you don’t mind, it’s not very easy to do this, and silence would help some."
Charise sat and watched. It was hard for her to believe that this kind of thing could exist that people she knew had strange powers, and that she was now tangled in it. Mike returned with a smiling girl. She was about five and a half feet tall and appeared to be a bit heavier. She had dirty blond hair and dark green eyes.
"Mike, you always make me feel so short." But as she said this, Charise noticed that she had started to stretch upward. Her hair became a lighter blond and her eyes turned bright blue.
"Rachael!"
"Hey, Charise, what are you doing here?"
"Some kind of tangle with the military or something. So you’re in with them too?"
"Of course! Who else would make sure that they clean their rooms?"
"So, what can you do?"
"Well, I'm either a metamorph or a genopath or something like that… the point is that I can alter my body at the cellular level and make my, uh… well, I don't remember that much from biology, even though I should because I have a unique perspective on it."
"Rachael, I need your help, there is some kind of genetic coding involved with this device."
"Well then, you may most certainly have my help!" She walked over to Zeke and placed her hand on his shoulder, and after a moment, it looked like it held melted into it. Rachael closed her eyes while Zeke continued to work. The two continued for a moment until Zeke stopped and Rachael turned and motioned for Charise with her free arm to move closer.
"This may take a while." She muttered. "Oh, Zeke, try to jiggle that little thing there…"
Zeke moved and did as he was told, but nothing noticeable happened.
"Now the other one, Zeke. And the third," she mumbled. Suddenly, a small notch appeared above where Charise's thumb was. Rachael detached herself from Zeke's shoulder and opened her eyes.
"Ah, there we go. Zeke, get out of there. This is where Charise gets to have some fun."
Zeke removed all the di and the rod closed itself back up. It looked the same as it had before, minus the button. The other three backed up as Charise wielded her pipe in the center of the room. She looked rather comical. She looked at it, then at Rachael.
"Go on, push the button!" she encouraged.
Charise looked tentatively at it, and then did so. She waited, but nothing happened. She looked at Rachael, who stared confidently back. Mike and Zeke's eyes were met with furrowed brows.
Charise clutched the staff tightly, as she was about to bring it up over her head and hit the workbench with it, when it suddenly grew.
Out of one side of the pipe grew 3 rods. They extended up and braided around each other until they were about a foot long, and then they joined together at the end into a sharp chockram type disc. The other end braided for about a foot, as well, but then joined together to form a short, jagged, scythe. Charise reached out and gingerly touched it. It was quite firm and sturdy, and surprisingly cool to the touch.
"How did it do that?" she asked.
"The staff was filled with nanobots. I would guess that everything that just came out was made out of them."
The four stared at Charise's staff inquisitively.
"Very cool, Charise, but…what's it do?" Mike asked.
Charise shook her head. "You're asking the wrong person."
"Try to do something spectacular with it. The government wouldn't want it so bad if it was just a pipe and didn't do anything." Rachael suggested.
Charise tried everything she knew. She tried a few colorguard moves, swinging it around, poking stuff with it, but no matter what she did, nothing happened.
"Ergh, this is so… frustrating!"
Charise brought the staff about her head, and then full force downwards, to the point where it was parallel to the ground. A bright flash of light, and then Zeke went flying and fell to the floor directly in front of Charise. The di that had covered his body was now dripping off his skin like water, and lay seeping in a puddle around him. He tried to get up, but fell back to the floor, one hand on the ground for support and the other clutching his chest, a pained expression written all over his face. Rachael ran over to him.
"Zeke!"
"What just happened?" Charise asked, very confused.
"Well, it looked like you shot a freaking lightning bolt at him."
"A…what?"
Rachael looked horrified as the di dripped off Zeke’s arm and revealed red marks.
"Zeke, are you ok? What's happening to your di?"
"I think I'm ok, but I can't control the di."
Rachael helped Zeke pull his shirt off, only to reveal a huge red mark that stretched from his shoulder to his hip. Charise stared, awed at what she done.
"Oh, Zeke, I'm so sorry, I didn't know…"
He managed to wave her off as Rachael spoke for him. "No worries, he'll be as right as rain when I'm done with it! No problem, piece of cake!"
"Just make sure she doesn't fry the rest of your cake with another thing from her stick." Mike said crossly. "You better learn how to control that thing of yours, or might kill us all."
"Well, it's not my fault! It's not like I did it on purpose–"
"You could've aimed it at something else, and then we would've known about it before you went off and hurt Zeke–"
"Like I could've known that a lightning bolt was going to come flying out of the end of it!"
"Well at least you could've had the sense not to point that thing at anyone!"
"Quit sounding like you're referring to my staff as a monster!"
"Enough!"
Mike and Charise turned to find Zeke on his feet, the mark slowly fading as Rachael stood behind him, her eyes closed and her hand melted into his shoulder.
"No more fighting. Got it? It was no one's fault. Only my own for standing directly in front of it in the first place. Now if you don't mind, I suggest we all go to bed before we try killing each other."
With that, Zeke turned on his heel and went to his room.
December 29, 2006
Fight or Flight
Zeke was standing below a cliff. There was always a large group of people milling around inside a fence. He always saw a boulder fall off of the cliff directly above them. Zeke would reach out to stop the it, but it would not stop. He would strain with all the strength had, but he always couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as the people were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder...
Zeke woke up in a cold sweat. A loud cry escaped his lips before he could stifle it. In moments Rachael was pounding on his door.
"Zeke, are you ok? Open the door!"
He raised his hand, causing the door to melt. Rachael ran in. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I just had a nightmare."
"Oh, I'm sorry... So this is your room?"
"Some of it. There's another two chambers in the back."
"And the whole thing is encased in di?"
"When the door's shut."
"That's a little dangerous, isn't it? I mean, what if something had happened to you? We wouldn't be able to get in. Someone could break into me and Mike's room... but not yours."
"I'm sorry if that's the way it has to be, but I've got stuff back there that no one but me should see. Not even you two. There's ancient artifacts and training things for alchemy and stuff back there, and if they where somehow to get into the wrong hands, they could be extremely dangerous."
"But Zeke, we aren't going to do anything like that."
"But if you can break in, so can other people."
"No one knows about the base."
"Yet."
They stood in awkward silence for a few seconds while Zeke checked his clock. "Well, we had better head over to Charise's. The government officers will probably be looking for her."
Rachael turned and stepped out of Zeke's room, calling as she went. "Come on Mike, let's go."
Zeke and Rachael followed behind Mike as the stepped out of the tree and closed the hole. The three traveled silently through the night.
"So what do you do all that time in your rooms?" Zeke proposed, so softly as to be nearly inaudible.
"Tell us what you do first."
"Well, I train. I practice moving, shaping, freezing, and melting di."
"I've been working on a garden. It's about five chambers big."
"Wow."
"The more I grow the more I have to keep alive so it's helping me get better."
"Wow, I just hang around, do homework and talk to my friends on my cell phone."
"Oh, you shouldn't do that. If someone wanted to find us that would be a way to trace us."
"But no one's looking for us."
"But they will. After we prevent them from getting their staff back, the government will start to hunt us down."
"Yeah, but..."
"We may even have to leave. Mike how much money do you have in your account?"
"I dunno, maybe 2 grand. Why?"
"We might have to leave on short notice, and the government will be working against us, so you should pull a grand of that out as soon as you get a chance. Cash is harder to track."
"Zeke, you're sounding paranoid again."
"We are getting ourselves in deep! Who cares, better safe than sorry."
The three stepped up to Charise's house and sat down on the porch. They sat there silently until two heavily armored trucks rounded the corner.
"Mike, stop them."
Mike reached into his pocket and withdrew a handful of acorns. He threw them in the trucks path of travel and closed his eyes, hands still extended toward the acorns. They had not yet even hit the ground when they burst open in a tangle of roots and branches. The roots forced themselves down through the road as the branches began to amass near the ground. The trucks, to their peril, drove over the acorns. The branches shot up and worked their way into the nooks in the bottom of the trucks. There was a moment of tires squealing in road before Mike lifted his arms and the branches propped the trucks up. Then they began to writhe with activity. The branched found their way into the grills and hoods of the trucks. Foliage sprouted and began to envelope the vehicles. From the thickening mass of leaves emanated an ear-splitting bang. The motion slowed as Mike reached for his shoulder, already damp with blood. Another shot exploded from the truck and Mike fell as a splintering crack and red spurts of blood ejected from his leg. The next shot just missed his head, but the following one found its mark in his chest. By this time Charise was out on the porch with Zeke and Rachael. Mike was screaming.
"Charise! Come on!" Rachael called behind her. "We're coming!" The two girls ran to Mike and the two of them tried to lift him up as he began to vomit blood. The two of them started to drag Mike off toward the park. His last action before he lost consciousness was to lift a hand. The repercussions of which were profound. The trees restricting the trucks disintegrated into dust, dropping them a good six feet. The axles cracked and rendered them useless. Luckily, this distracted the driver from firing a fatal shot at Zeke and Charise. The drivers exited their trucks and began to advance on Zeke, guns raised.
"Hands up! FBI! Hands up!"
Zek complied, for the moment. One man leaned forward as if to sprint. Zek noticed he was looking right at Mike. There was no way the three could outrun him, and Mike was in no condition to stop him. Zek had never had a chance to test the full strength of di. The whole speech he had given to Charise had been more to impress her than to present facts. He knew that di was extremely heavy, but not how strong it really was. However, he had no choice.
Zek ducked to the ground and thrust his hands forward. A stream of liquid di ejected from his back pack, forming a semi-sphere around him. The sound of the bullets pelting the di was deafening, but he stayed focused. Eventually the shots stopped. Zek peered out and figured that by the way they were looking at their guns, they were out of ammunition. He melted the shell down into a long pole. The two men flipped their guns around to use as clubs and rushed him. He blocked their first wave, but felt awkward and clumsy with the pole, so he split it in two and formed the halves into tonfas. He had had some training with them, and felt more confident. Zek was blocking and even getting a few hits in when one of the men grabbed the end of one tonfa. Zek melted the end around his wrist. The man, by reflex, grabbed his wrist with his other hand, which was soon ensnared as well. Zek melted his remaining di into orbs around his hands and started to lay waste to the other man. He got a lucky shot into the guy's stomach. He was about to finish him off with one between the shoulder blades when he sensed a mass of di moving very quickly for his head. He focused on stopping it, and it yielded. Zek turned around to find an astonished man nearly suspended by his wrists. One well placed punch between the eyes and he was out. One hit and the other guy was out as well. Zek rushed off to find the other three.
They were two blocks away. Rachael was kneeling over Mike in tears.
"I can't heal him! He's unconscious, so his mind is blocking me out!"
"Can you heal him if we get him conscious again?"
"Yes, of course, but he needs more blood... we have to get him back to the base before he bleeds to death!"
Zek coated Mike's wounds with di and wrapped a bit around his leg as a splint. He formed the remaining di into a stretcher. Rachael and Charise picked it up as Zek did his best to make it as light a possible. The four slipped away through the dark as peopled ventured out of their houses, curious as to what was causing all the noise.
~~~~~
"No Zek, keep it there!"
Mike was on a table in Rachael's room. The interior of the room was full of undulating, twitching columns of flesh. Veins full of blood and large stretches of muscle were easily distinguishable. Zek was prodding at her wall and trying to figure out how to do something with it. Rachael grabbed the part of the wall he was playing with and waited for a blood vessel to float over to her fingers. She then pulled it out and continued until she was to Mike.
"Zek, I need a needle."
He formed one out of di and gave it to her. Rachael opened up the vessel and stuck the back end of the needle in it. The she plugged the sharp end into Mike's arm. She then ran over and placed her hand on the wall.
"O-positive, O-positive..." she muttered to herself. Soon blood was visible running through the blood vessel and into Mike. In a few, long seconds Mike was conscious again. He had no sooner opened his eyes than started to gasp in extreme pain. Rachael quickly stepped around the table to his head.
"Mike, try not to focus on the pain. You need to let me in!" She clasped her hands around his head. She continued to whisper, "Relax, please, I'll heal you, I promise. I'm not going to let you give up now, you just need to let me in…" For several seconds, nothing happened. Mike's quick, labored breathing made Rachael squeeze her eyes shut and clutch Mike's head a bit harder than necessary. Then Mike suddenly relaxed and his breathing became slower and deeper.
Rachael issued orders before anyone could ask questions. "Ok, Charise, I need you to cut his clothes off while Zek gets the di out of his wounds."
"What?"
"I need to get to the wounds to heal them. You heard me, now cut his clothes off!"
Charise looked around for scissors or a knife. Zek handed her one he had just formed out of di. It was small and had large circles cut out of the body of the blade, and there was no handle.
"How…?"
"Grab it from the back side and use the holes to grip." He answered quickly. She grabbed it and looked up in surprise. "It's really heavy!"
"Di is."
"Less talking, more saving! I made a promise, I intend to keep it!"
Charise started to cut the clothes while Zek pulled the di out of one of the wounds, which immediately began to bleed again. Rachael had to stay in constant contact with Mike's body so it would not reject her again, and she started with his chest. She placed her hand around the wound and closed her eyes. The tissue began to move and pull back together. Then she moved to his shoulder. Before the healing could begin she had to remove the bullet. Rachael just pushed her finger into the wound to grab it. Zek and Charise turned away. His leg took longer because Rachael had to fix the shattered bone. When she was done, she called to them softly to let them know it was ok to turn around. Mike looked peaceful and much better, except that he was still covered in blood. Rachael produced a towel and a small basin of water and they began to gently wash off the blood from Mike's skin.
"So what did you do to calm him down?" Zek asked while they worked quietly.
"Oh, I just disconnected his brain from the nervous system and such so he couldn't feel the pain."
"Did you put them back?"
"Of course! I reconnected them after the healing was done. He's sleeping now."
Mike looked very comical laying there in just his shoes and his boxers, but the situation had been much too grave to allow them the humor. Zek pulled Mike's shoes off while Rachael found him a blanket.
"Ok, you two, you've seen too much of my room already, now go get some sleep." Rachael said while shooing them out. "And don't worry, guys, I'll be on nurse-duty all night." She winked and shut her door.
Zek opened the door to his room and let Charise go first.
"Wow! Neat room!"
"I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, but we need to sleep now."
Zek raised his hands, and out of the ground next to his bed formed a second one. It was a rectangle and the inside suddenly became liquid.
"It's ok, the liquid is much denser that you are, so you'll stay on top." Zek lay down on his and sank in a few inches. "It takes a while getting used to not sleeping on your stomach, but it's better than a water bed."
"Okay." Charise climbed gingerly into her bed.
"Good night, it's about to get dark." Zek raised his hand and as the door melted shut, utter darkness enveloped them.
Zeke woke up in a cold sweat. A loud cry escaped his lips before he could stifle it. In moments Rachael was pounding on his door.
"Zeke, are you ok? Open the door!"
He raised his hand, causing the door to melt. Rachael ran in. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I just had a nightmare."
"Oh, I'm sorry... So this is your room?"
"Some of it. There's another two chambers in the back."
"And the whole thing is encased in di?"
"When the door's shut."
"That's a little dangerous, isn't it? I mean, what if something had happened to you? We wouldn't be able to get in. Someone could break into me and Mike's room... but not yours."
"I'm sorry if that's the way it has to be, but I've got stuff back there that no one but me should see. Not even you two. There's ancient artifacts and training things for alchemy and stuff back there, and if they where somehow to get into the wrong hands, they could be extremely dangerous."
"But Zeke, we aren't going to do anything like that."
"But if you can break in, so can other people."
"No one knows about the base."
"Yet."
They stood in awkward silence for a few seconds while Zeke checked his clock. "Well, we had better head over to Charise's. The government officers will probably be looking for her."
Rachael turned and stepped out of Zeke's room, calling as she went. "Come on Mike, let's go."
Zeke and Rachael followed behind Mike as the stepped out of the tree and closed the hole. The three traveled silently through the night.
"So what do you do all that time in your rooms?" Zeke proposed, so softly as to be nearly inaudible.
"Tell us what you do first."
"Well, I train. I practice moving, shaping, freezing, and melting di."
"I've been working on a garden. It's about five chambers big."
"Wow."
"The more I grow the more I have to keep alive so it's helping me get better."
"Wow, I just hang around, do homework and talk to my friends on my cell phone."
