Katelyn, who hadn't moved, jumped as a bird made its landing on her head. Batting it off almost hesitantly, she watched as the bird took to the air for a second, before it readjusted itself onto her arm. Placing a slip of paper from its beak in her hand, it left, flying out one of the now open windows.
Before Katelyn opened it, another bird dug its cold metal talons into Alex's blazer. Looking sharply to his shoulder, Alex turned his hand up to the bird and received his own slip. Opening it, he read its contents.
Congratulations, Alex Mulholland. It read. Prepare yourself...Katelyn Strata is your opponent for the upcoming semester assessment. Good luck.
Chapter 19
Tuning In
"Class dismissed. Be ready for the test next class on object mimicry,” Mrs. Quill said.
"Hey, Melissa practice again today?" Alex asked her, packing up. Already at the end of his second month of Corpus, he was getting the hang of its one class curriculum, if only with Melissa's help.
"Must you ask every day?" She retorted. "I said I'd train you so I will."
Katelyn stood and, putting her headphones on, walked out without a second glance.
Watching her for a moment, Alex turned to Daniel. "Has your sister always been an anti-social?"
"Well..." Daniel's expression darkened, his eyes becoming distant. He seemed to look past Alex as if recalling a disturbing memory.
"Oh, um...never mind,” Alex said, feeling intrusive.
"No,” Daniel said finally.
Melissa reaching out, touched Daniel's shoulder lightly and jerking away from her, he snapped out of it. "I mean, no, she wasn't always like that."
"Really?" Alex said finding it hard to believe.
"Chop, chop, come on you slug, stop stalling. Socializing never got anyone anywhere," Melissa butted in. Grabbing Alex's hand, she dragged him out the door.
"Actually—" Alex began.
"Shut up."
"Uh..." Alex said, looking pointedly down at his hand. Melissa quickly released it, blushing. Readjusting her bag, she walked out the lobby door, leaving the tier one building. Alex, catching up, followed her out.
Melissa was barely a foot ahead of him spun around to face him. "Don't ask about Daniel's and Katelyn's pasts."
"Why not?"
"It has nothing to do with you,” Melissa said as she began the trek to the Commons. The building, long and tall, cast a dark, overarching shadow upon the courtyard as the sun dipped behind it.
"What's the big deal?" Alex asked, walking after her, hands in his pockets. "I just wanted to know more about her."
"Why? What's so interesting about Katelyn?"
"Why do you care?"
"Uh...because you're asking me?"
"She's who I'm facing in the tournament."
"Really?"
"Is she strong?"
"Well, you should know. You're in our class aren't you?"
"Yeah, but all she does is sleep with her earphones blasting. She's all mysterious and stuff."
Melissa raised an eyebrow. "Mysterious?" She said incredulously. "Are you sure you're talking about the same person? Mean, emotionless, and insensitive, Katelyn's just about as straightforward as you can get."
"Huh...? Really?"
Melissa nodded.
"So who are you fighting?" Alex asked opening the door to the commons.
"Sierra,” Melissa answered walking through the door, only to bump into Alex, who had the same idea. "It's ladies first, you dimwit,” she snapped pushing past him.
On the bleachers of the stadium, Melissa slid onto the plastic bleeder seats, next to Alex. Unlike Wilson, with his splotchy, spaced-out and spontaneous teaching methods, Melissa explained, and re-explained, quizzed, and drilled a concept into Alex, embedding it into his memory before putting it all together into actual techniques. Her rigid teaching structure had him walking from the first lesson with object deconstruction, the second with melding and the third with mimicry mastered. Alex grasped other less notable concepts in the textbook's first chapters. He’d graduated through sections, from object to manipulation, before landing on the next, more advanced and overarching, section about conjuring.
"Okay, show me what you've learned,” Melissa ordered, rocking back and forth slowly in her seat. Putting his hands together in a prayer-like attitude, Alex closed his eyes. Grasping at the circular, sphere-like form of a ball in his mind's eye, he slowly began to add its components— plastic material, smooth texture, look and feel, the ball's appearance. Touching it up with an olive green shade of color, Alex opened his eyes, and smiling, tossed the small ball into the air.
