First Strikes Disaster

by Tatiyana Perkins

  “But Artisan was there with us. Daniel liked him and wanted to help the crew because he was just a man in need. I can't imagine that it's like Vister said.” “Vister says many things; sometimes you just have to sit back and listen. Instead you sneak into a prison; you're too young to be this hasty, and I don't like it.” “It was just going to be a quick conversation with him.”

  “That cost me a relationship with four of the most powerful people in the world.” Rose remained quiet.

  "It's us against them, Rose, but not in the way you think. No one knows who the true enemy is. I've tried to find him and until I do, I don't need to make more.” “I'm sorry,” she said. The words were like a knife that reminded her this wasn't home; the rules were different here.

  “Orion and Daniel were two of the strongest men I've ever known. Do you think I'm not afraid? I am. Both of us should be.”

  “I am too.”

  “You're not afraid enough, unless you're forgetting you almost died.” That was unfair. “And what if I want to risk my life? All of the people could be dead; they're gone and I'm trying to help.” Tears built up in her like raindrops before a storm, but she refused to release them.

  “We know they're not dead, so leave the hard work to us.”

  “Even if I find out something that could help?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. "Okay.”

  “Do you truly understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Ana poured a cup of wine and sipped it. Rose felt that she had been making the room temperature rise, and she settled it.

  “Why were the people in the prison like that?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were injured and couldn't use their powers; it looked like it was on purpose.” Ana motioned, and all the windows closed. Rose paid very close attention to her next words. “I'm about to tell you something you can't tell anyone. These words will never leave this room. There are terrible things going on, Rose, do you understand?” “Yes, I do, truly,” she said, ready to hear anything.

  “It was Elesto's doing, combined partially with Vister, it's the new order they made for the prison. I've been trying to get rid of it, but they have all the votes they need to keep it in place, and my vote doesn't mean as much as it used to."

  “How-” she began, but Ana shushed her. “That's it, that's all I'm saying, no more questions."

  Rose looked down.

  “Are you healed?" Ana asked when a "hoo" from outside disrupted the quiet. “What?”

  “Are you healed?" she took out fresh bandages from a cabinet. "Your leg?" “Yes.”

  Ana put them down and poured more wine “I want you to go to school tomorrow with Bash and Kana.”

  “But why?” Rose asked.

  “Because being here doesn't stop you from resuming normal life, and it's not good that I'm now at odds with their father.”

  “Elesto is their father?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “I will,” she said, a little too fast.

  “Good. You need some time out of the house too.” You could tell from the way she said it, that Ana was not used to having children around.

  “What time should I be ready by?”

  “Seven thirty at the latest.”

  As Rose stood, Ana said, “Don't tell anyone what I said, even if you think it's not important.”

  Rose nodded.

  “And hey," She turned and for a second, Ana looked ready to reveal something really important, but she changed her mind “go straight to bed.”

  Chapter 4☆

  Rosalie woke early the next day. Remembering her promise, she quickly dressed in a black skirt and a cute short sleeved white shirt. She made her way to reach for the door, but then something stopped her. Quietly she shook Lena awake and asked, "Are you coming?" Lena nodded and began getting ready too. Rose had not heard what Ana said to Lena, and they were not allowed to talk about it, but everything about her seemed to be fine.

  Rose spotted Kana on her way down, so she smiled and waved; Kana was standing outside of her bedroom, hadn't even begun to get dressed and yet somehow still looked amazing. In the morning she made the sun shine beautifully on her and give her a slight glow (a trick that was one of the reasons why many envied light magicers). Kris, however, was fully dressed, waiting for them at the piano, playing a beautiful symphony piece as they came downstairs. When he reached the end, it sounded like something you would hear in an opera, all theatrical and tragic. "Good, you're here," he sighed when he noticed them and stopped playing. He only wore plain jeans with a light blue shirt, yet the effect looked nice on him. He had touched up his white hair till it nearly shone and ironed his clothes. "We're waiting for the others. Hold on," he said, then he called out, "KANA, COME ON-"

  "She won't hear you,” interrupted Rose, as Kana's room was all the way on the other side of where they were. "She can, because we're children of the counsel, so our minds are linked," he corrected.

  Lena gazed at her but Rose was just as confused. She had known she wasn't as close as the others, and yet she wondered, if she stayed, would that be her with them? Was that supposed to be her with them? The thought was put to the side as Kristopher lifted up the top on a container that had been sitting on the table, and began eating. She was desperately hungry.

  "First day, right?" he asked through a mouthful.

  "Yeah. Well, I was in school before, but- you know.” For a second the thought of how she might not go back made her sad, and her voice faltered.

  “Where did you go?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Rabbitson Karat.”

  Kris laughed. “You're joking. Rabbitson Carrot. Like the food? ”

  She smiled. “No like the diamond.”

  “I would have spelled it like the food and kept leaving trails of them outside his office,” he said, taking his joke amazingly.

  “Only if you wanted to get your head yelled off.”

  “It would have been well worth it.”

  “Until you failed.”

  “I never fail.”

  “That's the spirit.”

