City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  From that point onwards, Seckry never again judged the headmaster by his past, and he vowed to himself that he would defend the headmaster if any other students began to slate him. What Gobbledee had done that day, in Seckry’s opinion, was save someone’s life.

  Seckry felt much happier after speaking to Gobbledee, and his day was improved even more when they came across Mrs Cutson in the corridor, and saw that she had to pass the headmaster’s office and enter her inferior office. Before closing her door, she turned to them dryly and gave an expression of someone who had been sucking on a soursucker straw for hours with ten bitterballs dropped in for extra bite.

  By this time, Seckry was back in school and the one person he was petrified of seeing again was Snibble. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hasn’t showed up for ages,” Tippian said.

  Seckry guessed he would have to confront him at some point, but maybe it wouldn’t even be until after the summer holidays.

  “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with the messiah,” Tenk said that weekend, as they sat in Tippian’s living room.

  “I’m not the messiah!” Seckry laughed. “There . . . was no messiah.”

  “Mate, I just can’t even get my head around it. It’s like . . . you were named after yourself. You were named Seckraman because you had the same colour eyes as your time travelling self.” He gripped the sides of his head and did a few disbelieving shakes.

  “I’m sure Vance will explain it to you if you’d like him to,” Seckry offered.

  “All those paintings!” Tenk continued. “They were all of you! Do you realise there are people in shrines right now worshipping and praying to you?”

  “I don’t think he’s ever gonna get over it, is he?” Seckry said to everyone.

  “Nope,” said Loca.

  “Hey, Seck,” said Tippian, pulling a tightly rolled up newspaper out of his pocket. “You wanna see the headlines?”

  “Do you carry that thing with you wherever you go now?” said Loca.

  “Of course,” Tippian defended. “We’re famous! My name’s on the front page, for Gedin’s sake! This is getting laminated and framed and going up on my bedroom wall when I’m finished showing it to people.”

  “We made the headlines?” Seckry asked.

  Tippian unrolled the paper and shook it a few times before pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and clearing his throat.

  “Rabbit Man mystery solved by group of teenagers!” he read, in a deeper voice than normal. “Young heroes, Seckraman Sevenstars, Tenk Binko, Tippian Furst, Eiya Tacana, and Loca Thumbsuckle last night thwarted the corrupt plans of Endrin CEO Kan Darklight, who had been secretly conducting a mad professor style experiment in his lab.

  “Sources say that Darklight had convinced himself he could make a time machine by extracting certain compounds from human bodies, and kidnapped and murdered twenty people in order to do so.

  “The former student of Skyfall City University had also been holding a twenty five year old man captive, and had been pumping him with performance enhancing drugs in order to use him as a weapon. This man, whose real name is Danney Plum, is more widely known as the Rabbit Man.”

  “You hear that, Seck?” said Tenk, grinning wildly. “We’re heroes! Take that, mum! I ain’t some lazy bum anymore who sits around in his underwear playing video games all day, I’m a fully fledged hero!”

  Loca rolled her eyes.

  “Tenk, you’re a hero, yes, but that’s not gonna change the fact that you’re a lazy bum that sits around playing video games all day. You’re still gonna be that guy.”

  “Well, that might be true. But I can wear a t-shirt now saying ‘I’m a Hero,’ while doing it if I want.”

  “Tenk,” Loca said. “Please tell me you won’t.”

  They sat and talked for most of the morning. The sun was shining bright and the air was warm so Seckry and Eiya decided to walk home instead of catching the monorail.

  As they got closer, they saw the turning for the Blacklear, and Seckry paused momentarily.

  “Do we take the dangerous shortcut, or do we take the safe, long way round?” he said.

  “Hmm,” Eiya pondered. “I kind of feel like after the danger we were in last week, taking a shortcut past a drug smuggling den doesn’t really even compare. Let’s take it.”

  They made their way down the alley and tried to keep their heads down as they walked past the huge, run down building on their left, but because they weren’t looking, somebody leaving the warehouse bumped into them.

  Seckry immediately grabbed Eiya and readied himself to run for his life, but the man they had bumped into put his hand up to halt them.

  He had been carrying a cardboard box which he had dropped, and the contents were strewn across the floor. Amidst them were a heap load of books and a pink teddy bear.

  “I’m so sorry,” the man apologised. “I should’ve been look – wait, you’re Seckraman Sevenstars, and Eiya Tacana.”

  Seckry and Eiya glanced at each other, slightly frightened and slightly curious as to how this man knew them.

  “You . . . I owe you everything. My family . . . we all do, all of us here.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Seckry, confused.

  “You were the only ones that figured out a way to infiltrate Endrin. You are the ones who got Darklight arrested, you are the ones who have saved my daughter, my family, my friends and myself.”

  Suddenly, a young girl rushed out of the house, the same girl from last time Seckry was here, except this time, she was smiling. She ran straight to Seckry and slapped her arms around his waist, pressing her head into his stomach.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for not telling him where we were.”

  “I don’t understand,” Seckry said. “This isn’t . . . a drug smuggling den?”

  “Drug smuggling?” said the man, laughing lightly. “Is that what used to go on here? We knew this place had a reputation, and we knew the government were scared to come down here, but we were never entirely sure why. No, my friends, there is no drug smuggling going on here. We have been simply hiding. Hiding from Darklight.”

  Eiya stepped towards the man.

  “You’ve been hiding from Darklight . . . are you saying you’re–”

  “Yes,” said the man. “We are innoya.”

  “Seckry, this is it!” Eiya said excitedly. “This is how I’m still alive. This is how I still exist! There are more innoya!”

  “How you still exist?” queried the man.

  “I think we have a lot to talk to you about,” said Seckry. “So that’s why you were so scared when I saw you?” he addressed to the girl, who was picking up her teddy.

  “I didn’t want you telling him we were here,” she said. “If you’d told that evil man he would have come and taken us away, like he did to the others.”

  “I’m so sorry . . . we couldn’t save the others,” Seckry said.

  The man put his hand up. “Please, you don’t have to be sorry. What you lot did, we are beyond thankful for. You tried to save them, we know. You tried your hardest.”

  They arranged to meet up with the man, whose name was Cartell, at a later date, to talk to him about Eiya and her existence. For now, though, they were going to let the innoya move out of the Blacklear and find their feet again, in the knowledge that Darklight was going to be behind bars.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  An Old Friend Visits