Melissa caught it, and chucked it back at him. Rather than catch it, Alex dodged and as the ball bounced off a chair a row below them, Melissa burst out laughing." Good job,” she praised, standing up to ruffle his hair. "Your birthing has gotten better."
Alex swatted her hand lightly away. "I'll never get used to you saying that."
"What?"
"Birth—you know what? Never mind."
"Hmm..." she said putting a hand on her chin, her eyes narrowing in a hard stare. "What's wrong with the word birth? You birthing something just means—"
"Yeah, I know,” Alex interrupted, a blush rising to his cheeks. "In that context it's conjuring or whatever. It's just—"
"Awkward? What are you, a kid?" Melissa rolled her eyes. "Geez, you're so immature."
"Immature?!" Alex sputtered defensively. "I'm not the one—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, back wherever you came from, ignorant people align titus with magic and guys grow a pair only after getting kicked out by their parents."
Parents... Alex tensed, breaking eye contact and placed a self-conscious hand on his neck. Melissa had unknowingly poked at a touchy subject, unburied pain.
"Aren't you off topic?"
"It must be so hard for you, mingling with such adult-like characters such as myself."
"Says the girl who nearly tossed me off the stadium railing."
"I know, I know," Melissa said, turning away as she waved a dismissive hand. "You almost fell to your death, yada, yada, yada." She looked up. "You done wallowing yet?"
"If you are."
"On-wards and out-wards, then!" Melissa declared, left arm on her hip and the other extended, a finger pointing sky-wards.
"Don't you mean upwards?"
"Ptff...Whatever, it's all the same."
"Actually—"
"Anyway…" She exited the row and stepping on the stairs, looked back at him. "Alex, do you know how to make a weapon?"
"Like a sword?" he asked, following.
"Hmm..." She started down the stairs at a leisurely yet steady pace. "That's a start, but I mean more in terms of...you know, modern weapons. Guns, bombs, and what not."
"Well, the answer is no either way."
"I figured."
"Thanks?"
"That wasn't a compliment."
"Right."
She laughed. "You're an awkward guy, Alex."
"That one was a compliment right?"
"Yeah, you douche."
"Thank—wait, what?"
"Now to create a weapon, like the ball you made,” Melissa said and upping the pace, began to descend the stairs quickly. "You need to map it, from the inside out."
"So appearance first?"
She stopped and turned, shaking her head. "You're not listening,” he said and forming a circle with her thumb and forefinger in one hand and closing all the fingers on her other, with the exception of the pointer finger, she began to slide the finger between the circled ones.
"Inside out, Alex, inside...out."
"Uhh...I don't think our relationship's gone that far,” Alex said.
Melissa glanced down at her hands. "Don't get the wrong idea." Joining the pointer finger with its neighbor, she began to flex them both at Alex. "You, you..."
And she calls me immature? Alex thought. "Okay..." he said drawing out the word. Looking away he muttered to himself, "H
ot for teacher."
Melissa, not hearing his last comment, did a face palm. "Gah, so dense."
"I'm not dense, you're just—you're just not making any sense."
Chapter 20
Training
Melissa jumped the last few steps to the thick glass of the stadium's platform. She whirled around to face Alex as he stepped onto the flat surface after her. While they didn't have the whole of the stadium, let alone the bleachers to themselves, the lower tiers, making up the majority of the students in the area, made room.
"Shut up and watch,” she snapped and putting her hands together in a prayer-like attitude, she closed her eyes.
Separating them, she opened her eyes and turned her palms to Alex. She began to lift them, stopping parallel with her shoulders. Slowly at first, the flesh in the middle of her palms began to collapse in on itself as skin, bone and muscle parted, retreating to the sidelines as a hole formed in its middle, leaving a neat, yet large, symmetrical opening in the center of both hands.
"The...hell?" Alex gasped impulsively and reached out a tentative finger as if to poke at the gap.