"Oh, you shouldn't do that. If someone wanted to find us that would be a way to trace us."
"But no one's looking for us."
"But they will. After we prevent them from getting their staff back, the government will start to hunt us down."
"Yeah, but..."
"We may even have to leave. Mike how much money do you have in your account?"
"I dunno, maybe 2 grand. Why?"
"We might have to leave on short notice, and the government will be working against us, so you should pull a grand of that out as soon as you get a chance. Cash is harder to track."
"Zeke, you're sounding paranoid again."
"We are getting ourselves in deep! Who cares, better safe than sorry."
The three stepped up to Charise's house and sat down on the porch. They sat there silently until two heavily armored trucks rounded the corner.
"Mike, stop them."
Mike reached into his pocket and withdrew a handful of acorns. He threw them in the trucks path of travel and closed his eyes, hands still extended toward the acorns. They had not yet even hit the ground when they burst open in a tangle of roots and branches. The roots forced themselves down through the road as the branches began to amass near the ground. The trucks, to their peril, drove over the acorns. The branches shot up and worked their way into the nooks in the bottom of the trucks. There was a moment of tires squealing in road before Mike lifted his arms and the branches propped the trucks up. Then they began to writhe with activity. The branched found their way into the grills and hoods of the trucks. Foliage sprouted and began to envelope the vehicles. From the thickening mass of leaves emanated an ear-splitting bang. The motion slowed as Mike reached for his shoulder, already damp with blood. Another shot exploded from the truck and Mike fell as a splintering crack and red spurts of blood ejected from his leg. The next shot just missed his head, but the following one found its mark in his chest. By this time Charise was out on the porch with Zeke and Rachael. Mike was screaming.
"Charise! Come on!" Rachael called behind her. "We're coming!" The two girls ran to Mike and the two of them tried to lift him up as he began to vomit blood. The two of them started to drag Mike off toward the park. His last action before he lost consciousness was to lift a hand. The repercussions of which were profound. The trees restricting the trucks disintegrated into dust, dropping them a good six feet. The axles cracked and rendered them useless. Luckily, this distracted the driver from firing a fatal shot at Zeke and Charise. The drivers exited their trucks and began to advance on Zeke, guns raised.
"Hands up! FBI! Hands up!"
Zek complied, for the moment. One man leaned forward as if to sprint. Zek noticed he was looking right at Mike. There was no way the three could outrun him, and Mike was in no condition to stop him. Zek had never had a chance to test the full strength of di. The whole speech he had given to Charise had been more to impress her than to present facts. He knew that di was extremely heavy, but not how strong it really was. However, he had no choice.
Zek ducked to the ground and thrust his hands forward. A stream of liquid di ejected from his back pack, forming a semi-sphere around him. The sound of the bullets pelting the di was deafening, but he stayed focused. Eventually the shots stopped. Zek peered out and figured that by the way they were looking at their guns, they were out of ammunition. He melted the shell down into a long pole. The two men flipped their guns around to use as clubs and rushed him. He blocked their first wave, but felt awkward and clumsy with the pole, so he split it in two and formed the halves into tonfas. He had had some training with them, and felt more confident. Zek was blocking and even getting a few hits in when one of the men grabbed the end of one tonfa. Zek melted the end around his wrist. The man, by reflex, grabbed his wrist with his other hand, which was soon ensnared as well. Zek melted his remaining di into orbs around his hands and started to lay waste to the other man. He got a lucky shot into the guy's stomach. He was about to finish him off with one between the shoulder blades when he sensed a mass of di moving very quickly for his head. He focused on stopping it, and it yielded. Zek turned around to find an astonished man nearly suspended by his wrists. One well placed punch between the eyes and he was out. One hit and the other guy was out as well. Zek rushed off to find the other three.
They were two blocks away. Rachael was kneeling over Mike in tears.
"I can't heal him! He's unconscious, so his mind is blocking me out!"
"Can you heal him if we get him conscious again?"
"Yes, of course, but he needs more blood... we have to get him back to the base before he bleeds to death!"
Zek coated Mike's wounds with di and wrapped a bit around his leg as a splint. He formed the remaining di into a stretcher. Rachael and Charise picked it up as Zek did his best to make it as light a possible. The four slipped away through the dark as peopled ventured out of their houses, curious as to what was causing all the noise.
~~~~~
"No Zek, keep it there!"
Mike was on a table in Rachael's room. The interior of the room was full of undulating, twitching columns of flesh. Veins full of blood and large stretches of muscle were easily distinguishable. Zek was prodding at her wall and trying to figure out how to do something with it. Rachael grabbed the part of the wall he was playing with and waited for a blood vessel to float over to her fingers. She then pulled it out and continued until she was to Mike.
"Zek, I need a needle."
He formed one out of di and gave it to her. Rachael opened up the vessel and stuck the back end of the needle in it. The she plugged the sharp end into Mike's arm. She then ran over and placed her hand on the wall.
"O-positive, O-positive..." she muttered to herself. Soon blood was visible running through the blood vessel and into Mike. In a few, long seconds Mike was conscious again. He had no sooner opened his eyes than started to gasp in extreme pain. Rachael quickly stepped around the table to his head.
"Mike, try not to focus on the pain. You need to let me in!" She clasped her hands around his head. She continued to whisper, "Relax, please, I'll heal you, I promise. I'm not going to let you give up now, you just need to let me in…" For several seconds, nothing happened. Mike's quick, labored breathing made Rachael squeeze her eyes shut and clutch Mike's head a bit harder than necessary. Then Mike suddenly relaxed and his breathing became slower and deeper.
Rachael issued orders before anyone could ask questions. "Ok, Charise, I need you to cut his clothes off while Zek gets the di out of his wounds."
"What?"
"I need to get to the wounds to heal them. You heard me, now cut his clothes off!"
Charise looked around for scissors or a knife. Zek handed her one he had just formed out of di. It was small and had large circles cut out of the body of the blade, and there was no handle.
"How…?"
"Grab it from the back side and use the holes to grip." He answered quickly. She grabbed it and looked up in surprise. "It's really heavy!"
"Di is."
"Less talking, more saving! I made a promise, I intend to keep it!"
Charise started to cut the clothes while Zek pulled the di out of one of the wounds, which immediately began to bleed again. Rachael had to stay in constant contact with Mike's body so it would not reject her again, and she started with his chest. She placed her hand around the wound and closed her eyes. The tissue began to move and pull back together. Then she moved to his shoulder. Before the healing could begin she had to remove the bullet. Rachael just pushed her finger into the wound to grab it. Zek and Charise turned away. His leg took longer because Rachael had to fix the shattered bone. When she was done, she called to them softly to let them know it was ok to turn around. Mike looked peaceful and much better, except that he was still covered in blood. Rachael produced a towel and a small basin of water and they began to gently wash off the blood from Mike's skin.
"So what did you do to calm him down?" Zek asked while they worked quietly.
"Oh, I just disconnected his brain from the nervous system and such so he couldn't feel the pain."
"Did you put them back?"
"Of course! I reconnected them after the healing was done. He's sleeping now."
Mike looked very comical laying there in just his shoes and his boxers, but the situation had been much too grave to allow them the humor. Zek pulled Mike's shoes off while Rachael found him a blanket.
"Ok, you two, you've seen too much of my room already, now go get some sleep." Rachael said while shooing them out. "And don't worry, guys, I'll be on nurse-duty all night." She winked and shut her door.
Zek opened the door to his room and let Charise go first.
"Wow! Neat room!"
"I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, but we need to sleep now."
Zek raised his hands, and out of the ground next to his bed formed a second one. It was a rectangle and the inside suddenly became liquid.
"It's ok, the liquid is much denser that you are, so you'll stay on top." Zek lay down on his and sank in a few inches. "It takes a while getting used to not sleeping on your stomach, but it's better than a water bed."
"Okay." Charise climbed gingerly into her bed.
"Good night, it's about to get dark." Zek raised his hand and as the door melted shut, utter darkness enveloped them.
December 28, 2006
Awkward... Embarrassment
Zeke was standing below a cliff. There was always a large group of people milling around inside a fence. They were different this time, he found them vaguely familiar. He saw a boulder fall off of the cliff directly above them. Zeke reached out to stop it, but it would not stop. He strained with all the strength had, but he couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as the people were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder...
"Zeke!" Charise was bumping around in the dark, trying to get to him.
"Its ok, Charise, I just had a bad dream."
"What time is it?"
Zeke pulled his watch off a table and pushed the light. "It's 5:02."
"Too late to go back to bed, and I'm hungry."
Zeke opened the door and led her down the hall to the galley.
"There's food in the cabinets there, just go through it till you find something you like."
"Thanks. By the way, how do you find things in your room in the dark?"
"I can see di, not as well as when I'm in silver mode, but I can feel where everything is in my room."
"Silver mode?"
"Alchemy is a delicate art, to manipulate it more precisely, I arrange small amounts of it over blood vessels and muscles to increase my connection and strength respectively and in my eyes and brain to see di, and it gives me a better idea of where it is. Silver mode is also essential for gravity control."
"You can control gravity too?!"
"Not really. In fact, when I pushed the trucks off the bridge to save you, that was the only time. It is incredibly difficult and I haven't had any training yet."
Charise had just poured herself a bowl of cereal when they heard Mike shout, "WHERE ARE MY PANTS?"
Zeke laughed a little and said, "We'd better go explain."
Zeke and Charise stepped into Rachael's room to find her rolling on the ground in laughter. Mike had his head poked out from around the other doorway. Zeke walked back into the room. Mike was in just his boxers and looked quite mad.
"Zek, why am I in Rachael's room and not wearing much?"
"Uh, Mike, you were shot several times. We had to cut your clothes off to get to the wounds."
Mike just stood there stunned as the memories of the last night flooded back to him. Feeling the gravity of what he said, Zeke decided to try and lift the mood with some humor.
"Come on man, we have to get ready for school. Now go get some pants on."
"But Rachael and Charise are out there."
"Well, Charise was the one that cut your clothes off, and Rachael did have to run her hands all over you, but if you're still bashful you can just grow yourself a pair of leaf pants."
Zeke tried to dodge him, but Mike managed to land a punch on his shoulder.
"Ow! I was just kidding, you can borrow a pair of mine." Zeke left and returned with a pair of jeans.
"Here. So are you ok after last night?"
"Yeah, its kind of like a dream. I actually want to go to school. It will make things seem more normal."
"Yeah, you guys are used to having weird powers. All this is new to me." Charise added.
"Charise, you can't go, and I'm not being paranoid. They know you were involved: they came to your house. They are most likely going to be looking for you, and asking about you at school."
"I think Zeke's right about this one, they wanted to get you and the staff bad enough that they shot Mike." Rachael added.
"Ok, so I stay here. But what am I to do here by myself all day?"
"Oh, hold on." Mike stepped out into the bedroom hub and began to stare at the wall. In a few moments he flicked his wrist and a doorway appeared. "You can figure out how you want to decorate your room."
"Mike, that's awesome!"
"Well, we have to go, there's food in the galley." Everyone entered their rooms and emerged with their backpacks and school gear. "See you later."
And with that Charise was left alone in the base.
School went normally, for the most part. All their classes were rather uneventful. Rumors were starting to spread, and the three of them were more than happy to add to the stack of lies that the police would have to sort though.
"So son, can you tell me what you know about Ms. Charise Walters?"
"Well she's in marching band with me, she does flags."
"So you know her well?"
"No, not really. I see her in band, and that's it. But I heard that she killed her parents and she ran around town dangling her parents hands from a stick."
"Well I can assure you that her parents are alive and well. Thank you for your time."
By the time Zeke got to his last class, chemistry, he was tired. All the alchemy from the last night had taken a lot out of him and he was starting to feel it. Zeke just rested his head on his desk and listened to the teacher drone on.
"So anything lighter than iron will give off energy when fused and any thing heavier will give off energy when it fissions. Does anyone know why?" Because iron is at the size at which the short nuclear just spans the nucleus, and if you get two of them near each other in high pressure, you get some other form or di.
He easily slipped into sleep.
Zeke was standing below a cliff. There was always a large group of people milling around inside a fence. They were different this time, he was sure he knew them, but he just couldn't but his finger on who they were. He saw a boulder fall off of the cliff directly above them. Zeke reached out to stop it, but it would not stop. He strained with all the strength had, but he couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as the people cried out as they were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder...
"Zeke... Ezekiel!"
"What? Oh, sorry." Zeke peeled his face off of the desk. "Could you ask the question again?"
People in the class giggled, but the teacher complied.
"What is the difference between oxidation and reduction?"
"Oxidation is when an atom looses an electron to an oxygen atom, and reduction is when it gains one from an oxygen atom."
"Correct, as usual, Zeke. Now the bell's going to ring soon, so all of you need to read chapter 5.4 and answer all the question at the end." There was a general murmur of complaint from the class. "Fine, skip the vocab review. Just make sure that you know it."
The bell rang and the class started to empty. The teacher stopped Zeke on the way out.
"Zeke, I know you have a natural talent for chemistry, and I know that this class is a little slow paced for you, but try and stay awake. It sets a better example for the rest of the class."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, I was just really tired today."
"Ok, well there's just tomorrow and then we have spring break."
"Good bye."
"See you tomorrow."
The three were laughing all the way to the park.
"So you really told him that you heard she killed her parents and ran around with their hands on a stick." Rachael clarified.
"Yeah, you should have seen the look on his face, it was something like 'damn kids these days will believe anything they hear'." Mike laughed.
"Misinformation is such a wonderful thing." Rachael agreed.
"It's more of a distraction than disinformation, for it to be disinformation, they would have to believe it." Zeke pointed out.
"True. But it's still funny!"
They arrived at the tree and checked to make sure no one was looking before Mike let everyone in. They had barely stepped in the door when Charise came running down the hall. She nearly tackled the group to the ground.
"Wow, you're happy to see us, aren't you?" Rachael joked.
"Yeah, I've been bored out of my mind with no one to talk to and no TV. I read the rest of Lord of the Flies, I was that desperate! Strange book, I don't think that kids would really kill each other like that. I mean come on, they're just little kids."
"Wow, calm down. Did you get the plans drawn up for your room?" Mike asked.
"Yeah. I even did several different ones because I don't know how much space you have to work with."
"Well if you don't mind dropping levels, we have all the space you could use."
Charise and Mike left to work on her room. Zeke and Rachael ventured to the galley and found something to eat.
"So what's the plan for this weekend?"
"We head to Japan after school. I know that you think its a little fast, but we need all the time we can get."
"We?"
"Yes we, I'm sure that they can find some way to help you too." Rachael looked skeptically at him. "At the very least you can take some martial arts classes." He added.
"Zeke, I don't know if I can leave my room alone that long, it's not like we can just call a neighbor to take care of it."
"I know, but you're a smart girl, you'll find a way to make it work."
Rachael sighed. "I know its better not to argue with you, so I'll just take your word for it."
Zeke opened a cupboard and rummaged around looking for food while Rachael reached up and grabbed an unopened bag of sugar. Written on it was "Rachael's sugar, DO NOT EAT." Along with that was other random notes from Zeke and Mike, including "IT'S POISON!", "IT'LL KIL US ALL!", "AAAH!", and "DANGER, RADIOACTIVE!" Zeke smiled as he remembered Rachael's reaction when she first saw it…
He remembered when she walked in and went to the cabinet, dutifully oblivious to he and Mike's attempts to stifle their secret. She had pulled out one bag, and she had only taken one glace at it before she turned to looked at the two, partly annoyed and angry, but happily surprised, too. The two boys exploded in fits of laughter, and after a moment, she had started laughing too.
"Zeke…Zeke!"
Rachael's call brought Zeke back to reality.
"I'm going to go feed my room… I have to try and mess with its genetics and whatnot to slow down it's metabolism by like, 800%. Y'know, so that way not too many cells get eaten. Cannibalistic cells, that's what starvation's all about. I'll be in there, if you need me."
Zeke nodded.
"I'll probably be up all night working on my room, so I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Zeke."
"See ya."
And with that, she was off.
~~~~
A few hours later, Zeke had called Rachael back out to experiment with Charise's mind, in the sense of getting in and out. Rachael complied, as her room had done exactly what she wanted it to.
A few minutes into it, Charise's mind finally let her in. While part of her attention focused on the sleep, another part noticed a small part of Charise's brain that wasn't active at all. She focused on it, and she found a gene inside of it. It was turned off, and Rachael tried to manipulate it. It was to no avail, she couldn't.