  “When does school start?” Lena asked, her eyes staring out the window. Kris checked his watch. "Soon. I think we should leave without Kana, since we wouldn't want you girls late and she's never really on time."

  Lena unintentionally rolled her eyes. "You're lucky you can leave so late, at my old school we were out at six thirty."

  Rose said, "Same with me."

  "Where we're going it won't be like that. KANA, GET DOWN HERE.” He turned to them, clearly frustrated at something she had just said that they could not hear. He shook his head, stood up and grabbed a few grapes that he put in his container. The globe, she noticed, had been put away. "Do you want to just leave?" he asked. Rose thought about it. She liked Kana, though it was Bash that troubled her; if they waited, would he be there too?

  "Umn, it's up to you,” she said.

  “I don't really mind, but in this house we're literally always late,” he told her in matter-of-fact manner tone.

  “We can wait a little,” she decided.

  “But don't you want to be shown around?” he asked persuasively, smoothing out his shirt that already seemed to be getting wrinkled.

  "Well, yes I guess," she said.

  "Follow me, and also sorry about that." Kris called, "WE'RE LEAVING," and Rose smiled again.

  Together the three of them walked outside. It was a sunny warm day, which was a joke in Trearce that meant the weather regulators were happy. One time it was sunny for a month straight, after the head got married, but eventually people crowded city hall to complain about the heat. “How do we get there?"

  "Well usually we take a tunnel, but, umm."

  "But what?” Rose inquired.

  "I've heard Lena is good at wind magic.”

  She was, Rose marked, even more so than with fire.

  “What am I looking for?" Lena asked.

  "They send a wi
nd out every ten minutes. If we wait till seven-fifty we'll be able to catch it." She nodded. People good at air could use wind to travel, however with there being so many winds, companies, schools, and churches had started sending out specific ones. Rose only knew because one of Daniel's friends had been in charge of overseeing it. There were hundreds of thousands of wind request, a day. Sometimes you had to wait till an exact second or milisecond. It was truly confusing.

  The time was seven-forty eight. "I'm a little rusty," Lena warned as Kris gave them each a chocolate chip muffin from the container that they ate hungrily - Rose thought about grabbing a grape.

  "It's here," he said. Lena took both their hands, then they waited ten seconds, five seconds, four, and next thing Rose knew she was thrown into the sky. Traveling with wind magic was once compared to travelling with high speed wings, where you had to have tons of control to do things like, change direction and do tricks and land at the right time. Lena guided them, and Rose tried to be of help, but the second she let the wind catch her, she almost was thrown from the other two. As they grew closer, it began to spin them in circles and then shoot them extra fast like bullets. Finally, in a daze, they landed.

  The school, to her surprise, was a big tan building with vines covered in red and yellow leaves going down it.

  "It's not like that all the time, depends on the upcoming season," Kris explained. Kids were arriving to the school in all types of ways. Some walked down from the sky on air steps, some flew down with fire shooting from their feet, others rode ice chunks, the majority merely reammerged from the dirt on the ground, the older students rode clouds like they were horses.

  "It's pretty fun when... well, when you get used to it."

  A boy came in on a lightning bolt and landed so clumsily that people had to move out the way. "Evan," someone yelled, and a few people around him laughed. He had olive skin, brown hair, and brown freckles. He shook electric sparks out his hair and then looked up and winked at her.

  Rose winked back, and then she ran, because Lena and Kris had already left her to go inside. Through the doors led into a downstairs made of marble. On either side was a huge staircase and to the back was what had to be a series of hallways. Any teacher she saw was in a hurry, but they smiled their hardest and wished them well.

  "The marble is because no one can really control it," Kris explained. "Students have tried to make 'accidents' happen before so things cancel. You should see what it's like around finals.”

  “It looks so huge” she whispered.

  “Don't worry, you won't get lost; we're younger, so we'll mainly be in the tunnels.” He pointed to the vast array of hallways at the back of the huge room, and Rose counted at least eight. Each entry had a large archway full of lots of light, as there were many windows.

  She put her hair behind her ears. “Do they have a map?”

  “No, but they're pretty lenient when it comes to students being late the first few days.”

  She noticed he said it with a bit of a grin. “Have you ever gotten lost?” He looked at her slyly. “Took a wrong turn and wound up wandering the halls for a few hours.”

  “Hours?”

  “Let's just say I wasn't in a rush to get back to that teacher.”

  As the two girls looked around, Kris twirled his globe and said, "I'll get your schedules.”

  . "I hope you're in my classes," Rose admitted after he walked away. Lena smiled at her. "I hope so too."

  Just then a group of people came in loudly, and Rose studied them. They could easily walk, but instead they used bubbles to carry themselves. One of the girls insisted on hers being wide enough to take up almost all the space in the room. “Do you think this school is full of regular people or rich ones?” Rose asked.

  Lena spotted the group too. “Powerful ones.”

  “I hope they're nice.”

  “If they're all like you and Kris, we'll be fine.”

  “Thanks. I just hope there's no Bashes”

  Lena's eyes darkened at his name, and her ears perked up. “That Spanish kid who's Kana's brother?”

  “Yeah.”