"Don't touch it,” Melissa snapped.
"I—I wasn't,” Alex said drawing his hand back quickly.
"Step back."
Alex did so, looking on in shock, then awe, as Melissa, her palms down, materialized two small balls—the right black and the left white, which closely hovered over the holes at the backs of her hands.
"What are those?"
"Beautiful aren't they?" Melissa said turning her hands over slowly.
"They're...um, interesting,” Alex said.
Melissa pursed her lips, violet eyes searching, unsure of the genuineness behind the compliment. "I call them yin and yang,” she finally said. "They're two metals from a fallen asteroid that reside in a naturally liquid state. The scientists extracted them, and stupidly," she paused, her eyes unfocused, and distant, "injected them into me when I was a fetus."
“Um…you didn’t have to go that far.”
“What? But I thought—I thought you were—”
“Melissa, there’s something called too much information.”
“I thought you were my boyfriend,” she finished, staring at him expectantly.
“Where’d you hear that from?”
“Oh never mind. Never mind. Anyway, I guess you could say I inherited these metals...somehow." Her misting eyes met his. "It's weird isn't it? Of course it's weird. I'm weird."
"No..." Alex said, quickly. his uncertainty followed by a long unreassuring pause. "I—I think it's really cool...like you."
"I know,” she said frowning, her eyes shifting to the yin and yang spheres. "I can mold them into whatever I want." The black ball stretched out into an arrow-like point. "They're a part of me in the sense that I can control them at will." Stopping inches before Alex's chest, the yin metal flattened in on itself reluctantly in a slow retraction.
Melissa continued, "But what's interesting is that while the white one is very light, the black is extremely dense...or so the test results said. I can't really tell the difference."
"Test results?"
"I was born in a lab,” Melissa said simply, brushing off the touchy subject in an absent manner.
Alex gaped at her. "That's...I'm sorry."
"Don't be, you didn't have a hand in it,” she said coolly. "Now that I think about it though, you’re a natural eleven while I’m artificial.”
Alex shifted awkwardly but didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, I use yang, the white one, as a weapon as it responds quicker than yin."
Flexing her hand suddenly, she caused the white metal to shoot out. Stretching like gum, it lengthened and resembled a thin wire as it loosely encircled her, only to wrap back around, in all of a heartbeat. Its arrow-like tip peering down on Alex. "See?"
Alex nodded.
"Impressive,” he said shakily, thoroughly intimidated.
"So I use the black one as a shield." Melissa lapsed into silence and looked at Alex as if expecting something.
He looked back at her blankly, uncomfortable under the heavy atmosphere she'd thrown into the conversation. He needed to break it and yet was at a loss for words. "Why are you telling me this?" he finally managed to say.
"Why indeed..."
Alex felt it was time for a change in subject. "Melissa, why didn't you say 'end' when you finished your um...yin, yang, thingy?"
"End?" She laughed. "What are you five? That's only used by like...kids. Saying that is like verbally admitting your incompetence. It's the equivalent of a person who can't read in their head."
"Oh... I knew that."
"Uh huh, I bet,” she said, laughing all the harder. The laugher was forced, yet it cleared the air. "Do you have any special abilities Alex?"
He shook his head. "No, or at least not yet. Wilson...uh, the guy I met when—"
"Yeah, I know, you told me, he was the delusional dude that thought you were puzzler material or something."
"I was close,” he protested, "The sides just kept changing on me."
"Right..." she said rolling her eyes. "You just keep dreaming."
Alex silent, fumed for a moment before he, like a leaf with a raindrop, let her negativity fall off him. He'd show her...one day.
"Besides,” she continued, “Puzzlers are almost rarer than—"
"Elevens?"
"You knew?"
"I guessed."
"Wait...what's this Wilson guy's last name?"
"Milson, why?" Alex asked. "But its weird right? I mean like what sort of last name is that?"
"No way..." she said in shocked disbelief. "You met the Chairman of the Titus Association?"
"What? No. At least...I don't think so."
"If you think about it, it makes sense. You're an Oddity. There have only been—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, and your point?"