Rachael muttered aloud. "Whoa…"
Mike and Zeke stood idly by, and questioned her. "What is it?"
Rachael withdrew herself enough to speak. "There's a gene in here I can't manipulate. It's not a mutated one, but it's turned off. I'm going to finish up the sleep with Charise, and then I'm going to turn it on to see what happens."
Quickly, Rachael finished up the bit left, and then she went to the inactive area again. She turned on the gene, and she hurriedly left. She didn't know what would happen, and she didn't want to be involved if something negative happened.
Rachael detached herself from Charise. She opened her eyes and looked around and the three.
"How do you feel?" Rachael asked.
Charise blinked. "A lot better! Thanks!"
"Anything else?"
"No…why? Should there be?"
Rachael was crestfallen. It should've worked! Why didn't it? Zeke and Mike quickly forgot about it as they went away to finish their homework.
~~~~
Hours later, the four had resulted to games to pass the evening away. Zeke and Charise were playing chess while Rachael and Mike were playing charades.
"Quick, who am I?"
"Hey, no fair! You can change what you look like to make it easier!"
"Why are you complaining?"
"Um…I like a challenge?"
"I could blindfold you."
"What good what that do?"
"Well it would definitely make it harder to guess."
"Ahahaha! You look like that stupid math teacher!"
"DENTENTION! Ha-ha! I know, I try."
"I've got you now, Charise! E4 to C2!"
"Uh, yeah! Sure! Knight takes C2!"
"Ooh, bad move! Now I can –"
"Wait."
Zeke looked up at Charise, mid-move. Rachael and Mike weren't paying attention, and they continued their banter over their game. Charise looked over all the pieces, and again, and a third time while a smile crept over her face.
"What is it?"
Charise laughed. "I can see every move possible. You can't win!"
"Oh yeah? Well, we'll see about that!"
A few minutes later, Zeke sat in defeat. Charise glowed triumphantly.
"See? I told you I'd win."
"Yeah, right. It was probably just a lucky bet."
"Give me a puzzle, I'll solve it. Come on!"
"Here's one," Rachael said, running up. "Where can I hide so Mike can't find me?"
"Wha-? Um, definitely no place around here. Why?"
"Shoot – Aaah!!"
Rachael ran off as Mike came in and chased her down the next hallway. Charise turned back to Zeke.
"Seriously. Give me a puzzle and I'll solve it."
"Ok, fine. I'll go get some." He got up, went to his room, and returned with a book. "Here. It's a book of sudoku puzzles. Y'know, that new craze from Japan. We are going there in a few days for spring break, anyways."
"We are?"
"Of course. I have to finish my training."
"For?"
"Dinuclecium, of course. What else? Anyways, try one of the extra hard ones in the back. Y'know, the ones with 13 numbers instead of nine. If you can figure all those before morning, I'll believe you."
"Perfect. I'll have them done long before you wake up again, though."
"Alright, fine, whatever. Just don't hurt yourself."
"Like Rachael just did to Mike."
"What?"
At that moment, Rachael tore through the central hub towards the bedrooms with a huge grin on her face. Mike entered not long after, with huge red marks up and down both arms.
"What happened to you?" Zeke asked. Charise was already in a laughing fit.
"Word to the wise: Don't make a genopath mad at you. You have no idea what she can do to you."
"That's…temporary, right?”
"You know Rachael. She wouldn't do anything to hurt us. Heck, she couldn't hurt anyone, even if she wanted to."
"If you say so."
"I'm going to bed now. G'night, Zeke. You too, Charise."
Zeke nodded. "Doesn't sound like a bad idea, right now. Night Mike, Charise."
They walked down the hallway to the bedrooms, and Zeke called out when they got there, "Goodnight, Rachael!"
"Ya backstabbing moron!" Mike added. Only fits of high pitched giggles answered them.
~~~~
Zeke was standing below a cliff for the fourth time. This time there was a small group of people milling around inside the fence. Zeke was sure that he knew them. The boulder fell off of the cliff directly above them, and he reached out to stop it, as always. It slowed, but did not stop. He strained with all the strength had, but he still couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Suddenly, with astounding clarity, he knew who the people were. Horrified, he tried to call to them. Mike! Rachael! Charise! Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as his friends were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder…
Zeke found himself sitting bolt upright on his bed in his room, a cold sweat and an echoing scream accompanying him. Rachael was banging on his door again, just like the last time.
"Zeke! Open the door!"
His hand lifted, and the di melted. Rachael stormed in.
"Would you quit it? Some of us are trying not to be petrified by someone suddenly screaming!"
"Sorry. It –"
"Let me guess. Just another nightmare?"
Zeke stared at her.
"Yeah. Anyways, Charise stopped by my room before she went to bed. She said to give it to you if she didn't get a chance. She doesn't have to go to school anymore, you know. She gets to sleep in."
Rachael handed it to Zeke, and he flipped through all the pages. The first page was blank. Upon further inspection, he found a note. It read:
Thought I'd leave you one for you so your money for this book wouldn't go to waste.
-Charise
Zeke tried to laugh a little as he went through and saw that every other puzzle in the book was completed. "Thanks, Rachael. What time is it?"
"A little past 12:30. You guys went to bed maybe an hour and a half ago."
There's no doubt about her gene now, Zeke thought. "Thanks again, Rachael. Goodnight."
"No problem."
Zeke heard her mutter to herself as she left.
"Nothing ever goes on around here at night. So boring. And for six more hours, at least! Heaven forbid. I've got to find something to do. Every night gets more and more boring…"
Zeke forced a halfhearted smile while she left. When his door was shut, he closed his eyes and pondered his nightmare, still shocked.
"Zeke!" Charise was bumping around in the dark, trying to get to him.
"Its ok, Charise, I just had a bad dream."
"What time is it?"
Zeke pulled his watch off a table and pushed the light. "It's 5:02."
"Too late to go back to bed, and I'm hungry."
Zeke opened the door and led her down the hall to the galley.
"There's food in the cabinets there, just go through it till you find something you like."
"Thanks. By the way, how do you find things in your room in the dark?"
"I can see di, not as well as when I'm in silver mode, but I can feel where everything is in my room."
"Silver mode?"
"Alchemy is a delicate art, to manipulate it more precisely, I arrange small amounts of it over blood vessels and muscles to increase my connection and strength respectively and in my eyes and brain to see di, and it gives me a better idea of where it is. Silver mode is also essential for gravity control."
"You can control gravity too?!"
"Not really. In fact, when I pushed the trucks off the bridge to save you, that was the only time. It is incredibly difficult and I haven't had any training yet."
Charise had just poured herself a bowl of cereal when they heard Mike shout, "WHERE ARE MY PANTS?"
Zeke laughed a little and said, "We'd better go explain."
Zeke and Charise stepped into Rachael's room to find her rolling on the ground in laughter. Mike had his head poked out from around the other doorway. Zeke walked back into the room. Mike was in just his boxers and looked quite mad.
"Zek, why am I in Rachael's room and not wearing much?"
"Uh, Mike, you were shot several times. We had to cut your clothes off to get to the wounds."
Mike just stood there stunned as the memories of the last night flooded back to him. Feeling the gravity of what he said, Zeke decided to try and lift the mood with some humor.
"Come on man, we have to get ready for school. Now go get some pants on."
"But Rachael and Charise are out there."
"Well, Charise was the one that cut your clothes off, and Rachael did have to run her hands all over you, but if you're still bashful you can just grow yourself a pair of leaf pants."
Zeke tried to dodge him, but Mike managed to land a punch on his shoulder.
"Ow! I was just kidding, you can borrow a pair of mine." Zeke left and returned with a pair of jeans.
"Here. So are you ok after last night?"
"Yeah, its kind of like a dream. I actually want to go to school. It will make things seem more normal."
"Yeah, you guys are used to having weird powers. All this is new to me." Charise added.
"Charise, you can't go, and I'm not being paranoid. They know you were involved: they came to your house. They are most likely going to be looking for you, and asking about you at school."
"I think Zeke's right about this one, they wanted to get you and the staff bad enough that they shot Mike." Rachael added.
"Ok, so I stay here. But what am I to do here by myself all day?"
"Oh, hold on." Mike stepped out into the bedroom hub and began to stare at the wall. In a few moments he flicked his wrist and a doorway appeared. "You can figure out how you want to decorate your room."
"Mike, that's awesome!"
"Well, we have to go, there's food in the galley." Everyone entered their rooms and emerged with their backpacks and school gear. "See you later."
And with that Charise was left alone in the base.
School went normally, for the most part. All their classes were rather uneventful. Rumors were starting to spread, and the three of them were more than happy to add to the stack of lies that the police would have to sort though.
"So son, can you tell me what you know about Ms. Charise Walters?"
"Well she's in marching band with me, she does flags."
"So you know her well?"
"No, not really. I see her in band, and that's it. But I heard that she killed her parents and she ran around town dangling her parents hands from a stick."
"Well I can assure you that her parents are alive and well. Thank you for your time."
By the time Zeke got to his last class, chemistry, he was tired. All the alchemy from the last night had taken a lot out of him and he was starting to feel it. Zeke just rested his head on his desk and listened to the teacher drone on.
"So anything lighter than iron will give off energy when fused and any thing heavier will give off energy when it fissions. Does anyone know why?" Because iron is at the size at which the short nuclear just spans the nucleus, and if you get two of them near each other in high pressure, you get some other form or di.
He easily slipped into sleep.
Zeke was standing below a cliff. There was always a large group of people milling around inside a fence. They were different this time, he was sure he knew them, but he just couldn't but his finger on who they were. He saw a boulder fall off of the cliff directly above them. Zeke reached out to stop it, but it would not stop. He strained with all the strength had, but he couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as the people cried out as they were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder...
"Zeke... Ezekiel!"
"What? Oh, sorry." Zeke peeled his face off of the desk. "Could you ask the question again?"
People in the class giggled, but the teacher complied.
"What is the difference between oxidation and reduction?"
"Oxidation is when an atom looses an electron to an oxygen atom, and reduction is when it gains one from an oxygen atom."
"Correct, as usual, Zeke. Now the bell's going to ring soon, so all of you need to read chapter 5.4 and answer all the question at the end." There was a general murmur of complaint from the class. "Fine, skip the vocab review. Just make sure that you know it."
The bell rang and the class started to empty. The teacher stopped Zeke on the way out.
"Zeke, I know you have a natural talent for chemistry, and I know that this class is a little slow paced for you, but try and stay awake. It sets a better example for the rest of the class."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, I was just really tired today."
"Ok, well there's just tomorrow and then we have spring break."
"Good bye."
"See you tomorrow."
The three were laughing all the way to the park.
"So you really told him that you heard she killed her parents and ran around with their hands on a stick." Rachael clarified.
"Yeah, you should have seen the look on his face, it was something like 'damn kids these days will believe anything they hear'." Mike laughed.
"Misinformation is such a wonderful thing." Rachael agreed.
"It's more of a distraction than disinformation, for it to be disinformation, they would have to believe it." Zeke pointed out.
"True. But it's still funny!"
They arrived at the tree and checked to make sure no one was looking before Mike let everyone in. They had barely stepped in the door when Charise came running down the hall. She nearly tackled the group to the ground.
"Wow, you're happy to see us, aren't you?" Rachael joked.
"Yeah, I've been bored out of my mind with no one to talk to and no TV. I read the rest of Lord of the Flies, I was that desperate! Strange book, I don't think that kids would really kill each other like that. I mean come on, they're just little kids."
"Wow, calm down. Did you get the plans drawn up for your room?" Mike asked.
"Yeah. I even did several different ones because I don't know how much space you have to work with."
"Well if you don't mind dropping levels, we have all the space you could use."
Charise and Mike left to work on her room. Zeke and Rachael ventured to the galley and found something to eat.
"So what's the plan for this weekend?"
"We head to Japan after school. I know that you think its a little fast, but we need all the time we can get."
"We?"
"Yes we, I'm sure that they can find some way to help you too." Rachael looked skeptically at him. "At the very least you can take some martial arts classes." He added.
"Zeke, I don't know if I can leave my room alone that long, it's not like we can just call a neighbor to take care of it."
"I know, but you're a smart girl, you'll find a way to make it work."
Rachael sighed. "I know its better not to argue with you, so I'll just take your word for it."
Zeke opened a cupboard and rummaged around looking for food while Rachael reached up and grabbed an unopened bag of sugar. Written on it was "Rachael's sugar, DO NOT EAT." Along with that was other random notes from Zeke and Mike, including "IT'S POISON!", "IT'LL KIL US ALL!", "AAAH!", and "DANGER, RADIOACTIVE!" Zeke smiled as he remembered Rachael's reaction when she first saw it…
He remembered when she walked in and went to the cabinet, dutifully oblivious to he and Mike's attempts to stifle their secret. She had pulled out one bag, and she had only taken one glace at it before she turned to looked at the two, partly annoyed and angry, but happily surprised, too. The two boys exploded in fits of laughter, and after a moment, she had started laughing too.
"Zeke…Zeke!"
Rachael's call brought Zeke back to reality.
"I'm going to go feed my room… I have to try and mess with its genetics and whatnot to slow down it's metabolism by like, 800%. Y'know, so that way not too many cells get eaten. Cannibalistic cells, that's what starvation's all about. I'll be in there, if you need me."
Zeke nodded.
"I'll probably be up all night working on my room, so I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Zeke."
"See ya."
And with that, she was off.
~~~~
A few hours later, Zeke had called Rachael back out to experiment with Charise's mind, in the sense of getting in and out. Rachael complied, as her room had done exactly what she wanted it to.
A few minutes into it, Charise's mind finally let her in. While part of her attention focused on the sleep, another part noticed a small part of Charise's brain that wasn't active at all. She focused on it, and she found a gene inside of it. It was turned off, and Rachael tried to manipulate it. It was to no avail, she couldn't.
Rachael muttered aloud. "Whoa…"
Mike and Zeke stood idly by, and questioned her. "What is it?"
Rachael withdrew herself enough to speak. "There's a gene in here I can't manipulate. It's not a mutated one, but it's turned off. I'm going to finish up the sleep with Charise, and then I'm going to turn it on to see what happens."
Quickly, Rachael finished up the bit left, and then she went to the inactive area again. She turned on the gene, and she hurriedly left. She didn't know what would happen, and she didn't want to be involved if something negative happened.
Rachael detached herself from Charise. She opened her eyes and looked around and the three.
"How do you feel?" Rachael asked.
Charise blinked. "A lot better! Thanks!"
"Anything else?"
"No…why? Should there be?"
Rachael was crestfallen. It should've worked! Why didn't it? Zeke and Mike quickly forgot about it as they went away to finish their homework.
~~~~
Hours later, the four had resulted to games to pass the evening away. Zeke and Charise were playing chess while Rachael and Mike were playing charades.
"Quick, who am I?"
"Hey, no fair! You can change what you look like to make it easier!"
"Why are you complaining?"
"Um…I like a challenge?"
"I could blindfold you."
"What good what that do?"
"Well it would definitely make it harder to guess."
"Ahahaha! You look like that stupid math teacher!"
"DENTENTION! Ha-ha! I know, I try."
"I've got you now, Charise! E4 to C2!"
"Uh, yeah! Sure! Knight takes C2!"
"Ooh, bad move! Now I can –"
"Wait."
Zeke looked up at Charise, mid-move. Rachael and Mike weren't paying attention, and they continued their banter over their game. Charise looked over all the pieces, and again, and a third time while a smile crept over her face.
"What is it?"
Charise laughed. "I can see every move possible. You can't win!"
"Oh yeah? Well, we'll see about that!"
A few minutes later, Zeke sat in defeat. Charise glowed triumphantly.
"See? I told you I'd win."
"Yeah, right. It was probably just a lucky bet."
"Give me a puzzle, I'll solve it. Come on!"
"Here's one," Rachael said, running up. "Where can I hide so Mike can't find me?"
"Wha-? Um, definitely no place around here. Why?"
"Shoot – Aaah!!"
Rachael ran off as Mike came in and chased her down the next hallway. Charise turned back to Zeke.
"Seriously. Give me a puzzle and I'll solve it."
