The Turn: Chapter Two

The Turn

Chapter Two

~Assess This!~

Three Years before the Turn

It was noon when Zara biked up to the massive school. The large sign at the front of the gated school property read Sage School of Agent Training. After the gate, Zara rode up the paved road. She passed by the main school building where she would normally take her academic classes. A larger building lay just beyond the academic building. That was where Zara learned to better use her powers. A dome shaped building lay off to the left. That was the gym. It had both a conventional gym and a special gym for using powers in.

The grounds of the school were breathtaking. It was a little piece of green in the city. There was a little bit of everything for everybody. There were trees, small forests and lots of open green grass for people to practice their powers on. There was a small lake too and a small rocky hill on the property. The wind passed through the school grounds freely and easily providing some comfort of hot sunny days.

Zara biked to the gym and locked up her bike near the front entrance. There were some other kids walking in to the building. She followed them inside and lined up behind some others who were signing in.

“Okay,” the person at the desk chewed her gum open mouthed and loudly, “Sign your first name here, your last name here, what gender you are, your phone number, your address, what weapon you will be using, and who we should contact in case of an emergency, their number, their address, and what hospital you want to go to. Good luck. Next. Okay, sign you first name here…”

Zara walked to her gym locker, it was quite a ways from the entrance. She walked the curved hallways. Since this was the gym dome, there were no other classes, so it was simply row after row of lockers. Her footfalls echoed off all the walls.

“Get out of my way, stupid!”

A loud bang followed, startling Zara. A skinny boy with long black hair was pushed into one of the lockers by a much larger stronger looking boy. The larger boy’s group of friends all laughed as their victim slumped to the ground gripping his sore shoulder. The locker he was practically thrown into had a large dent in it. Zara sighed. Just her luck it would be her locker.

One of the other boys kicked the skinny one in the back for laughs.

“Stop it!” a girl with short black hair shouted, “Leave my brother alone!”

That brought even more laughs.

“You let your sister defend you?” the tough boy laughed.

At that the girl lunged at the bully only to be thrown into the neighboring locker. Zara heard a sigh behind her. A girl with glasses and pigtails looked disappointed. She had an armful of books that were waiting to be placed somewhere, assumingly in the locker that was now inoperable. Granted, they should have felt bad about caring about their locker predicament more than bullying but bullying was something that high school students, especially when there were powers involved, rarely got involved with.

Zara turned back to the fight in time to see the skinny boy get up to his feet. She thought she heard an apology come from his lips for bumping into the bully but that didn’t seem to be enough to the larger boy.

“You’re sorry?” scoffed the bully, “What about my scuffed shoes, man! Does a ‘sorry’ fix those, huh?”

Head down, the skinny boy shook his head. With that, the bully shoved him into the locker again.

“I said leave him alone!” the sister got to her feet and shoved the bully. A purple mist appeared around her hands as she pushed him. He flew back into the opposite row of lockers. The noise he made caught the attention of two boys that were further down the hallway. The girl’s hands were clenched tight in anger.

The bully pulled himself to his feet; the look on his face said it all, “Now, you’ve really made me angry!”

His followers jumped into action. Some of them grabbed the girl and held her in place while only two of them grabbed the brother. The two forced the brother to his feet, arms spread apart to keep him from moving. The bully marched over to the brother and pointed a finger in his face.

“You should really teach your sister some manners, you know!” to everyone’s surprise, the bully hit the brother in the jaw.

Unable to move, the boy took the full blow of the hit. He stumbled but the two others pulled him back up. His sister screamed her protests and nearly escaped the grasp of the four or five that were holding her. When the skinny boy was positioned again, the bully hit him across the face again.

Zara flinched as each blow was dealt. Even though she herself had never intervened in a fight, she hated seeing the unfairness of it all. It was two against seven and the skinny boy couldn’t fairly defend himself. She scowled as the brutal punishment continued. Each blow resulted in an involuntary flinch or twitch. After the boy was kicked in the stomach he was barely conscious, something in Zara took over. She turned to the girl behind her. A crowd had gathered to watch in silence behind the two of them. The girl stared ahead. Zara’s eyes fell to one of the girls large books.

“Hey,” she said, “can I see that?”

The girl jumped. She was a little flustered and curious as to why anyone was talking to her. Her eyes dropped to the book at the top of her stack. She nodded. Zara picked up the book.

“I hope you did the calculus homework,” she muttered as she walked toward the bully.

His right arm was pulled back as Zara approached. She tapped him on the shoulder and as he looked at her she back handed him with the book. The impact caused him to take a few steps back. Before he had a chance to recover she hit him with the book in the opposite direction. He fell back to the ground. If the halls were quiet before, they were dead silent now.

The bully’s friends just stood there not knowing what to do or say. The bully looked up at her with stunned surprise. Zara made a threatening gesture with the book raised over her head and the boy skirted back with fright. He looked to his friends.

“What are you idiots standing there for!? DO something!” he shouted.

The boys dropped their hostages and charged at her. Zara dropped her weapon and high kicked the first boy who got to her. Quickly, Zara crouched as a boy tried to punch her. The boy lost his balance and Zara swung her leg in an arch to trip him. One of the boys thrust his hand out. A strong gust of wind hurled its way toward Zara. She rolled out of the way with a small cut in her arm. Before Zara could react, someone grabbed her from behind. She struggled and kicked the boy in the shin. He dropped her in pain. Another boy was in front of her with his fist pulled back. Zara closed her eyes expecting the blow but it didn’t come.

