The Turn: Chapter Four

The Turn

Chapter Four

~Unwanted Power of Invisibility~

Three Years before the Turn

Zara sat through her Arabic language class staring out the window. As much as she tried to focus, her mind was just too full of its own thoughts to allow any learning. She looked out the window. A gym class was out for a jog/run around the expansive school property. Vaguely, she heard the bell ring, signaling the end of two hours of language.

The group assessments were two weeks away. In the meantime, school took up most of her time. She repeatedly kicked herself for not getting a team together sooner. Now everything hinged on the group assessments and she still had a ton of last minute homework to pull together for the end of the school year; not to mention exams.

It was around lunch time and Zara made her way to the lunch room. She stood in line and got her food. She then looked for a place to sit and found and empty table in the corner of the lunch room. She sat on the side of the table that looked into the lunch room. The lunch itself looked decent but Zara just wasn’t hungry. She pushed her food around with her fork. Soon she felt a presence in front of her.

A tray slapped down on the table. Zara looked up to see who it was. It was the boy with bleached hair. He glanced at her briefly and started eating his mashed potatoes and gravy. Zara dug around in her memory for his name. Chaud! That’s what it was. Now what was he doing here?

“Are you going to eat that?” he asked pointing to her mashed-potato-steamed- vegetable-gravy mix.

Zara shook her head and watched as he grabbed her plate and scraped off the mess she had created. She then had to force herself not to throw up as he started eating.

“I can’t believe that Miss. Kemp gave us an essay to do on the history of the Island, on the last two weeks of school too!” another tray fell heavily onto the table, “I mean, doesn’t she know that we have half a dozen things to do!?”

Hina sat down to Chaud’s left. Her brother, Naru, just quietly listened to his sisters ranting, nodding his head in agreement from time to time. He sat beside Zara across from his sister.

“Man!” Deontay, the black boy, sat down next to Chaud, “I’m beat!”

“Yeah,” Chaud answered, “Running around school property does that to you.”

Deontay looked to Chaud with skepticism, “I don’t see you sweating bullets.”

Chaud shrugged, “I didn’t run. I was hiding in the bathroom.”

“Right,” Deontay shook his head back and forth.

Silently, Vicky slid into the seat on Zara’s left. Perplexed at her sudden overflow of company, Zara looked around the table. She wasn’t sure if she liked the company but she surely didn’t resent it. Nevertheless, she was curious as to why they were sitting next to her.

“Um,” she started.

Chaud raised a fork to stop her, “Alright, time for the first order of business: Heard down the grapevine that you needed a team. Voilà! Here we are. Had to pull Deontay from his other team though; by the way, you need to bake him cookies, chocolate chip preferably but really this guy will eat anything. Oh, we sent you our data. It should be in your inbox. That Naru, I tell you, he may be quiet but he is amazing at a keyboard. Took him five seconds to crack the school firewall to find your e-mail address.”

“We could have just asked her,” Deontay muttered.

“Where is the fun in that?” Chaud shrugged, “Besides, this way I get to see the look on her face. First impressions are everything. Just like my dad always says, “Be sure to shine”. I am totally shining right now. Moving on: Who votes that Zara here is the leader?”

“Aye,” the whole table said in chorus.

“And the nay’s?” no one said anything, “The aye’s have it. Second order of business: I nominate me as second in command,” Chaud raised his hand.

“I second the notion,” Deontay nodded.

“Third,” Hina said.

“Forth,” Naru said a fraction of a second after his sister.

“Fifth,” Vicky said quietly.

“As chairman of the quickest team meeting known to man,” Chaud said again, “I appoint myself as second in command by the majority of the vote,” he looked to Zara, “The choice ultimately is yours.”

Zara thought a moment. Chaud had shown an outstanding ability to organize and plan. He looked like a complete dunce in his sleeveless shirt and baggy black pants but that obviously wasn’t the case. She looked him over. His posture was one of slight arrogance. The type of arrogance that made people want to hit him but not quite kill him. Sarcasm seemed part of his theme too. This only made Zara wonder…

“Why don’t you want to be the leader?” Zara asked.

He raised an eyebrow in thought but answered almost instantly, “To much responsibility.”

Zara shrugged, “In that case, I don’t see why you can’t be second.”

“Great,” he stood up, his tray cleaned of food. He glanced at the watch on his wrist, “In that case, I’ll talk to you after you’ve had a look at the data. Meeting adjourned.”

Just then the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period.

Deontay smirked as he finished his food, “Nice.”

“Told you I had this timed perfectly,” he stated as he started to walk away.

“Never doubted you,” Deontay stood up with the rest of the table. He dipped his head to Zara as he left.