"Ok, fine. I'll go get some." He got up, went to his room, and returned with a book. "Here. It's a book of sudoku puzzles. Y'know, that new craze from Japan. We are going there in a few days for spring break, anyways."
"We are?"
"Of course. I have to finish my training."
"For?"
"Dinuclecium, of course. What else? Anyways, try one of the extra hard ones in the back. Y'know, the ones with 13 numbers instead of nine. If you can figure all those before morning, I'll believe you."
"Perfect. I'll have them done long before you wake up again, though."
"Alright, fine, whatever. Just don't hurt yourself."
"Like Rachael just did to Mike."
"What?"
At that moment, Rachael tore through the central hub towards the bedrooms with a huge grin on her face. Mike entered not long after, with huge red marks up and down both arms.
"What happened to you?" Zeke asked. Charise was already in a laughing fit.
"Word to the wise: Don't make a genopath mad at you. You have no idea what she can do to you."
"That's…temporary, right?”
"You know Rachael. She wouldn't do anything to hurt us. Heck, she couldn't hurt anyone, even if she wanted to."
"If you say so."
"I'm going to bed now. G'night, Zeke. You too, Charise."
Zeke nodded. "Doesn't sound like a bad idea, right now. Night Mike, Charise."
They walked down the hallway to the bedrooms, and Zeke called out when they got there, "Goodnight, Rachael!"
"Ya backstabbing moron!" Mike added. Only fits of high pitched giggles answered them.
~~~~
Zeke was standing below a cliff for the fourth time. This time there was a small group of people milling around inside the fence. Zeke was sure that he knew them. The boulder fell off of the cliff directly above them, and he reached out to stop it, as always. It slowed, but did not stop. He strained with all the strength had, but he still couldn't stop it. He wanted to scream and warn the people, but he couldn't open his mouth. Suddenly, with astounding clarity, he knew who the people were. Horrified, he tried to call to them. Mike! Rachael! Charise! Zeke was forced to watch helplessly as his friends were slowly crushed by his partially suspended boulder…
Zeke found himself sitting bolt upright on his bed in his room, a cold sweat and an echoing scream accompanying him. Rachael was banging on his door again, just like the last time.
"Zeke! Open the door!"
His hand lifted, and the di melted. Rachael stormed in.
"Would you quit it? Some of us are trying not to be petrified by someone suddenly screaming!"
"Sorry. It –"
"Let me guess. Just another nightmare?"
Zeke stared at her.
"Yeah. Anyways, Charise stopped by my room before she went to bed. She said to give it to you if she didn't get a chance. She doesn't have to go to school anymore, you know. She gets to sleep in."
Rachael handed it to Zeke, and he flipped through all the pages. The first page was blank. Upon further inspection, he found a note. It read:
Thought I'd leave you one for you so your money for this book wouldn't go to waste.
-Charise
Zeke tried to laugh a little as he went through and saw that every other puzzle in the book was completed. "Thanks, Rachael. What time is it?"
"A little past 12:30. You guys went to bed maybe an hour and a half ago."
There's no doubt about her gene now, Zeke thought. "Thanks again, Rachael. Goodnight."
"No problem."
Zeke heard her mutter to herself as she left.
"Nothing ever goes on around here at night. So boring. And for six more hours, at least! Heaven forbid. I've got to find something to do. Every night gets more and more boring…"
Zeke forced a halfhearted smile while she left. When his door was shut, he closed his eyes and pondered his nightmare, still shocked.
December 27, 2006
Trip To Japan
The next day passed in a haze of blazing sunshine. As it was the day before spring break, none of the trio's teachers gave them any homework. Happily, the weather was becoming warmer, and any attempts made by the government to find Charise would have to wait until school was back in session. The trio was returning to their base, laughing about their day and planning their hasty but necessary trip to Japan.
"Ok, when we get back home, we should be able to just grab our bags and go, right?"
"Yeah, sounds good, Zeke."
"Oh man, guys, did you see that stupid kid in band today? That poor teacher, I'll bet Leeb didn't show up on purpose!"
"No kidding. It's a good idea though. Not show up and have another teacher come take care of us."
"Still…I wish we could've played today. I like all our pieces!"
"You always like very song we play, Mike."
"Because they all sound cool, and I have a cool part!"
"I say play a bass part sometime, and then recast that ballot."
"What, we're talking politics now?"
"Just making a point…"
The three entered the base to find Charise sitting on the couch, waiting for them.
"Hey Charise!"
"Hey guys. I think I've got everything. I ran a checklist in my head probably a dozen times by now."
"If you're missing something, we could probably get it in Japan. A souvenir, if you will."
"Come on, Rachael, we've got to go. Plus, we've got to stop at a bank on the way out of the country. For Mike."
"Wha…? Oh, yes, that's right. Let me go get my stuff." Rachael left and returned promptly with one bag.
"Is that it?" Charise asked.
"Yup."
"Why so little?"
"Think about it. I can control my hygiene at will, and I don't have much care for personal luxuries, so really, all I need is change of clothes and an extra jar of cells. Just in case something happens."
"Oh."
"Hence the one bag. Less money for the flight then. Anyways, let's go! We don't want to miss it!"
"Yeah, yeah, we know, we're coming! Take some time to breathe, man!" They were about to leave when Zeke exclaimed, "No! We can't go yet!"
"Why?"
"Charise is bound to be noticed eventually, we have to change what she looks like!"
"No problem!" Rachael walked up behind Charise and placed a hand on her neck. Within moments, Charise looked entirely different, but sounded completely the same.
"Sweet. Great job, Rachael."
~~~~
The four proceeded to call a cab to take them down to Chicago so they could go to California. From there, they would withdraw Mike's money and board another plane to get to Japan. It took them five hours to get to O'Hare, and boarded their plane as soon as they got there. Zeke, Mike, and Charise all tried to fall asleep, but the flight was full of laughter, games and conversation. They arrived in California 3 hours later, and Mike tried to reset his watch while Charise and Zeke stretched.
"What time is it back home?" Charise asked him, yawning.
"Uh… 11-ish. What time is it here?"
"Um… 8-ish, I think. You might want to wait to reset that, since you'll need to do it again once we get to Japan."
"Good point." The four boarded their plane and left for Japan at 9 AM the following morning after withdrawing Mike's money, and the four engaged in conversation quickly. A few hours later, they got bored and went to sleep. Before Rachael put herself into hibernation (since it was against her nature to sleep), she calculated how much longer it would take them to get there, and she guessed about 10 more hours. She would reset her internal clock later.
~~~~
Exactly 9 hours later, Rachael awoke with a start. She accidentally elbowed Charise in her gut in the process, and inevitably woke her. Charise groaned and pulled out her headphones and plugged them into the armrest. Rachael blinked and looked outside the window. Water, water, and more water was all she could see. But suddenly, she spotted something else. It was only a little red spot on the water, but after watching it, she realized that whatever it was, it was following the plane, and doing a pretty good job of keeping up. Rachael magnified her focus on it, and she found it was a little boat, with what looked like a pagoda on top. She watched it intently for a moment.
"Rachael? Rachael!" She turned, only to see a very large version of Mike's nose. She yelped quietly and closed her eyes.
"Rach, what is it?"
"I was looking at something outside and my eyesight's kinda messed up." She explained. "Hang on…"
A minute later she opened her eyes. She looked outside the window at the water, but her pagoda boat was gone. She turned back to Mike, a little frustrated that he had pulled her focus from the boat. He shrugged. "Math?"
She smiled through her annoyance, and stuck out both her index fingers.
~~~~
As the plane touched down early the next morning, the four were now awake, though the other three (aside from Rachael) were still drowsy. Zeke led the way out of the airport into a small area. A little sign labeled CUSTOMS sat near the door. A little Japanese woman sat at the counter. The four walked over. She looked up and smiled. "Oh, hello dears! How may I help you? Oh, but that must be a silly question, considering what this is for!" She laughed. "Come for the customs, I'll say. Yes? Of course. So I'll get right to it, shall I? What are you here for? Have you been here before? You four are a group, right? Why do you all come together?"
Charise nudged Zeke out of the way, and started speaking fluent Japanese. Surprised, the little lady started yammering back, and within moments, she was writing up the papers and whatnot that they needed. Astounded, Mike and Zeke stared in confusion while Rachael laughed under her breath. The little lady wandered off behind the counter, and Charise turned to the others.
"How…? When…? I didn't know you could speak Japanese!" Zeke said, flabbergasted.
Charise shrugged. "Neither could I, but after Rachael woke me up, I listened to a Japanese radio station, and I guess I picked up some things."
"Some things? Sheesh, I'll say you picked up the whole language!" Mike joked.
"What did you tell her?" Zeke asked.
Charise shrugged again. "Well, I told her that we're all cousins and that we're taking a holiday to Japan. A family outing, if you will. That and we're here for training in martial arts. She said if she sees us before we leave, she'd like to see progress. I think she was joking…"
"Hey, whatever works." Rachael said. "Let's go."
After the little lady had written down all the answers she needed, Zeke led the way out of the area again, and they found themselves in a small station. They sat on a bench and Mike looked at his watch. He groaned as he realized that he had not bothered to change the time on his watch in the airport, and he had no idea how many time-zones they had passed through.
"9:47," Rachael said, reading Mike's expression of dismay. "A.M."
Mike looked at her, to say thanks, but she was not looking at him. She was on her feet, looking down the train track towards the water. She had seen the pagoda boat again. Mike tried to follow her gaze, but couldn't see anything around the wall, so he rose and stood next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder in the process.
"What are you looking at?" he asked. She blinked and looked at him, surprised, and then quickly turned her gaze back to the water. She stomped her foot in frustration.
"Nothing. Nothing but water."
Suddenly, the bullet train silently pulled up next to them. They jumped, and Mike went back to their seat and retrieved both of their bags. Rachael nodded her thanks, and then boarded with the others. The four chose a compartment to themselves, and Mike and Charise promptly fell asleep next to the window, as it was the middle of the night back in their hometown. Zeke fought to stay awake.
"Zeke, I appreciate you trying to stay awake to accompany me, but you should sleep."
"Can you fix it for me, please? I want to stay up with you. Company will make this trip go by faster, you know?"
She hesitated a moment, and then placed a hand to his forehead. A few minutes later, she returned her hand to her side.
"Thanks, Rachael. I've noticed that the sleep thing doesn't always work."
"Yeah, I'm not sure why, but the more I do it the less it works."
"Yeah, but when it does work, it's getting better."
"It's a kind of trade off, I guess."
Zeke nodded, and Rachael looked outside the window. She saw that the bullet train was on a monorail out in the middle of the water, between two islands of Japan. She heard a shuffle, and she turned. Mike had fallen onto Zeke's lap, and Zeke had a very bemused look on his face. Rachael considered laughing, but something pulled her attention outside again. It was the pagoda boat. This time she watched it, determined not to loose it again. She heard a thunk and a moan, and she turned. Mike was sitting up now, his hand on his head.
"Mike! Zeke! Come look at…" she trailed off as she turned and saw that the boat was gone again. "Never mind." She finished.
"Anyways, I hope you like it here. It was really intense the last time I came."
"For good reason." Rachael had turned back to face Zeke.
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, think about it. You were going to further training in martial arts, but instead you left knowing dinuclecium alchemy."
Zeke shrugged. "I suppose that makes sense."
Rachael glanced outside the window again. "I don't know about you, but I think we're being followed."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know. It's just a… feeling." She purposely decided not to tell him about the pagoda boat. She had already seen it three times, and she didn't want to scare him about possible tricks of her mind.
They sat in silence for the rest of the ride.
"Ok, when we get back home, we should be able to just grab our bags and go, right?"
"Yeah, sounds good, Zeke."
"Oh man, guys, did you see that stupid kid in band today? That poor teacher, I'll bet Leeb didn't show up on purpose!"
"No kidding. It's a good idea though. Not show up and have another teacher come take care of us."
"Still…I wish we could've played today. I like all our pieces!"
"You always like very song we play, Mike."
"Because they all sound cool, and I have a cool part!"
"I say play a bass part sometime, and then recast that ballot."
"What, we're talking politics now?"
"Just making a point…"
The three entered the base to find Charise sitting on the couch, waiting for them.
"Hey Charise!"
"Hey guys. I think I've got everything. I ran a checklist in my head probably a dozen times by now."
"If you're missing something, we could probably get it in Japan. A souvenir, if you will."
"Come on, Rachael, we've got to go. Plus, we've got to stop at a bank on the way out of the country. For Mike."
"Wha…? Oh, yes, that's right. Let me go get my stuff." Rachael left and returned promptly with one bag.
"Is that it?" Charise asked.
"Yup."
"Why so little?"
"Think about it. I can control my hygiene at will, and I don't have much care for personal luxuries, so really, all I need is change of clothes and an extra jar of cells. Just in case something happens."
"Oh."
"Hence the one bag. Less money for the flight then. Anyways, let's go! We don't want to miss it!"
"Yeah, yeah, we know, we're coming! Take some time to breathe, man!" They were about to leave when Zeke exclaimed, "No! We can't go yet!"
"Why?"
"Charise is bound to be noticed eventually, we have to change what she looks like!"
"No problem!" Rachael walked up behind Charise and placed a hand on her neck. Within moments, Charise looked entirely different, but sounded completely the same.
"Sweet. Great job, Rachael."
~~~~
The four proceeded to call a cab to take them down to Chicago so they could go to California. From there, they would withdraw Mike's money and board another plane to get to Japan. It took them five hours to get to O'Hare, and boarded their plane as soon as they got there. Zeke, Mike, and Charise all tried to fall asleep, but the flight was full of laughter, games and conversation. They arrived in California 3 hours later, and Mike tried to reset his watch while Charise and Zeke stretched.
"What time is it back home?" Charise asked him, yawning.
"Uh… 11-ish. What time is it here?"
"Um… 8-ish, I think. You might want to wait to reset that, since you'll need to do it again once we get to Japan."
"Good point." The four boarded their plane and left for Japan at 9 AM the following morning after withdrawing Mike's money, and the four engaged in conversation quickly. A few hours later, they got bored and went to sleep. Before Rachael put herself into hibernation (since it was against her nature to sleep), she calculated how much longer it would take them to get there, and she guessed about 10 more hours. She would reset her internal clock later.
~~~~
Exactly 9 hours later, Rachael awoke with a start. She accidentally elbowed Charise in her gut in the process, and inevitably woke her. Charise groaned and pulled out her headphones and plugged them into the armrest. Rachael blinked and looked outside the window. Water, water, and more water was all she could see. But suddenly, she spotted something else. It was only a little red spot on the water, but after watching it, she realized that whatever it was, it was following the plane, and doing a pretty good job of keeping up. Rachael magnified her focus on it, and she found it was a little boat, with what looked like a pagoda on top. She watched it intently for a moment.
"Rachael? Rachael!" She turned, only to see a very large version of Mike's nose. She yelped quietly and closed her eyes.
"Rach, what is it?"
"I was looking at something outside and my eyesight's kinda messed up." She explained. "Hang on…"
A minute later she opened her eyes. She looked outside the window at the water, but her pagoda boat was gone. She turned back to Mike, a little frustrated that he had pulled her focus from the boat. He shrugged. "Math?"
She smiled through her annoyance, and stuck out both her index fingers.
~~~~
As the plane touched down early the next morning, the four were now awake, though the other three (aside from Rachael) were still drowsy. Zeke led the way out of the airport into a small area. A little sign labeled CUSTOMS sat near the door. A little Japanese woman sat at the counter. The four walked over. She looked up and smiled. "Oh, hello dears! How may I help you? Oh, but that must be a silly question, considering what this is for!" She laughed. "Come for the customs, I'll say. Yes? Of course. So I'll get right to it, shall I? What are you here for? Have you been here before? You four are a group, right? Why do you all come together?"
Charise nudged Zeke out of the way, and started speaking fluent Japanese. Surprised, the little lady started yammering back, and within moments, she was writing up the papers and whatnot that they needed. Astounded, Mike and Zeke stared in confusion while Rachael laughed under her breath. The little lady wandered off behind the counter, and Charise turned to the others.
"How…? When…? I didn't know you could speak Japanese!" Zeke said, flabbergasted.
Charise shrugged. "Neither could I, but after Rachael woke me up, I listened to a Japanese radio station, and I guess I picked up some things."
"Some things? Sheesh, I'll say you picked up the whole language!" Mike joked.
"What did you tell her?" Zeke asked.