"The point is," she said annoyed. "Who’d miss the opportunity to meet one? An oddity."
"How would I know...?" Alex said, as he vaguely recalled Wilson claiming some type of chairmanship status back at some point.
"We're off topic,” Melissa said sharply. "You're a horrible student Alex, always distracting your teacher with useless nonsense."
"Weren't you the one who—"
"Nope, I don't know what you're talking about,” she said lightheartedly, violet eyes twinkling.
"Now you're off topic, teach',” Alex said returning the smile. "Didn't you lay out a lesson plan?"
Melissa folded her arms, catching the chill of a passing breeze through the thick wool of the uniformed jacket. Alex responded by sticking his own numbing hands in his pockets. They weren't the only ones to feel the bite of fall's cooling temperatures. The once crowded stadium began to resemble a ghost-town as students drifted to the elevator, lured by the promise of warmth within the halls of the temperature-regulated Commons.
Chapter 21
Catfight
"Don't be doubting,” Melissa said, her breath calling up a faint mist as she entered the stadium.
Alex, following behind, guessed it was that time of year. The next thing they knew, they'd be trudging through snow, inches deep instead of braving the whipping winds of fall.
"Anyway,” Melissa threw the words over her shoulder as she made her way down the stairs. “The basics of making a weapon is what?"
"Uh...metal?" Alex guessed.
"That can be part of it, yeah...well actually, weapon conjuring requires a certain level of familiarity with the foundation of your weapon. You have to know what it is you're trying to create and furthermore what you're aiming to create it for. Defense?" She said, and uncrossing her arms, brought out her right hand and turning it palm up, closed it into a fist.
The yin sphere spreading out before her like water on a flat surface, morphed into a defensive rectangular glossy black wall that extended up from the base of her feet to a few inches past her head. Curving at the edges, the makeshift shield successfully co
vered the whole of her frame. It had taken but a few seconds to come into being, and resembled a thick liquid like syrup not moments before. But now it stood firm and solid. Melissa poking her head out from its side, smiled smugly.
"That's so cool,” Alex said, holding back the urge to touch it.
"Offense?" Melissa said, continuing the lesson undeterred. "Birthing..."
Turning her palm down again, she willed the opaque metal to return to its original ball-like form before recalling both spheres. The yin and yang metals slipped back into her body as her palms closed. Bone locking into place, muscle and cartilage resumed their positions as skin stood guard over it all, connecting with the cells. It aligned perfectly and left no scar, imprint, or hint of any sort to the circle once etched in its middle.
"Er, conjuring, is a give and take process of your titus, led by your thoughts, emotions, and ultimately, instructions. Forcing themselves on, or manipulating other, exterior titus' found in air, water, the ground, animals...or whatever else you can imagine. Like changing water into metal."
Stepping onto the bottom of the stadium, she walked over to one of the plastic containers. Lifting the lid, she tossed it aside. As the lid clattered on the stadium's glass base, Melissa gestured towards the large container, and called out a stream of water. Cutting it off after a foot or so, she turned to face Alex.
"Levitation,” Alex said, eyes on the clear liquid suspended in the air, above Melissa's hand.
"Way to state the obvious,” Melissa praised dryly. "Now, weapon conjuring is fairly straightforward. Although similar to mimicry, instead of changing something's appearance, you're going to change its form by infusing its titus with yours and..." Turning her hand, she caused a faintly glowing thin purple stream to lift from her fingers. The stream twisted in on itself to form a solid visible line before disappearing into the water.
"Force it," she said and the stream stopped as soon as it had begun, "into becoming something else."
Creeping from the water's middle, then outwards rapidly, Melissa stared at the transforming liquid as intently as Alex, and willed it into metal. The water smoothed itself out into a jagged short sword. Melissa held out her hand to grasp it by its leather hilt. Swinging it twice across her body, she pulled back her arm and chucked the blade at Alex. Green eyes wide with fear, Alex threw up his arms, shielding himself instinctively as the sword reverted back to water in midair, soaking him.
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