The girl with short black hair tackled the boy to the ground. She got to her feet and pulled the boy up by the collar. After a punch in the face, she pushed him back to the ground. The girl turned to look at Zara. Her Asian features were now more obvious. She had narrow dark determined purple eyes. Her face had a combination of soft curves and sharp corners; with her eyes it gave her a tough look.

Another boy started running at her and she turned, thrust her hand out palm out, and screamed defiantly. The boy flew back as if hit by something hard even though she never actually touched him.

Zara heard a grunt behind her. She turned to see the brother standing over a rather terrified boy. He looked at her and smiled. Just like his sister he had a combination of soft curves in the face as well as sharp corners. But unlike his sister, his eyes were blue and more open and friendlier. With his long hair and his skinny stature, he could easily be mistaken as a girl while his sister would be mistaken as a boy.

He formed a water orb in his hands and shot one hand out toward one of the other boys. The water followed his hand and snaked its way toward the boy, freezing on impact causing the boy to be unable to move from the waist down.

The bully had gotten to his feet. He looked around at the chaos. His eyes zoned in on Zara whom he blamed for this mess and charged at her. Zara stepped back in to a battle position and readied herself for the bully. Suddenly, the ground under his feet shifted. He fell down on his face. Zara looked around for the earth-shifter responsible. She spotted the two boys that she saw earlier.

One was laughing alongside the other boy that she had noticed earlier. The earth-shifter looked African American with some European. His skin was a light even brown. He had dark brown hair with blond highlights. His hair was in loose curls that fell to about his hears.

The boy beside him was almost the complete opposite. He had ‘white’ skin. His hair was short and bleached white except for a longer section under his hair was dyed black. The boy’s eyes were an electric blue.

The bully took notice of them next. Some of the other boys started to run at them. The one with white hair put his hand in the air and snapped. Some of the slights shattered raining down florescent glass onto the boys. Then the other one stomped his foot, causing them to fall. Some pained cries escaped the boys’ mouths as they fell on a broken shard of glass.

“Look out!” someone yelled.

Zara turned and saw a boy raise his fist. She pivoted out of the way. A gust of wind suddenly picked up and without hurting her it targeting the boy instead. He flew into the air and was carried across the hall and dropped. The girl with glasses pushed her glasses up her nose. All her books were in a pile on the ground.

Zara was about to join the fight again when something stopped her. She couldn’t move. As she looked around she noticed that everyone involved seemed frozen.

“Oh, Kaiba,” a voice said from the crowd, “So this is where over half the participants went.”

Two grown men walked into the open. One was only slightly taller than the other one. His long white hair fell on his lower back and shoulders. He smiled at the scene in front of him, his blue eyes scanning everything and taking everything in. He wore a white suit and white dress shoes. Beside him was his assistant. Unlike the other man, he had short brown hair and brown eyes. He wore all black including a black coat that stopped at his ankles. In one arm he held an advanced tablet that was merely a clear blue screen. The man didn’t smile as he took it out as started writing something.

The man in white sighed, “Well, I guess it’s time to go down to the office and talk about this.”

He waved his hand as he turned to leave. Zara found that she could move again. She reluctantly followed behind the man. The others, both the bullies and the others that had helped, followed behind her. Zara started to worry about what the punishment would be. She started to feel her dreams slipping away. The bully walked up beside her and glared at her. Angrily, Zara feigned punching him without meaning any harm. He stumbled back and hit the lockers. She continued walking with a satisfied smiled on her face.

IOIOIOIOIOI

Shuppet fell asleep. It was slumped over by the phone. Puppetmaster still sat on the desk. He smiled as he finished with the body and the head of his new doll. He was starting to wonder where he could get some good quality hair when the phone rang. Startled, Shuppet sprang to its feet.

Puppetmaster laughed, “Now, now, Shuppet, we don’t use that kind of language.”

Shuppet walked over to the phone. It picked up the old-style phone and carried to its master. Puppetmaster picked up the phone and brought it to his ear.

“Hello? Puppetmaster speaking,” he paused, a smile cheeped across his face, “Really?” he paused again, “I’ll be right there.”

He placed the phone on Shuppet’s extended arms. The little doll walked over to the phone cradle and placed the phone down. It turned its face toward its master in question. Puppetmaster stood from his sitting position and jumped off the desk to the floor. He barely made a sound as he landed. He walked behind the desk and grabbed his shoes. Shuppet walked up to him excitedly, seeing that they were going on an outing. Puppetmaster brushed out the long old looking grey cloak. He then reached under the desk and pulled out an old grey hat with a long purple cloth draping down from the brim. He also placed a wooden box on the desk. Shuppet walked up to it an opened it. It pulled out a tiny cloak and a tiny had similar to its master’s. When they were ready, and Puppetmaster found a decent pair of sandals, he picked Shuppet up and walked toward the door.

Outside, he locked his shop’s door with Shuppet in one arm. After that he began his long walk toward the Sage School of Agent Training.