Charise shrugged again. "Well, I told her that we're all cousins and that we're taking a holiday to Japan. A family outing, if you will. That and we're here for training in martial arts. She said if she sees us before we leave, she'd like to see progress. I think she was joking…"
"Hey, whatever works." Rachael said. "Let's go."
After the little lady had written down all the answers she needed, Zeke led the way out of the area again, and they found themselves in a small station. They sat on a bench and Mike looked at his watch. He groaned as he realized that he had not bothered to change the time on his watch in the airport, and he had no idea how many time-zones they had passed through.
"9:47," Rachael said, reading Mike's expression of dismay. "A.M."
Mike looked at her, to say thanks, but she was not looking at him. She was on her feet, looking down the train track towards the water. She had seen the pagoda boat again. Mike tried to follow her gaze, but couldn't see anything around the wall, so he rose and stood next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder in the process.
"What are you looking at?" he asked. She blinked and looked at him, surprised, and then quickly turned her gaze back to the water. She stomped her foot in frustration.
"Nothing. Nothing but water."
Suddenly, the bullet train silently pulled up next to them. They jumped, and Mike went back to their seat and retrieved both of their bags. Rachael nodded her thanks, and then boarded with the others. The four chose a compartment to themselves, and Mike and Charise promptly fell asleep next to the window, as it was the middle of the night back in their hometown. Zeke fought to stay awake.
"Zeke, I appreciate you trying to stay awake to accompany me, but you should sleep."
"Can you fix it for me, please? I want to stay up with you. Company will make this trip go by faster, you know?"
She hesitated a moment, and then placed a hand to his forehead. A few minutes later, she returned her hand to her side.
"Thanks, Rachael. I've noticed that the sleep thing doesn't always work."
"Yeah, I'm not sure why, but the more I do it the less it works."
"Yeah, but when it does work, it's getting better."
"It's a kind of trade off, I guess."
Zeke nodded, and Rachael looked outside the window. She saw that the bullet train was on a monorail out in the middle of the water, between two islands of Japan. She heard a shuffle, and she turned. Mike had fallen onto Zeke's lap, and Zeke had a very bemused look on his face. Rachael considered laughing, but something pulled her attention outside again. It was the pagoda boat. This time she watched it, determined not to loose it again. She heard a thunk and a moan, and she turned. Mike was sitting up now, his hand on his head.
"Mike! Zeke! Come look at…" she trailed off as she turned and saw that the boat was gone again. "Never mind." She finished.
"Anyways, I hope you like it here. It was really intense the last time I came."
"For good reason." Rachael had turned back to face Zeke.
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, think about it. You were going to further training in martial arts, but instead you left knowing dinuclecium alchemy."
Zeke shrugged. "I suppose that makes sense."
Rachael glanced outside the window again. "I don't know about you, but I think we're being followed."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know. It's just a… feeling." She purposely decided not to tell him about the pagoda boat. She had already seen it three times, and she didn't want to scare him about possible tricks of her mind.
They sat in silence for the rest of the ride.
December 26, 2006
The Contest
It was a good hour later when they had reached the fourth and final island of Japan, Kyushu, when Zeke finally spoke again.
"We're almost there. Time to wake Mike and Charise up,"
Mike groaned as Zeke poked him in the shoulder. Rachael set her hand gently on Charise's shoulder and immediately had a hand at her throat. Charise was standing now with one hand at Rachael's throat and the other searching her side for her staff. Before anyone could protest, Charise let go and sat back down.
"What was that?"
"Sorry, you startled me."
"No, I've never seen anyone move so fast."
"It was weird, after I jumped up. Things seemed to slow down, even me. It was like I was watching a slow motion world from inside my head."
They felt the monorail stop smoothly in the station.
"Wow, Rachael, that gene was cooler than you thought."
"What gene?" Charise eyed Zeke quizzically.
"When Rachael was working on metamorphing you, she found a dormant gene, and so she turned it on."
Charise exploded, "So you just went inside and started messing with my DNA? The stuff that makes me different from everyone else?"
"Well, yes, but Charise, you had something no one else has, but it was locked. I just unlocked it for you."
"Well…yeah, I guess you're right. And it is kind of cool."
"Well I'm glad that worked out quick. Anyways, I don't know about you guys, but if we don't go now, I'll be seeing you two the next time the train stops here."
Slightly irritated, the girls grabbed their bags and shuffled out. Zeke made sure Mike had everything, as he was still groggy, and followed them.
Once the train left the four alone on the road, Zeke started down the road.
"Zeke? Aren't we going to call a cab or something?"
"Nope. No taxies around here for miles. Too small of a town for that."
Charise looked skeptically at him.
"Well sorry, did you want me to type up a step-by-step itinerary?"
Rachael giggled as Charise shook her head, exasperated. Mike was still totally oblivious.
The trek took quite a while, and by the time they were done, everyone but Zeke was a little cranky.
"Come on, guys, its good exercise!"
"Zeke, I can exercise just by thinking about it."
"Mike and Charise can't, but if you can, then this should be easy."
"Yeah, yeah."
The road ended in a metal gate. The gate was attached to a stone wall surrounding a small complex of seven buildings. A class of martial arts students was practicing in one of the grassy courtyards. The group stepped up to the guard window.
"Hello, do you have an appointment?"
"I'm sorry, no."
"Then you'll have to wait as I call for the secretary."
"Well, uh, actually, I'm a member."
"Oh? Can I see your card, please?"
Zeke reached in his pocket and pulled out a metal card, which he extended to the guard. He reached out and touched it, and they didn't move for a few seconds, then both withdrew.
"Welcome back, Zeke. The sensei will have to meet your friends before you can resume training. You can wait in the commons, I'll notify him."
"Thank you, and don't worry, my friends are very unique too. I think he'll find them to be right at home here."
The gate silently slid open, and Zeke led the way to one of the buildings. The inside was very comfortable. Couches and lounge chairs filled up the room. The walls were lined with bookcases, all filled with books and trinkets. Tables bore chess sets, cards, large stacks of papers, and a plethora of other things. A large clock in the corner chimed noon.
"Wow, this is like a dorm room."
"It kind of is. This is where everyone hangs out. It's also the only place on campus that's allowed to be messy."
"What?"
"Every other building and the grounds must be kept in perfect order." Zeke explained. The other three glanced at each other. "It's not that bad." he added.
A semi-short man with neat hair walked in. The three guessed that he was in his twenties. Zeke jumped up and bowed. The other man returned the bow as Zeke whispered urgently, "Guys, bow! It's a sign of respect." Awkwardly, they did so.
The man began to speak. "Zeke, I'm surprised that you would bring in outsiders. Do they know?"
"Yes, sensei, but they're in the same boat…"
"Hah, I will hear no more!" And with that, he turned and left.
"Zeke, was that the sensei?" Mike asked.
"Yeah, what were you expecting?"
"I don't know, a short, old, bald man with a long beard?"
"You will find that people don't really fit into stereotypes here."
"Zeke, was that something we should be worried about?" Rachael asked.
"Not really, I think he's a little miffed that I brought you guys here. I just need to show him what you guys can do, and then he'll be alright."
"Oh, alright. So what do we do now?"
As Zeke glanced at a chess set, it floated off the shelf and onto a nearby table. "Try and play Charise. She's good. Oh, be careful, the pieces are heavy. Mike's going to come with me and show the sensei his power."
"Why Mike?"
"Because his power is a lot more visual."
"Be careful where you go with that, I could accidentally alter the way your nose is and leave it that way. How's that for a visual?"
Zeke and Mike ran out as Rachael threatened to do so. They didn't stop until they reached the sensei's office. Zeke noticed a dried out bonsai tree in the trash can. He gently pulled it out and inspected it. "Mike, do you suppose you could fix it?"
Mike reached out and ran his fingers over the bark and dried leaves. "I think so."
"Good!" Zeke pushed the door open and stepped in.
"Yes?"
"Sensei, is this you're prized weeping fig bonsai?"
Without glancing up, he answered, "I mixed some bad peat into the soil. There's no saving it now."
"Mike thinks he can help."
The sensei looked up in protest, but lost his voice when he saw the leaves fill out and return to a vibrant shade of green. "I would get it in a good mix soon. I don't know how long it will stay that way."
The sensei looked from his revived tree to Mike. "You did that?"
Mike nodded and reached into his pocket. He withdrew an acorn and held it in his hand. It cracked open and 2 tiny leaves poked out. They grew upwards as roots began to sprout. When Mike was done, he had a fully grown oak tree in his hand that was reduced to about a foot tall. He offered to the sensei, who received it. He turned it over and examined it.
"Remarkable…" he muttered.
"I told you my friends were in the same boat. If they reveal my secret, I reveal theirs."
"I apologize for my rudeness earlier. A situation like this has never arisen before."
"So you've never seen anything like this before?"
The sensei shook his head. "No, I'm sorry."
"Sorry, Mike, looks like we still don’t know anything about your powers."
"And what about you're other friends?"
"Rachael is a metamorph. She can manipulate her DNA and change the way she looks. She threatened to permanently alter our faces not too long ago. Anyways, Charise has this staff thing our government is after her for. She's the only one that can use it and she's got really fast reflexes."
"Well, lots of students here have fast reflexes."
"You don't know the meaning of the word until you see what she can do. She can solve puzzles almost instantly."
"I see. So you want them to train as well?"
"Yeah. Charise is kinda clumsy with her staff, and martial arts training would help immensely. If she could learn alchemy too, that'd be cool. I don't know what we could do with Mike and Rachael, but anything we choose would be up to you. Anything would be great."
"Alright. I'll put Charise in the martial arts section. What weapon proficiency?"
"Primarily staff and bow, I think. Maybe swords. It'd be more like broadsword and katana, second. After that, hand-to-hand and anything else we have time for."
"You're only here for a week, correct? Do you think she can learn that much in a week?"
"She learned fluent Japanese on the plane ride here."
"Really."
"Yeah. So about my training."
"I assume you've been practicing?"
"Correct."
"Then we'll send you through the contest."
"Agreed."
"Zeke, I don't mean to interrupt, but you crossed over into Japanese."
"Really? Sorry. Sensei, with your leave?" Zeke and Mike bowed.
"Granted." He returned the bow.
The two left and returned to the commons. As they entered, Charise and Rachael broke out into laughter.
"What's so funny?"
"Charise just dropped a piece on my foot."
"Be careful with those!" The piece zapped over and began to rotate in front of Zeke's face. It was a queen. The crown was an intricate maze of wires, some of which were a little bent out of place. They turned to liquid and corrected their position. "This set was crafted by one of the best students this school has ever seen. You ought to be more careful."
"Sorry."
"It's alright now. Besides, I just smoothed things over with the sensei. He's agreed to train us. Charise, you're in for a lot of work."
"Oh boy."
"You're going to be going through a whole martial arts class in a week."
"Whoa."
"Yeah. Rachael, you and Mike are going to work with the sensei, as your power is still a bit… unfamiliar."
"I'll tolerate the use of that phrase. And what about you?"
"I have to go through a contest-like thing to determine my rank and skill."
"When's that?"
"As soon as I get there. We might want to go now, so I don't keep them waiting."
Zeke turned to leave, and the other three followed quickly.
~~~~
The other students had already assembled for the test. They sat in the bleachers as the sensei drew a ring in the dirt. A block of dinuclecium was placed in the center. Zeke stood idly nearby, waiting for the sensei to give the word. Mike, Charise and Rachael sat in the front row, as to be closest to their friend.
The sensei turned to Zeke. "Zeke, please melt this block." He raised his hand and it did as it was bid. The sensei nodded.
"I figured as such." The sensei formed two small orbs from the di and presented one to Zeke and one to another student. Zeke used the small amount to silver, and most of the curious liquid went to his head while a single twin stream running down the inside of his arm. It branched out onto his finger and became an intricate web of design on his fingertips. The other student fixed the di as wires connected poles protruding from his head. The sensei formed the rest of the block into a large flat circle. He placed it vertically between the two students.
"What are they doing?" Rachael asked.
One of the students behind her explained. "They both have to try and bend both ends of the disc 90 degrees away from them, so it's bent over into a circle facing their opponent. Once the two ends touch, the person who was on the other side of the gap is the winner. It's a common way to see who's stronger in their alchemy."
The sensei called out, "Begin!" With hardly any effort at all, Zeke bent the disc into a sphere facing his opponent.
"Very impressive, Zeke. He's one of our best students here. This will be his second full year. You've improved greatly."
"Thank you, master."
"Miss Koji, I believe he is ready to face you."
A girl stepped forward now, seemingly very annoyed that she would have to be involved in such a trivial matter. The sensei reformed the di back into a flat disc. When Koji was ready, the sensei called out, "Begin!"
Koji was caught off guard by the force that Zeke was exerting. He had, in a few seconds, bent the disc about halfway. She was not worried, however. She thought that he would not be able to keep up the level of force. Within the next few seconds, however, she realized her fault. Zeke soon had the disc bent far enough, and the sensei called Zeke the victor. Koji returned to the stands, completely shocked.
The sensei then stepped forward, and a small murmur escaped the crowd.
"What is it?" Rachael asked again.
"Your friend is going up against the sensei. He has never had to battle against anyone before. At least, not that I know of."
The sensei pulled the di from the ground where Koji had let it drop. It spread into a web over his head and down his arm into an intricate design on his hands, very similar to Zeke's design.
"Zeke, your knowledge of the metaphysical properties of dinuclecium has increased greatly."
"Thanks, it helps having a metamorph as a friend."
Rachael beamed in the stands, as her hearing was often better than everyone else's.
One of the students stepped forward and raised the disk. He made sure the two were ready, and then called out, "Begin!"
Zeke and the sensei pushed, tensing every muscle in their body. The disc did not move. For five minutes straight the disc and the two contestants did not move, though an occasional ripple would shoot out from the center of the disc.
Suddenly the sensei relaxed, and stood straight. The only muscle that showed any tension now was the one holding up his arm. Zeke felt an immense force building up in the di, and he braced for it. The sensei flicked his wrist, and the impact nearly sent Zeke flying. Amazingly, he somehow kept the disc from closing too much.
"Oh my gosh, Mike, look at him!" Charise sat astounded.
Rachael sat shaking her head, awed but concerned. "He's never done alchemy this long with this much pressure before. He's not going to last much longer."
"What are you talking about?"
At that moment, Zeke swayed where he stood. The disc bent a little further, and then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and collapsed.
"Zeke!" The three made to run to him, but the sensei gave them a look that stopped them. They watched as the sensei incorporated the disc onto Zeke and focused on him. Zeke gently lifted up off the ground.
"Is he going to be alright?"
The sensei continued to float Zeke away. The same student behind them began to explain. "He'll be fine. It's a defense mechanism for your body. Alchemy really drains your energy and your body will relinquish itself into a coma before any damage is sustained."
"So…?"
"He'll be out for a day or so. He should be fine tomorrow afternoon."
"He'd better be."
The three headed back to the commons. When they arrived, Mike flopped down onto a couch and was out within seconds. Rachael and Charise were far too excited to sleep, so they looked around. Most of the books were in Japanese, and many of the ones that were in English were ones that they had never heard of. Their eyes were then drawn to the chess set. Its intricate pieces almost glowed, the way to light reflected off of them. They sat down without saying a word.
Rachael made the first move, then Charise, then Rachael, then Charise. Rachael had moved again and looked up at Charise. She had a placid look on her face.
"Charise?" she called.
Charise didn't respond. She was about to call her again when Charise blinked and shook her head.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I think so. How long was I like that?"
"5 or 6 seconds. Why?"
Charise rubbed her head and didn't respond.
"I called you, but you didn't say anything."
"I heard something, but it sounded like it was super slow and underwater. It was really strange… it was like it was playing into the room on speakers."
"What room?"
"After I looked at the chess set, I was thinking about what moves you could make, and suddenly I was in a huge white room. On the wall in front of me was a large window or TV-screen thing, and it was what I was seeing. It was like I was in a room in my head. I walked over to the screen thing and got up real close. It looked like it was open, like I could stick my head of it. So I tried. I was back in my body, but everything was slow. I couldn’t move. I thought it was like time froze or something, but then I saw you blink, but 50 times slower than normal. I tried moving again, and it worked, but I was moving so slow, like I was trying to go through cement. Even my eyes moved slowly. So I just kind of pulled back into the room in my head, and there's a chess set sitting there, set up like the one here. So I moved a piece and the board split into a whole bunch of other ones, and on each one a different piece was moved to a different spot. Every time I moved a piece, the board would split again. Then I hear the strange sound. I didn't really pay much attention to it, it didn't sound like anything. So I keep splitting chess board for a while until this room is completely filled with chess boards, and then I realize that I hadn't told you what I was doing, so I just closed my eyes and I was back to how things should be."