The whole table left and Zara was sitting by herself. She sat there a few more seconds, trying to absorb what had just happened. Her stomach growled. Zara sighed. Yeah, now she was hungry.

IOIOIOIOIOI

It was around nine-o-clock at night and Zara sat in her bed looking at a laptop screen. Shuppet sat in the space created by her crossed legs. Puppetmaster insisted that she take Shuppet with her for the night. He seemed very pleased that his prediction came true for the most part. Zara was beginning to think that these predictions were a bunch of hooey that he spouted when the moment was right.

She opened her e-mail and sure enough found the five large files in her inbox. With a tired yawn, Zara glanced at the clock. She knew she should have done her homework right after school instead of read the advanced chemistry book. Zara looked at the doll below.

“Looks like we’ll be up late tonight,” she said.

Shuppet responded by settling down some more. It seemed fairly interested on Zara’s teammates. It was ready to absorb information like a sponge and relay the information to its master the next day. After all, that was the reason it was here in the first place.

“Let’s get started,” Zara muttered as she clicked on the first file.

It took a while for it to load. When it did, Deontay’s file showed up. It started with the general information like his full name: Deontay Walsh. He was the same age as Zara. He was male, obviously. Zara scrolled through to the academic records. Deontay was the best with gym, especially when using his powers. He had the powers to use the earth to attack and defend. There was a picture of his weapon. It looked like a glove of some kind. It had sharp claws that extended from fingers including the thumb. The cloth on the palm side was removed allowing for much easier movement. In fact, where ever cloth wasn’t necessarily needed it was removed to make the weapon lighter. The fingers on the glove were cut off and there was a small metal bar that allowed a grip.

Shuppet leaned in slightly at the picture.

She scrolled down a little and saw his scores on the individual assessment. There were four judges including Sirius. All of judges scored him high marks on defense and offense. His speed could be better but his strength wasn’t an issue. He had good weapons skills as well.

Zara nodded, “He sounds like a tank to me. It looks like he can take a lot of damage and deal out a lot of hurt but if you tell him to walk a tight rope, things won’t end well.”

Shuppet seemed to nod in agreement. Zara closed the file and looked at the next one in her inbox.

Victoria “Vicky” Chen was next on the list. She was Chinese but born in America with the power of wind. Her awkward picture was next to her basic info. Her hair was a mess, her glasses were tilted and her smile was more of an awkward unsure toothy smile. It was painfully obvious that she forgot it was picture day. Shuppet tilted its head up.

“Don’t judge,” Zara muttered, “She is a nice girl.”

Shuppet shrugged unconvinced.

Vicky was very smart in the academic area especially in medical science and natural remedies. In gym though, the gym teacher wrote a comment along the lines of “is afraid to do anything” and left it at that. She did alright using her powers but her grade didn’t seem to match with her potential. Zara made a mental note to help Vicky come out of her shell. Just like before, there was a picture of her weapon. It was a shuriken. In the margins there was a note that she actually carried two of them.

Her assessment sheet was much the same as her academic record. The judges gave her average marks on offense and defense. Her speed was higher than normal and she was nimble on her feet. She could use the weapon well and her use of her powers was noteworthy. But again, she seemed very unsure of herself and the judges had to dock points off for that.

Zara closed the file. Shuppet stretched out its arms as if it were stretching out muscle. It made sense in a way. If you were made of wood it was likely that you would feel fairly stiff from time to time.

Next were Hina and Naru Sasaki, both Japanese. Zara first took a look at Hina’s file. She too was sixteen. At a brief glance she could be mistaken as a boy. She had a stern look on her face as if she were is a relatively bad mood and had no time to be sitting for pictures. Zara was fairly certain that her parents were hoping for a sweet little girl because of the meaning of her name. If Zara remembered correctly Hina meant sunlight, in other words a happy girl. Instead, she got in schoolyard fights almost every day. She did play the violin but it was obvious that she did it to make her parents happy. Shuppet tilted its head to one side in confusion.

“She’s a girl,” Zara answered his unspoken question.

Shuppet nodded, satisfied with the knowledge.

Hina was average in her studies. It didn’t look like she scored especially well in her basic studies but she did get high grades in power identification. It was a class that strictly studied different types of powers, how to counter them, where they most likely originated from, and how they affect the body. It was understandable because Hina’s powers weren’t the typical fire, ice and lightning. She was able to create a type of force in the palm of her hands and use it in various amounts to create a small force field that would be created quickly and dispersed just as quickly creating a large amount of energy. She would then use that energy anyway she saw fit.

During the assessment, she scored high on defense and offence. She had no weapons other than her fists and hands. Her speed was notable as well.