  She gripped her knife, “Leave him to me.”

  Rose's eyes grew when she looked at the fresh blade, and she whispered, "You've met him before?”

  “In a sense.”

  “And it didn't go well?”

  Before she could answer, Kris came back, saying, "Strange"

  "What?"

  “They changed everything, meaning my whole entire schedule. Took me out of some classes I liked, and there's even new classes than the ones we had before. Do you want breakfast?"

  Rose’s stomach growled, and she thought hungrily of all the different food they might have, but Lena answered for her by saying, "No."

  "Come on, then, have to start breaking you guys in around here."

  “Can we go upstairs?” they both asked.

  “Not if we don't want to get in trouble.”

  He lead them down the little hall to see their classes and showed them all three of their schedules, which were pretty much the same. Rose noticed the emptiness of the building and wondered why it was so bare. A huge sign in the main office said there weren't many students; the grades were from eighth to twelfth, and there only seemed to be around seventy five of each. A number that would decrease as they took their “end of the year” test. When the bell rang, he led them to the first place and her first thought, upon walking into the new class, was that it didn't seem like a normal classroom. The walls were a bright red, and instead of your average desk and chairs, there was a big white couch surrounded by little chair and table sets, that were apparently for them. The only desk sat up front, and on either side were two big cabinets with many different types of jewels. All along the walls were bookshelves, which a pretty blue bird flew around. Kristopher’s equally confused face showed that this must be one of the new schedule changes he talked about.

  The man that sat at the desk had long honey brown hair, and pretty, sharp features with eyes the color of light chocolate. He carried a friendly face despite holding it very sternly. He looked almost too handsome to be a teacher, like a tragic poet in a land from long ago. To his right was a big chair covered by a blanket. Every so often he glanced at it and sighed.

  Rose sat down at the table closest to the front readily, and Lena took the chair beside her. Behind them, there was a rush to see who got to the couch first, and in the end someone exclaimed, “Bash won.” Rose turned around to see if it was the one she knew, and Kana waved, while Bash just gave her a slight nod. She nodded back to him and turned around.

  "My name is Mr. Clark," the teacher announced when they settled, "and the being you see in front of you is my anger.” He took the cover off to reveal a bright red figured that yelled and struggled in the chair.

  Around her everyone took in deep breaths.

  "Guess I should explain. When I was a boy, I lost someone dear to me. The grief was so strong, unbearable even, and I knew all too well that I couldn't handle it. That was when my gift appeared. At first it wouldn't last long, a day or two; but then I realized that I could get the grief to leave me for weeks at a time. I tried it with other emotions and learned that, while I could do this with all, only one could be out at any given moment. In your life this may happen to you - not my gift, but another. I won't guarantee it. People have gone mad thinking they have special powers, so I advise you not to accept your gift, unless you are sure it fits with every part of your being."

  He looked out over them all and then stepped back in deep thought. The creature stopped fighting and turned blue.​He’s changing it to something else,​she thought. The blue was so deep it was comparable to the sea before a storm. It sobbed and it slithered to the floor, screeching, in too much pain to move. When it crawled closer to her and reached out a hand, Rose felt sadness. It leaked inside of her so strong that she almost cried.

  The boy Rose remembered to be Evan raised his hand.

  "Yes," said Mr, Clark.
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  "Exactly how many different types of these 'things' are there?”

  "Powers?"

  "Yes."

  Mr. Clark began to put the emotion back in the chair. "Surprisingly, for what it's worth, many aren't unique. It started with us finding fifteen news ones every year, but now it's down to five. You've heard of them in action all your life; especially on August fifteenth. Our land was said to be attacked by the chainers, who can control anything that can't be held physically in a hand."

  Rose opened her mouth to ask something else but was beat by Lena calling out, "What were the worst ones?"

  He grabbed a book. "We've had three total that were the worst. One girl could make anything she didn't like disappear - she was killed when they realized she was starting to like the world less day by day. The other could make the worst case scenario happen in any situation - his gift eventually caused him to be apart of those who died. The last could break any boundary; many say it was fun watching him put his body to the extreme and lift entire oceans, but then came a day when he went beyond all possible evil and lost all sanity. They call it The Lost Day because what he did was so horrible that they removed all account of it from history, and anyone who spoke of it was killed. They lived in three different times. Since then there has been peace."

  The room became quiet. Rose suddenly thought of Daniel, who could make fake things turn real. If he suddenly turned evil, would his name be up there? "Will we be learning about all of them?" she asked, forgetting her question from before.

  "Yes," he said, almost sadly. "In addition to things about your very own skills that you never noticed before. It has come to my attention that everyone has two or three skills that they are defined by."

  Rose shook her head right away, for her mother had helped her figure out hers, which were temperature magic, glass, and the control of water. Sometimes turning the temperature up enough lead to fire, but fire definitely was not a specialty. “There are reasons for that that can predict what your special power will be. Also if you find yourself feeling a certain emotion a lot.”

  “When do we get them?” asked Bash.

  “It depends. It has come to my attention that some of you have showed signs, and that has lead me to our first assignment. Take out your books and pens. I want a paragraph on what you think your special power is.”