"Wow, that gene must have been more powerful than we thought."
"Yeah." She moved. "Your turn."
Rachael did so and Charise's face went blank for a second, then smiled. "This is better than when I played Zeke. All the chess boards that didn't have you make that move disappeared."
"Well, aren't you lucky."
In a few moves, Rachael could see why Charise was so excited. It was like she could read her mind. Rachael knocked her king over.
"I give up."
"Oh, come on!"
"No, you're going to beat me."
At that moment, a student walked in. "I beg your forgiveness if I am interrupting."
"We just finished, so it's no problem."
"I was wondering if you wanted me to show you to your quarters."
"Oh, yeah, that might be good. I'll be right there."
Charise grabbed her stuff and followed the student as Rachael shook Mike violently as to wake him up enough for him to understand what was going on.
~~~~
The three set their bags down and looked around. The room had bunk beds and dressers, but other than that, there wasn't much else.
"Your clothes and belongings are to be neatly packed in the dressers. If your suitcases won't fit in there, you may store them under the beds. The rooms are to be in neat order and cleaned every day."
"That seems a little strict."
"The common room can be messy, but keeping strict organization is part of the training."
"I see. Alright, well thank you."
The student left, and Rachael turned to find Mike and Charise already asleep on the bottom bunks. Rachael climbed up on the bed over Charise and lay, staring at the ceiling, pondering Zeke's fate and the mysterious pagoda boat.
"We're almost there. Time to wake Mike and Charise up,"
Mike groaned as Zeke poked him in the shoulder. Rachael set her hand gently on Charise's shoulder and immediately had a hand at her throat. Charise was standing now with one hand at Rachael's throat and the other searching her side for her staff. Before anyone could protest, Charise let go and sat back down.
"What was that?"
"Sorry, you startled me."
"No, I've never seen anyone move so fast."
"It was weird, after I jumped up. Things seemed to slow down, even me. It was like I was watching a slow motion world from inside my head."
They felt the monorail stop smoothly in the station.
"Wow, Rachael, that gene was cooler than you thought."
"What gene?" Charise eyed Zeke quizzically.
"When Rachael was working on metamorphing you, she found a dormant gene, and so she turned it on."
Charise exploded, "So you just went inside and started messing with my DNA? The stuff that makes me different from everyone else?"
"Well, yes, but Charise, you had something no one else has, but it was locked. I just unlocked it for you."
"Well…yeah, I guess you're right. And it is kind of cool."
"Well I'm glad that worked out quick. Anyways, I don't know about you guys, but if we don't go now, I'll be seeing you two the next time the train stops here."
Slightly irritated, the girls grabbed their bags and shuffled out. Zeke made sure Mike had everything, as he was still groggy, and followed them.
Once the train left the four alone on the road, Zeke started down the road.
"Zeke? Aren't we going to call a cab or something?"
"Nope. No taxies around here for miles. Too small of a town for that."
Charise looked skeptically at him.
"Well sorry, did you want me to type up a step-by-step itinerary?"
Rachael giggled as Charise shook her head, exasperated. Mike was still totally oblivious.
The trek took quite a while, and by the time they were done, everyone but Zeke was a little cranky.
"Come on, guys, its good exercise!"
"Zeke, I can exercise just by thinking about it."
"Mike and Charise can't, but if you can, then this should be easy."
"Yeah, yeah."
The road ended in a metal gate. The gate was attached to a stone wall surrounding a small complex of seven buildings. A class of martial arts students was practicing in one of the grassy courtyards. The group stepped up to the guard window.
"Hello, do you have an appointment?"
"I'm sorry, no."
"Then you'll have to wait as I call for the secretary."
"Well, uh, actually, I'm a member."
"Oh? Can I see your card, please?"
Zeke reached in his pocket and pulled out a metal card, which he extended to the guard. He reached out and touched it, and they didn't move for a few seconds, then both withdrew.
"Welcome back, Zeke. The sensei will have to meet your friends before you can resume training. You can wait in the commons, I'll notify him."
"Thank you, and don't worry, my friends are very unique too. I think he'll find them to be right at home here."
The gate silently slid open, and Zeke led the way to one of the buildings. The inside was very comfortable. Couches and lounge chairs filled up the room. The walls were lined with bookcases, all filled with books and trinkets. Tables bore chess sets, cards, large stacks of papers, and a plethora of other things. A large clock in the corner chimed noon.
"Wow, this is like a dorm room."
"It kind of is. This is where everyone hangs out. It's also the only place on campus that's allowed to be messy."
"What?"
"Every other building and the grounds must be kept in perfect order." Zeke explained. The other three glanced at each other. "It's not that bad." he added.
A semi-short man with neat hair walked in. The three guessed that he was in his twenties. Zeke jumped up and bowed. The other man returned the bow as Zeke whispered urgently, "Guys, bow! It's a sign of respect." Awkwardly, they did so.
The man began to speak. "Zeke, I'm surprised that you would bring in outsiders. Do they know?"
"Yes, sensei, but they're in the same boat…"
"Hah, I will hear no more!" And with that, he turned and left.
"Zeke, was that the sensei?" Mike asked.
"Yeah, what were you expecting?"
"I don't know, a short, old, bald man with a long beard?"
"You will find that people don't really fit into stereotypes here."
"Zeke, was that something we should be worried about?" Rachael asked.
"Not really, I think he's a little miffed that I brought you guys here. I just need to show him what you guys can do, and then he'll be alright."
"Oh, alright. So what do we do now?"
As Zeke glanced at a chess set, it floated off the shelf and onto a nearby table. "Try and play Charise. She's good. Oh, be careful, the pieces are heavy. Mike's going to come with me and show the sensei his power."
"Why Mike?"
"Because his power is a lot more visual."
"Be careful where you go with that, I could accidentally alter the way your nose is and leave it that way. How's that for a visual?"
Zeke and Mike ran out as Rachael threatened to do so. They didn't stop until they reached the sensei's office. Zeke noticed a dried out bonsai tree in the trash can. He gently pulled it out and inspected it. "Mike, do you suppose you could fix it?"
Mike reached out and ran his fingers over the bark and dried leaves. "I think so."
"Good!" Zeke pushed the door open and stepped in.
"Yes?"
"Sensei, is this you're prized weeping fig bonsai?"
Without glancing up, he answered, "I mixed some bad peat into the soil. There's no saving it now."
"Mike thinks he can help."
The sensei looked up in protest, but lost his voice when he saw the leaves fill out and return to a vibrant shade of green. "I would get it in a good mix soon. I don't know how long it will stay that way."
The sensei looked from his revived tree to Mike. "You did that?"
Mike nodded and reached into his pocket. He withdrew an acorn and held it in his hand. It cracked open and 2 tiny leaves poked out. They grew upwards as roots began to sprout. When Mike was done, he had a fully grown oak tree in his hand that was reduced to about a foot tall. He offered to the sensei, who received it. He turned it over and examined it.
"Remarkable…" he muttered.
"I told you my friends were in the same boat. If they reveal my secret, I reveal theirs."
"I apologize for my rudeness earlier. A situation like this has never arisen before."
"So you've never seen anything like this before?"
The sensei shook his head. "No, I'm sorry."
"Sorry, Mike, looks like we still don’t know anything about your powers."
"And what about you're other friends?"
"Rachael is a metamorph. She can manipulate her DNA and change the way she looks. She threatened to permanently alter our faces not too long ago. Anyways, Charise has this staff thing our government is after her for. She's the only one that can use it and she's got really fast reflexes."
"Well, lots of students here have fast reflexes."
"You don't know the meaning of the word until you see what she can do. She can solve puzzles almost instantly."
"I see. So you want them to train as well?"
"Yeah. Charise is kinda clumsy with her staff, and martial arts training would help immensely. If she could learn alchemy too, that'd be cool. I don't know what we could do with Mike and Rachael, but anything we choose would be up to you. Anything would be great."
"Alright. I'll put Charise in the martial arts section. What weapon proficiency?"
"Primarily staff and bow, I think. Maybe swords. It'd be more like broadsword and katana, second. After that, hand-to-hand and anything else we have time for."
"You're only here for a week, correct? Do you think she can learn that much in a week?"
"She learned fluent Japanese on the plane ride here."
"Really."
"Yeah. So about my training."
"I assume you've been practicing?"
"Correct."
"Then we'll send you through the contest."
"Agreed."
"Zeke, I don't mean to interrupt, but you crossed over into Japanese."
"Really? Sorry. Sensei, with your leave?" Zeke and Mike bowed.
"Granted." He returned the bow.
The two left and returned to the commons. As they entered, Charise and Rachael broke out into laughter.
"What's so funny?"
"Charise just dropped a piece on my foot."
"Be careful with those!" The piece zapped over and began to rotate in front of Zeke's face. It was a queen. The crown was an intricate maze of wires, some of which were a little bent out of place. They turned to liquid and corrected their position. "This set was crafted by one of the best students this school has ever seen. You ought to be more careful."
"Sorry."
"It's alright now. Besides, I just smoothed things over with the sensei. He's agreed to train us. Charise, you're in for a lot of work."
"Oh boy."
"You're going to be going through a whole martial arts class in a week."
"Whoa."
"Yeah. Rachael, you and Mike are going to work with the sensei, as your power is still a bit… unfamiliar."
"I'll tolerate the use of that phrase. And what about you?"
"I have to go through a contest-like thing to determine my rank and skill."
"When's that?"
"As soon as I get there. We might want to go now, so I don't keep them waiting."
Zeke turned to leave, and the other three followed quickly.
~~~~
The other students had already assembled for the test. They sat in the bleachers as the sensei drew a ring in the dirt. A block of dinuclecium was placed in the center. Zeke stood idly nearby, waiting for the sensei to give the word. Mike, Charise and Rachael sat in the front row, as to be closest to their friend.
The sensei turned to Zeke. "Zeke, please melt this block." He raised his hand and it did as it was bid. The sensei nodded.
"I figured as such." The sensei formed two small orbs from the di and presented one to Zeke and one to another student. Zeke used the small amount to silver, and most of the curious liquid went to his head while a single twin stream running down the inside of his arm. It branched out onto his finger and became an intricate web of design on his fingertips. The other student fixed the di as wires connected poles protruding from his head. The sensei formed the rest of the block into a large flat circle. He placed it vertically between the two students.
"What are they doing?" Rachael asked.
One of the students behind her explained. "They both have to try and bend both ends of the disc 90 degrees away from them, so it's bent over into a circle facing their opponent. Once the two ends touch, the person who was on the other side of the gap is the winner. It's a common way to see who's stronger in their alchemy."
The sensei called out, "Begin!" With hardly any effort at all, Zeke bent the disc into a sphere facing his opponent.
"Very impressive, Zeke. He's one of our best students here. This will be his second full year. You've improved greatly."
"Thank you, master."
"Miss Koji, I believe he is ready to face you."
A girl stepped forward now, seemingly very annoyed that she would have to be involved in such a trivial matter. The sensei reformed the di back into a flat disc. When Koji was ready, the sensei called out, "Begin!"
Koji was caught off guard by the force that Zeke was exerting. He had, in a few seconds, bent the disc about halfway. She was not worried, however. She thought that he would not be able to keep up the level of force. Within the next few seconds, however, she realized her fault. Zeke soon had the disc bent far enough, and the sensei called Zeke the victor. Koji returned to the stands, completely shocked.
The sensei then stepped forward, and a small murmur escaped the crowd.
"What is it?" Rachael asked again.
"Your friend is going up against the sensei. He has never had to battle against anyone before. At least, not that I know of."
The sensei pulled the di from the ground where Koji had let it drop. It spread into a web over his head and down his arm into an intricate design on his hands, very similar to Zeke's design.
"Zeke, your knowledge of the metaphysical properties of dinuclecium has increased greatly."
"Thanks, it helps having a metamorph as a friend."
Rachael beamed in the stands, as her hearing was often better than everyone else's.
One of the students stepped forward and raised the disk. He made sure the two were ready, and then called out, "Begin!"
Zeke and the sensei pushed, tensing every muscle in their body. The disc did not move. For five minutes straight the disc and the two contestants did not move, though an occasional ripple would shoot out from the center of the disc.
Suddenly the sensei relaxed, and stood straight. The only muscle that showed any tension now was the one holding up his arm. Zeke felt an immense force building up in the di, and he braced for it. The sensei flicked his wrist, and the impact nearly sent Zeke flying. Amazingly, he somehow kept the disc from closing too much.
"Oh my gosh, Mike, look at him!" Charise sat astounded.
Rachael sat shaking her head, awed but concerned. "He's never done alchemy this long with this much pressure before. He's not going to last much longer."
"What are you talking about?"
At that moment, Zeke swayed where he stood. The disc bent a little further, and then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and collapsed.
"Zeke!" The three made to run to him, but the sensei gave them a look that stopped them. They watched as the sensei incorporated the disc onto Zeke and focused on him. Zeke gently lifted up off the ground.
"Is he going to be alright?"
The sensei continued to float Zeke away. The same student behind them began to explain. "He'll be fine. It's a defense mechanism for your body. Alchemy really drains your energy and your body will relinquish itself into a coma before any damage is sustained."
"So…?"
"He'll be out for a day or so. He should be fine tomorrow afternoon."
"He'd better be."
The three headed back to the commons. When they arrived, Mike flopped down onto a couch and was out within seconds. Rachael and Charise were far too excited to sleep, so they looked around. Most of the books were in Japanese, and many of the ones that were in English were ones that they had never heard of. Their eyes were then drawn to the chess set. Its intricate pieces almost glowed, the way to light reflected off of them. They sat down without saying a word.
Rachael made the first move, then Charise, then Rachael, then Charise. Rachael had moved again and looked up at Charise. She had a placid look on her face.
"Charise?" she called.
Charise didn't respond. She was about to call her again when Charise blinked and shook her head.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I think so. How long was I like that?"
"5 or 6 seconds. Why?"
Charise rubbed her head and didn't respond.
"I called you, but you didn't say anything."
"I heard something, but it sounded like it was super slow and underwater. It was really strange… it was like it was playing into the room on speakers."
"What room?"
"After I looked at the chess set, I was thinking about what moves you could make, and suddenly I was in a huge white room. On the wall in front of me was a large window or TV-screen thing, and it was what I was seeing. It was like I was in a room in my head. I walked over to the screen thing and got up real close. It looked like it was open, like I could stick my head of it. So I tried. I was back in my body, but everything was slow. I couldn’t move. I thought it was like time froze or something, but then I saw you blink, but 50 times slower than normal. I tried moving again, and it worked, but I was moving so slow, like I was trying to go through cement. Even my eyes moved slowly. So I just kind of pulled back into the room in my head, and there's a chess set sitting there, set up like the one here. So I moved a piece and the board split into a whole bunch of other ones, and on each one a different piece was moved to a different spot. Every time I moved a piece, the board would split again. Then I hear the strange sound. I didn't really pay much attention to it, it didn't sound like anything. So I keep splitting chess board for a while until this room is completely filled with chess boards, and then I realize that I hadn't told you what I was doing, so I just closed my eyes and I was back to how things should be."
"Wow, that gene must have been more powerful than we thought."
"Yeah." She moved. "Your turn."
Rachael did so and Charise's face went blank for a second, then smiled. "This is better than when I played Zeke. All the chess boards that didn't have you make that move disappeared."
"Well, aren't you lucky."
In a few moves, Rachael could see why Charise was so excited. It was like she could read her mind. Rachael knocked her king over.
"I give up."
"Oh, come on!"
"No, you're going to beat me."
At that moment, a student walked in. "I beg your forgiveness if I am interrupting."
"We just finished, so it's no problem."
"I was wondering if you wanted me to show you to your quarters."
"Oh, yeah, that might be good. I'll be right there."
Charise grabbed her stuff and followed the student as Rachael shook Mike violently as to wake him up enough for him to understand what was going on.
~~~~
The three set their bags down and looked around. The room had bunk beds and dressers, but other than that, there wasn't much else.