Zara muttered, “She strikes fast and hard.”

Shuppet nodded in agreement. She seemed scary.

Naru’s picture was much nicer. He had ocean blue eyes that seemed to look at things with a heightened accuracy. His hair fell around his face and shoulders. Zara already knew that his power was water. He looked softer than his sister, much more feminine. It said in his file that originally, their parents though that he was going to be a she, that their mother was expecting twin girls. Lo and behold, one of the ‘she’s was a ‘he’ bringing the meaning of his name, “to become”, to light. In a way, he ‘became’ a boy.

He earned ‘A’s in all of his classes but seemed to have a strong interest in weapons requiting a strong sense of accuracy, like the bow and arrow or throwing daggers. Also he seemed interested in the human body, like the anatomy and physiology, pressure points and the like. His weapons were the sai, throwing needles, and throwing stars. He did well in gym classes but it was noted that he usually kept to himself.

Shuppet seemed interested. It looked to be reading the page that Zara was on with great detail. Zara raised an interested eyebrow.

“You can read?” she asked.

Shuppet made a dismissive gesture as if saying, “Yeah, duh. What have I been doing this whole time?”

Naru did really well in the assessment. His defense could use work but the judges noted that he could use his water powers to defend as well. He was also fast, faster than anyone at the assessment. He seemed to disappear and reappear in another spot in an instant. It was also noted that he didn’t have teleporting abilities but it was possible that he did obtain a little speed ability. Zara was greatly interested in Naru’s abilities.

Last but not least was Chaud. Zara forced herself not to laugh and Shuppet slapped one of its wooded arms onto its face in distress. His grades were much to be desired. He was getting a low ‘C’, the lowest one could get and stay in school, in practically everything, including gym. His teachers all said negative things about his grades and his attendance records. Apparently, Chaud rarely came to school; or at least he hid in the bathroom a lot. Although, he did attend his class on firearms and passed that with flying colors.  All this information seemed contradictory to what she had seen earlier that day. She did however find it interesting that in addition of his electrical powers he could sprout wings and fly.

His assessment was even worse. He didn’t even try. The judges gave him all low marks because all he really did was stand there with his hands in his pockets. Zara looked closer. One of the judges didn’t give Chaud a ranking at all. There was just a symbol over his section: Ø. Zara knew that symbol meant null set in mathematics. In short hand it just meant null. Zara smirked, was his performance that bad that the judge just couldn’t handle it? She looked at the signature: Sirius Galaxy. Zara scowled in thought.

There were a few reasons that a judge would withdraw himself from rating someone. Most of the time, the reason was when they knew the person they were assessing and couldn’t rate fairly. This was especially true if they were related. Zara paused a moment. Her mind went back to when she met Sirius in the office.

“Be sure to shine,” he had told her. And that day, Chaud told her something similar.

Zara scrolled up the page. She had skimmed over Chaud’s name in the beginning because she thought it didn’t matter. She had thought wrong. Sure enough his last name was Galaxy. She copied his name and opened another window. Sure enough she found a family photo; he was one of Sirius’s four children.

There was Kaiba; apparently he was next in line to the throne of the Tower and learning how things work. He was the oldest at age 25. There was Lynx. He was known for his inventions and was in charge of anything electric at the Tower. If it went boom, zzt, or beep, most likely Lynx was behind it. The twenty year old was an electronic genius. Then there was his wife. She wore a stylish black dress and a large black hat. Her hair was died black; she was a natural brunette originally. She was a famous fashion designer. She often designed clothes and uniforms for the Agents when she had time and the current ones were “so last year”. Everyone only knew her by Mrs. Galaxy. Then there was the youngest in the family, ten year old Amber. She was adopted into the family when she was an infant. Her orange hair was pulled into two tiny pig tails. She was the cutie in the family. Last but not least was Chaud. In the picture he seemed to fade in his family’s reputation. He wasn’t second in command, he want good at mechanics, his clothing tastes could be better, he wasn’t the youngest who got all the attention and he certainly didn’t own the Tower. He was the invisible third child.

It explained his behavior. He was trying to get as much attention as he could whether be it good or bad. That’s why he didn’t go to class or do anything for the assessment. Everyone knew about his brothers, his mother, father and his sister but rarely, it seemed, did people notice him. Even now, Zara had looked over him.

Zara looked at the clock. It read close to midnight. She slowly closed her laptop and placed in on the floor. Shuppet looked at her as she stepped out of the bed. Zara picked him up and placed him on her nightstand. She turned off the lights and went to bed. Shuppet looked on for a moment in the dark. It looked at the computer and its shoulders rose and fell in an inaudible sigh.

Poor Chaud.