"Your clothes and belongings are to be neatly packed in the dressers. If your suitcases won't fit in there, you may store them under the beds. The rooms are to be in neat order and cleaned every day."
"That seems a little strict."
"The common room can be messy, but keeping strict organization is part of the training."
"I see. Alright, well thank you."
The student left, and Rachael turned to find Mike and Charise already asleep on the bottom bunks. Rachael climbed up on the bed over Charise and lay, staring at the ceiling, pondering Zeke's fate and the mysterious pagoda boat.
December 25, 2006
Learn, Michael-san
Mike and Charise awoke with a start to a loud gong. Rachael looked up from the book she was reading and smiled. "Oh, good! You guys are awake. I've been so bored. Anyways, if you haven’t guessed by now, the gong means it's time to get up and start training."
She handed them their robes and they put them on while she continued.
"Zeke's also still in his coma, so he won't be joining us for breakfast."
"When did they think he'd get better?"
"Sometime this afternoon, I think. I can't remember."
"Who cares? He wakes up when he wakes up. Let's go eat."
They met the sensei outside of the mess hall after breakfast. He gave them a friendly smile.
"Good morning pupils."
"Good morning sensei." The three chorused.
"Charise, please follow this young man here. He will show you to all of your martial arts classes. Rachael and Mike, you will work with me until we figure out better means for you."
The trio separated and Mike and Rachael followed the sensei to his office where he motioned for them to sit. He looked at Rachael.
"Now, Rachael, would you please describe for me the exact nature of your abilities?"
"Well, I'm a metamorph. I can alter most physiological functions of my body, and I can change how I look and heal wounds. I can't spontaneously gain or loose mass, though."
"Very interesting. What do you have to do to metamorph? How do you control it?"
"Well, I think about what I want to happen, and it happens. I can feel it happening. I can feel when things are wrong and what's going on inside me. I can also morph viruses and bacteria so I can't get sick. I can change other people, too, but not as much as myself, and only if they are willing. I think people's minds provide some sort of protection for that, or something."
"Can you change animals and plants, too?"
"Plants? Oh, no, we leave the plants up to Mike. I couldn't even if I wanted to. And I'm not sure about animals; I've never tried."
"Thank you. And Michael?"
"I can control the growth of plants in what part and which direction. I can also disintegrate plant substance. I picture what I want to happen and then I move my hands. I feel a sort of energy flow from inside of me. I don't really know why I use my hands, but it seems to help sometimes."
The sensei looked thoughtful. "Rachael, do movements help you at all?"
"No, it's all thought."
"Michael, do actions or thoughts help you more?"
"Concentrating helps a little, but if I happen to move right, it helps way more."
"I see. Thank you, this has helped. Rachael, would you be alright with learning a meditation skill form Buddhism?"
"Of course."
"Good, I think that will help you immensely. I will help train you for that. And as for you, Michael, I think it would be most helpful for you to learn Tai Chi. I'll send for a runner, just wait outside."
Mike left, casting a glance to Rachael as he did. The sensei went to his desk as he instructed her.
"Sit on the floor, please, and get comfortable."
He lit some incense and then sat down next to her.
"Breathe in and relax as you exhale…"
~~~~
Zeke groaned and opened his eyes, then quickly shut them as they were assaulted by the light. He rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. He heard a voice not long after.
"Oh, good, you're awake. I'll send for your friends."
"What time is it?"
"Around five."
"And I've been in comatose for a day?"
"Actually less. With that much exertion, I thought you'd be out until five tomorrow."
"So I've only been out for 8 hours?"
"Yes. Sensei will be surprised." And with that, the student ran out.
Zeke grabbed a glass of water from the bed-side table and downed it. His head hurt, but he was glad that the coma had not lasted long. He had seen others who had been in one for two or three days. Sometimes more; and many of them for doing much less alchemy then he had done. He lay back down and thought back to what had happened. He and the sensei had been very evenly matched. Their dinuclecium tracing had been very much alike, and he was proud that he had found a good way to do it. They had also been about as strong. They had not been able to for five whole minutes. Small lapses in focus had resulted in little more than ripples across the plate. It was what the sensei had done next that completely stumped him. He had straightened up and relaxed completely, with no muscle tension or nerve impulses to end energy to the di on his skin. How he had amassed such a force, Zeke didn't know how to answer.
Zeke pondered this and gently fell into slumber.
-dream-
"Zeke!"
A voice called him from his dream, and he opened his eyes to fins Rachael kneeling on the bed, face over his. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Mike and Charise at the foot at his bed. Rachael grabbed Zeke's shoulder and pulled him up, forcing him to look directly into her eyes.
"What is up with you and these stupid nightmares?!"
"Well, I'm sorry, it's not like I can do anything about them!"
With a huff, she let go of him, letting him fall back down on his back. She retreated to the end of the bed when the sensei walked in.
"Congratulations, Zeke! You passed the test."
"Test?"
"Yes. You have shown exceptional skill in developing your talents on your own. You also seem to have a fast recovery rate, like me. I believe you are ready to start iron training."
"Iron… and gravity?"
"Yes. But first, I need to ask you some questions. When you using mercury, did you ever manipulate gravity?"
"Yeah… once, I think."
Charise interrupted. "He pushed two trucks off a bridge to save me!"
The sensei paused and frowned slightly, then continued. "Thank you. Did you sustain this force?"
"No, it was just a pulse, not sustained. It made me incredibly tired afterwards, though."
"I see. Have you tried lifting anything with dinuclecium?"
"Not very much. The last time I can think of is when Mike was injured and I made a stretcher out of di. I couldn't lift it by myself, but I think I got close."
"Thank you, Zeke. You all have the rest off the day off. That is, of course, you otherwise wish to join Miss Koji for the open karate class and sparing."
The three standing bowed, and Zeke motioned with his head. The sensei returned the bow and left.
~~~~
The grounds were beautiful as the sky shifted to orange, then sun dipping toward the horizon. Zeke had joined in for the lesson, but was sitting out for the sparing. Mike and Rachael were off to one side, practicing moves while Charise was out in the open of the courtyard, circling Miss Koji.
-battle!-
Miss Koji removed her foot and offered Charise a hand. She took it and Koji began to laugh, as if they had been friends forever.
"Charise, you are one of the quickest student's I've ever had. That power of yours is very special, you've remembered everything I've even told or shown you. Your reflexes are very impressive, too."
"It's kind of annoying, I knew you were coming, but I also knew that I couldn't move fast enough."
"Don't worry. Like anything else, the more you practice, the better you become. The more you train in… what did you call it?"
"Hyper mind."
"The more you fight in hyper mind, the faster your body will become."
The two bowed and Charise went to talk with Mike and Rachael. Miss Koji approached Zeke.
"I'm sorry if I came across a little condescending earlier. I had no idea you had progressed so far."
"I hadn't either. I had no way to gauge my progress with other people."
"So now you are to start gravity work?"
"Yes."
"Congratulations, it is a real honor to be picked for iron training. You and your friends are very special. You four are very lucky to know each other." She produced a card from her robes. "Here. If you and your friends ever get into too much trouble, just know that you can call me and I'll find some way to help. I'm glad that Michael made it out of that situation of his."
"What are you talking about?"
"Sorry. I meant when he had gotten shot."
"How did you know about that?"
"Those of us that are more advanced enough in alchemy have… visions. Sometimes when I look at people, I can see things that have happened to them recently. The sensei can sometimes feel when people are going to be in a particular location in the future. For instance, he said that the four of you will be returning within the year."
Zeke bowed. "Thank you. I'm looking forward to your classes tomorrow."
"Yes. I am particularly interested to see if your martial arts skills are as good as your alchemy."
She returned the bow and then went over to an electrical box and turned off the lights. In the fading orange light of the hot bulbs, the four walked off towards their room.
"Zeke, how are you doing?"
"I'm still a bit tired, bit not as much as I expected to be. How was your day?"
"Quite interesting, actually. The sensei worked with me on Buddhist meditation techniques. I can already tell that it's helping."
"I never thought I'd learn so much in a day. This gene thing is really awesome to work with, too."
"Well MY day was really boring. All I did was work on breathing and moving slowly in funny motions!"
The other three turned to stare at Mike.
"What? So I didn't find today's training that helpful." He said, looking another way.
"Well, if you could just figure out how you do what you do, then we could help." Zeke offered.
"Well if there was a way to find out, I think I would have by now." Mike retorted.
"Boys, please! I understand that you have a disadvantage because you're missing part of your second X chromosome, but do try to get along." Rachael joked.
Charise tried to stifle a giggle as the boys stepped in front of Rachael, cutting her off and turning angrily to face her.
"What? A Y chromosome is an X chromosome that's missing a leg."
"I don’t believe you." Mike challenged.
Rachael stopped and closed her eyes. Her hair grew short and her face squared off. Her jaw and brow thickened and became more pronounced. Her shoulders broadened and her body lost its feminine curves. Her hands enlarged and filled out as dark brown hair sprouted from her exposed forearms. When she spoke, her voice was much deeper and quite gravelly until she got used to it.
"See Mike? I just disabled the part of my second X that isn't on the Y. I'll admit that I shortened my hair on purpose, but that was so you would see what I'm talking about, and not that I'd look like some hippie."
Mike’s jaw dropped open, and Zeke and Charise could no longer contain their laughter. Mike flushed and turned away, slightly disturbed.
"OK, Rachael, you win. You're right. Now please turn back, it's creepy."
She sensed a strong feeling of disturbance in his voice, and she quietly shifted back to her normal form. She smiled mischievously to the other two and then veered off with Charise towards the girl's bath. Zeke and Mike veered off towards the boy's. Zeke overheard Rachael whisper to Charise, "Why is it that guys are so stubborn? I love proving them wrong!"
Zeke turned to the silhouette that was his best friend. "What, Mike, couldn't handle your girlfriend turning into a guy?"
Mike blushed a hot red, his ears burning. Luckily, in the darkness, Zeke did not see. Mike punched Zeke in the arm, none too gently.
"She's not my girlfriend. It's just that I've known her since I was like, 3, and that was kinda too weird."
"OK, sure. And even though it's too dark to see, I'll bet you blushed." Zeke only received another punch for his comment.
Zeke pushed the bath house door open and led Mike in. He grabbed two towels and some soap. He led Mike though another door into a very warm room. It was mostly filled by a large stove-bath pool. Zeke pulled off his shirt, but Mike stopped him from progressing.
"Wait, we're both supposed to strip and take a bath in that pool together? Don't they have any showers here?"
"Uh, no, Mike. They don't have showers. But if it makes you feel better, I'll go all the way over to the other side and face the wall."
"OK, thanks Zeke."
Zeke proceeded to strip completely and eased into the hot water when he was finished. Once he was acclimated he swam over to the other side.
"You know, Mike, you are the most bashful guy I know."
"Oh, come on, Zeke! Like any other guy back home would just go bathe with another guy. Plus, there's a reason they don't have community showers at school anymore."
"Yeah, that's because so many people are openly gay these days."
"Ok, fine. But this is just in violation of moral laws!"
"Moral laws from back home, yes. But this is here. This is part of their culture. Actually, community baths were also ubiquitous in Greece and the Roman Empire. It was a social event; a time to relax and talk to other people."
Mike mumbled something that Zeke couldn’t make out. After that, neither spoke until Mike was finished. He jumped out and quickly dried off.
"I'm going to bed now, Zeke."
"Alright. I think I'll stay a little longer and soak."
After Mike left, the room was completely silent, apart from the gentle lap of water stirred up by Zeke's breathing. Zeke closed his eyes and allowed himself to enjoy that simplicity of being in a place where he was loved and cared about.
~~~~
Zeke had gone to bed not long after his bliss in his bath, but he awoke in his bed later that night. Not because he had the nightmare again, but because he had heard a small sound. He sat up softly and listened. He soon realized that it was Rachael, humming softly on the other side of the room divider. He crept to the edge of the divider as her soft tune evolved into words.
"Shadows in the endless night
Shadows that appear in my disappearing dreams
Shadows in the endless night
Can't escape the wrath of darkness 'round
Flightless dreams, unspoken things
Only to feel the truth again
The pain inside, unending joy
Reflect my life unendingly
I thought my time had finally come
But I know my journey's just begun
And now I see that shadows obscure my thoughts and view
And only for a moment
My eyes revert to you
I thought I might have had my chance
But now I must sadly let it pass
Through clouded sight and thought I know
That shadows rule my every move
Shadows in the endless night
Can't escape reality
But only for a moment
And only for a while
My life reflects before my eyes
In shadows of you and I...
I thought the shadows would let me through
To memories of me and you..."
As Zeke listened, the more he began to realize what it was about, and how lonely she must be. He noted that it sounded like she was holding back tears, and that she must be very sad with nothing to do other than ponder her own thoughts every night. Zeke knew that her parents were always away anyways, traveling on business for their work and whatnot, and they rarely saw her. And, like now, she was awake and alone at night when the rest of the world around her slept. No way to join the rest of them and experience the thing they called sleep, or to know what it was to see a dream. Zeke crept back to his bed, but lay poised to crawl back to the divider. After a few minutes, however, and he had slipped back into the silence of his dreams.
~~~~
Rachael looked at her three friends the next morning as the shoveled food into their mouths.
"You should eat more," Zeke said, mouth full.
"I don't need as much. I'm not growing hair or fingernails, and I'm not replacing skin that doesn't need to be replaced. Besides, while you three are doing alchemy or Tai-che or hyper mind stuff, I'm just meditating. Not even metamorphing yet. I'll be fine. I know my body way better than you know yours."
"Whatever you say, Rae."
"Hey, that rhymes!"
"Yeah, I know. I planned it that way."
"...oh."
After breakfast, the four friends had sword training. All the students held short wooden poles as their sword, but a thin old man pace in front of them. He stopped and squared off the group, which consisted of about 15 students. He began to speak very quietly, causing everyone to remain silent in order for them to hear him. He would explain a move or series of them, and then a student would demonstrate. Charise looked excited, but Mike and Rachael looked rather bored. Rachael less so only because she knew the alternative was much worse. She'd rather sit and listen about it rather than have nothing to do. At least now she would have something to preoccupy some of her night. Mike was drawn to a complete blank. Zeke smiled as he noticed the two. He knew the teacher's style, and he knew the teacher would have already noticed them by now.
When the teacher was about finished, he called Mike up to the front.
"You seemed bored today. Was the work we did today too easy?"
"What work? All you did was explain how to do things."
"Fine. Would you please demonstrate for the class every move I have talked about today."
Mike was dumbfounded. "But you didn't have us try it!"
"Not yet."
"But how am I supposed to remember everything?"
"You listen."
Charise stepped forward. "I could do it, sir."
The teacher smiled. "Well, thank you, but that would hardly do you any credit, what with that gift of yours."
Charise smiled and went back to her place.
"Who else can demonstrate the moves?" the teacher asked.
Several students, including Zeke and a halfhearted attempt by Rachael, raised their hands.
"These people," the teacher motioned to them, "fully understand that knowledge is the best weapon. What good is it for me to have you do something without knowing why? I introduced you to these moves in the order I did because many counter to previous ones." The teacher sent Mike back to his place. "Now find a partner and run through the moves. Once you can do them all, have one do one, then the other do the next and so on. Once you see how they interact, get creative and mix them up a bit."
Zeke turned to Charise. She smiled dangerously. He did too, though he knew that defeat was near.
Zeke held his own, for a while. In a few minutes, Charise had fallen into a rhythm and took a defensive stance. Zeke knew that in a few moves she could defeat him, yet she did not take up offensive.
She’s just toying with me! OK, maybe she just wants me to practice.
This continued on for a while, but then she turned to offensive, but held back.
By the time the two of them were finished, they were both exhausted.
"Thank you for not killing me." Zeke panted.
"It wouldn’t be very productive for you if I had, huh?"
The teacher released them for lunch, and the sensei found Zeke before they had made it very far. "Zeke, I hope you are doing well today. Would you like to start iron training today?"
"Maybe a little, but I would like to hone my combat skills first."
"Alright. Come see me later when you are ready."
~~~~
Later, Mike and Rachael were in the gardens with the sensei. Rachael was sitting and meditating while Mike and the sensei moved fluidly through the motions of Tai Chi.
"I don't mean to complain, sensei," Mike began. "But I don't see the point of this."
"You have seen 'The Karate Kid' back in America, haven’t you?"
"Yes…"
"I teach, you learn. The answer to why comes later."
Mike scowled, but continued to follow his motions. Rachael smiled and opened an eye long enough for her to catch his expression.
"Rachael, I know you didn't open your eyes just now."
She quickly shut it. "No, sensei." Only one of them! She thought.
Mike turned his head just enough to catch her expression and smiled.
She handed them their robes and they put them on while she continued.
"Zeke's also still in his coma, so he won't be joining us for breakfast."
"When did they think he'd get better?"
"Sometime this afternoon, I think. I can't remember."
"Who cares? He wakes up when he wakes up. Let's go eat."
They met the sensei outside of the mess hall after breakfast. He gave them a friendly smile.
"Good morning pupils."
"Good morning sensei." The three chorused.
"Charise, please follow this young man here. He will show you to all of your martial arts classes. Rachael and Mike, you will work with me until we figure out better means for you."
The trio separated and Mike and Rachael followed the sensei to his office where he motioned for them to sit. He looked at Rachael.
"Now, Rachael, would you please describe for me the exact nature of your abilities?"
"Well, I'm a metamorph. I can alter most physiological functions of my body, and I can change how I look and heal wounds. I can't spontaneously gain or loose mass, though."
"Very interesting. What do you have to do to metamorph? How do you control it?"
"Well, I think about what I want to happen, and it happens. I can feel it happening. I can feel when things are wrong and what's going on inside me. I can also morph viruses and bacteria so I can't get sick. I can change other people, too, but not as much as myself, and only if they are willing. I think people's minds provide some sort of protection for that, or something."
"Can you change animals and plants, too?"
"Plants? Oh, no, we leave the plants up to Mike. I couldn't even if I wanted to. And I'm not sure about animals; I've never tried."
"Thank you. And Michael?"
"I can control the growth of plants in what part and which direction. I can also disintegrate plant substance. I picture what I want to happen and then I move my hands. I feel a sort of energy flow from inside of me. I don't really know why I use my hands, but it seems to help sometimes."
The sensei looked thoughtful. "Rachael, do movements help you at all?"
"No, it's all thought."
"Michael, do actions or thoughts help you more?"
"Concentrating helps a little, but if I happen to move right, it helps way more."
"I see. Thank you, this has helped. Rachael, would you be alright with learning a meditation skill form Buddhism?"
"Of course."
"Good, I think that will help you immensely. I will help train you for that. And as for you, Michael, I think it would be most helpful for you to learn Tai Chi. I'll send for a runner, just wait outside."
Mike left, casting a glance to Rachael as he did. The sensei went to his desk as he instructed her.
"Sit on the floor, please, and get comfortable."
He lit some incense and then sat down next to her.
"Breathe in and relax as you exhale…"
~~~~
Zeke groaned and opened his eyes, then quickly shut them as they were assaulted by the light. He rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. He heard a voice not long after.
"Oh, good, you're awake. I'll send for your friends."
"What time is it?"
"Around five."
"And I've been in comatose for a day?"
"Actually less. With that much exertion, I thought you'd be out until five tomorrow."
"So I've only been out for 8 hours?"
"Yes. Sensei will be surprised." And with that, the student ran out.
Zeke grabbed a glass of water from the bed-side table and downed it. His head hurt, but he was glad that the coma had not lasted long. He had seen others who had been in one for two or three days. Sometimes more; and many of them for doing much less alchemy then he had done. He lay back down and thought back to what had happened. He and the sensei had been very evenly matched. Their dinuclecium tracing had been very much alike, and he was proud that he had found a good way to do it. They had also been about as strong. They had not been able to for five whole minutes. Small lapses in focus had resulted in little more than ripples across the plate. It was what the sensei had done next that completely stumped him. He had straightened up and relaxed completely, with no muscle tension or nerve impulses to end energy to the di on his skin. How he had amassed such a force, Zeke didn't know how to answer.
Zeke pondered this and gently fell into slumber.
-dream-
"Zeke!"
A voice called him from his dream, and he opened his eyes to fins Rachael kneeling on the bed, face over his. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Mike and Charise at the foot at his bed. Rachael grabbed Zeke's shoulder and pulled him up, forcing him to look directly into her eyes.
"What is up with you and these stupid nightmares?!"
"Well, I'm sorry, it's not like I can do anything about them!"
With a huff, she let go of him, letting him fall back down on his back. She retreated to the end of the bed when the sensei walked in.
"Congratulations, Zeke! You passed the test."
"Test?"
"Yes. You have shown exceptional skill in developing your talents on your own. You also seem to have a fast recovery rate, like me. I believe you are ready to start iron training."
"Iron… and gravity?"
"Yes. But first, I need to ask you some questions. When you using mercury, did you ever manipulate gravity?"
"Yeah… once, I think."
Charise interrupted. "He pushed two trucks off a bridge to save me!"
The sensei paused and frowned slightly, then continued. "Thank you. Did you sustain this force?"
"No, it was just a pulse, not sustained. It made me incredibly tired afterwards, though."
"I see. Have you tried lifting anything with dinuclecium?"
"Not very much. The last time I can think of is when Mike was injured and I made a stretcher out of di. I couldn't lift it by myself, but I think I got close."
"Thank you, Zeke. You all have the rest off the day off. That is, of course, you otherwise wish to join Miss Koji for the open karate class and sparing."
The three standing bowed, and Zeke motioned with his head. The sensei returned the bow and left.
~~~~
The grounds were beautiful as the sky shifted to orange, then sun dipping toward the horizon. Zeke had joined in for the lesson, but was sitting out for the sparing. Mike and Rachael were off to one side, practicing moves while Charise was out in the open of the courtyard, circling Miss Koji.
-battle!-
Miss Koji removed her foot and offered Charise a hand. She took it and Koji began to laugh, as if they had been friends forever.
"Charise, you are one of the quickest student's I've ever had. That power of yours is very special, you've remembered everything I've even told or shown you. Your reflexes are very impressive, too."
"It's kind of annoying, I knew you were coming, but I also knew that I couldn't move fast enough."
"Don't worry. Like anything else, the more you practice, the better you become. The more you train in… what did you call it?"
"Hyper mind."
"The more you fight in hyper mind, the faster your body will become."
The two bowed and Charise went to talk with Mike and Rachael. Miss Koji approached Zeke.
"I'm sorry if I came across a little condescending earlier. I had no idea you had progressed so far."
"I hadn't either. I had no way to gauge my progress with other people."
"So now you are to start gravity work?"
"Yes."
"Congratulations, it is a real honor to be picked for iron training. You and your friends are very special. You four are very lucky to know each other." She produced a card from her robes. "Here. If you and your friends ever get into too much trouble, just know that you can call me and I'll find some way to help. I'm glad that Michael made it out of that situation of his."
"What are you talking about?"
"Sorry. I meant when he had gotten shot."
"How did you know about that?"
"Those of us that are more advanced enough in alchemy have… visions. Sometimes when I look at people, I can see things that have happened to them recently. The sensei can sometimes feel when people are going to be in a particular location in the future. For instance, he said that the four of you will be returning within the year."
Zeke bowed. "Thank you. I'm looking forward to your classes tomorrow."
"Yes. I am particularly interested to see if your martial arts skills are as good as your alchemy."
She returned the bow and then went over to an electrical box and turned off the lights. In the fading orange light of the hot bulbs, the four walked off towards their room.
"Zeke, how are you doing?"
"I'm still a bit tired, bit not as much as I expected to be. How was your day?"
"Quite interesting, actually. The sensei worked with me on Buddhist meditation techniques. I can already tell that it's helping."
"I never thought I'd learn so much in a day. This gene thing is really awesome to work with, too."
"Well MY day was really boring. All I did was work on breathing and moving slowly in funny motions!"
The other three turned to stare at Mike.
"What? So I didn't find today's training that helpful." He said, looking another way.
"Well, if you could just figure out how you do what you do, then we could help." Zeke offered.
"Well if there was a way to find out, I think I would have by now." Mike retorted.
"Boys, please! I understand that you have a disadvantage because you're missing part of your second X chromosome, but do try to get along." Rachael joked.
Charise tried to stifle a giggle as the boys stepped in front of Rachael, cutting her off and turning angrily to face her.
"What? A Y chromosome is an X chromosome that's missing a leg."
"I don’t believe you." Mike challenged.
Rachael stopped and closed her eyes. Her hair grew short and her face squared off. Her jaw and brow thickened and became more pronounced. Her shoulders broadened and her body lost its feminine curves. Her hands enlarged and filled out as dark brown hair sprouted from her exposed forearms. When she spoke, her voice was much deeper and quite gravelly until she got used to it.
"See Mike? I just disabled the part of my second X that isn't on the Y. I'll admit that I shortened my hair on purpose, but that was so you would see what I'm talking about, and not that I'd look like some hippie."
Mike’s jaw dropped open, and Zeke and Charise could no longer contain their laughter. Mike flushed and turned away, slightly disturbed.
"OK, Rachael, you win. You're right. Now please turn back, it's creepy."
She sensed a strong feeling of disturbance in his voice, and she quietly shifted back to her normal form. She smiled mischievously to the other two and then veered off with Charise towards the girl's bath. Zeke and Mike veered off towards the boy's. Zeke overheard Rachael whisper to Charise, "Why is it that guys are so stubborn? I love proving them wrong!"
Zeke turned to the silhouette that was his best friend. "What, Mike, couldn't handle your girlfriend turning into a guy?"
Mike blushed a hot red, his ears burning. Luckily, in the darkness, Zeke did not see. Mike punched Zeke in the arm, none too gently.
"She's not my girlfriend. It's just that I've known her since I was like, 3, and that was kinda too weird."
"OK, sure. And even though it's too dark to see, I'll bet you blushed." Zeke only received another punch for his comment.
Zeke pushed the bath house door open and led Mike in. He grabbed two towels and some soap. He led Mike though another door into a very warm room. It was mostly filled by a large stove-bath pool. Zeke pulled off his shirt, but Mike stopped him from progressing.
"Wait, we're both supposed to strip and take a bath in that pool together? Don't they have any showers here?"
"Uh, no, Mike. They don't have showers. But if it makes you feel better, I'll go all the way over to the other side and face the wall."
"OK, thanks Zeke."
Zeke proceeded to strip completely and eased into the hot water when he was finished. Once he was acclimated he swam over to the other side.
"You know, Mike, you are the most bashful guy I know."
"Oh, come on, Zeke! Like any other guy back home would just go bathe with another guy. Plus, there's a reason they don't have community showers at school anymore."
"Yeah, that's because so many people are openly gay these days."
"Ok, fine. But this is just in violation of moral laws!"
"Moral laws from back home, yes. But this is here. This is part of their culture. Actually, community baths were also ubiquitous in Greece and the Roman Empire. It was a social event; a time to relax and talk to other people."
Mike mumbled something that Zeke couldn’t make out. After that, neither spoke until Mike was finished. He jumped out and quickly dried off.
"I'm going to bed now, Zeke."
"Alright. I think I'll stay a little longer and soak."
After Mike left, the room was completely silent, apart from the gentle lap of water stirred up by Zeke's breathing. Zeke closed his eyes and allowed himself to enjoy that simplicity of being in a place where he was loved and cared about.
~~~~
Zeke had gone to bed not long after his bliss in his bath, but he awoke in his bed later that night. Not because he had the nightmare again, but because he had heard a small sound. He sat up softly and listened. He soon realized that it was Rachael, humming softly on the other side of the room divider. He crept to the edge of the divider as her soft tune evolved into words.
"Shadows in the endless night
Shadows that appear in my disappearing dreams
Shadows in the endless night
Can't escape the wrath of darkness 'round
Flightless dreams, unspoken things
Only to feel the truth again
The pain inside, unending joy
Reflect my life unendingly
I thought my time had finally come
But I know my journey's just begun
And now I see that shadows obscure my thoughts and view
And only for a moment
My eyes revert to you
I thought I might have had my chance
But now I must sadly let it pass
Through clouded sight and thought I know
That shadows rule my every move
Shadows in the endless night
Can't escape reality
But only for a moment
And only for a while
My life reflects before my eyes
In shadows of you and I...
I thought the shadows would let me through
To memories of me and you..."
As Zeke listened, the more he began to realize what it was about, and how lonely she must be. He noted that it sounded like she was holding back tears, and that she must be very sad with nothing to do other than ponder her own thoughts every night. Zeke knew that her parents were always away anyways, traveling on business for their work and whatnot, and they rarely saw her. And, like now, she was awake and alone at night when the rest of the world around her slept. No way to join the rest of them and experience the thing they called sleep, or to know what it was to see a dream. Zeke crept back to his bed, but lay poised to crawl back to the divider. After a few minutes, however, and he had slipped back into the silence of his dreams.
~~~~
Rachael looked at her three friends the next morning as the shoveled food into their mouths.
"You should eat more," Zeke said, mouth full.
"I don't need as much. I'm not growing hair or fingernails, and I'm not replacing skin that doesn't need to be replaced. Besides, while you three are doing alchemy or Tai-che or hyper mind stuff, I'm just meditating. Not even metamorphing yet. I'll be fine. I know my body way better than you know yours."
"Whatever you say, Rae."
"Hey, that rhymes!"
"Yeah, I know. I planned it that way."
"...oh."
After breakfast, the four friends had sword training. All the students held short wooden poles as their sword, but a thin old man pace in front of them. He stopped and squared off the group, which consisted of about 15 students. He began to speak very quietly, causing everyone to remain silent in order for them to hear him. He would explain a move or series of them, and then a student would demonstrate. Charise looked excited, but Mike and Rachael looked rather bored. Rachael less so only because she knew the alternative was much worse. She'd rather sit and listen about it rather than have nothing to do. At least now she would have something to preoccupy some of her night. Mike was drawn to a complete blank. Zeke smiled as he noticed the two. He knew the teacher's style, and he knew the teacher would have already noticed them by now.
When the teacher was about finished, he called Mike up to the front.
"You seemed bored today. Was the work we did today too easy?"
"What work? All you did was explain how to do things."
"Fine. Would you please demonstrate for the class every move I have talked about today."
Mike was dumbfounded. "But you didn't have us try it!"
"Not yet."
"But how am I supposed to remember everything?"
"You listen."
Charise stepped forward. "I could do it, sir."
The teacher smiled. "Well, thank you, but that would hardly do you any credit, what with that gift of yours."
Charise smiled and went back to her place.
"Who else can demonstrate the moves?" the teacher asked.
Several students, including Zeke and a halfhearted attempt by Rachael, raised their hands.
"These people," the teacher motioned to them, "fully understand that knowledge is the best weapon. What good is it for me to have you do something without knowing why? I introduced you to these moves in the order I did because many counter to previous ones." The teacher sent Mike back to his place. "Now find a partner and run through the moves. Once you can do them all, have one do one, then the other do the next and so on. Once you see how they interact, get creative and mix them up a bit."
Zeke turned to Charise. She smiled dangerously. He did too, though he knew that defeat was near.
Zeke held his own, for a while. In a few minutes, Charise had fallen into a rhythm and took a defensive stance. Zeke knew that in a few moves she could defeat him, yet she did not take up offensive.
She’s just toying with me! OK, maybe she just wants me to practice.
This continued on for a while, but then she turned to offensive, but held back.
By the time the two of them were finished, they were both exhausted.
"Thank you for not killing me." Zeke panted.
"It wouldn’t be very productive for you if I had, huh?"
The teacher released them for lunch, and the sensei found Zeke before they had made it very far. "Zeke, I hope you are doing well today. Would you like to start iron training today?"
"Maybe a little, but I would like to hone my combat skills first."
"Alright. Come see me later when you are ready."
~~~~
Later, Mike and Rachael were in the gardens with the sensei. Rachael was sitting and meditating while Mike and the sensei moved fluidly through the motions of Tai Chi.
"I don't mean to complain, sensei," Mike began. "But I don't see the point of this."
"You have seen 'The Karate Kid' back in America, haven’t you?"
"Yes…"
"I teach, you learn. The answer to why comes later."
Mike scowled, but continued to follow his motions. Rachael smiled and opened an eye long enough for her to catch his expression.
"Rachael, I know you didn't open your eyes just now."
She quickly shut it. "No, sensei." Only one of them! She thought.
Mike turned his head just enough to catch her expression and smiled.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)