Elevatia

6. Training montage

The very next day I awoke at the crack of dawn and hurried to the Library. Two hours later Galbrathian turned up yawning. "Why are you here so early? Who said dawn??"

We agreed on a new schedule of lunchtime sessions. And so my training began.

It was a demanding regime – days and days of gruelling practice touching my ear.

"Your power is triggered with physical gestures. Touch your left ear to grow tall." Galbrathian instructed, pacing slowly behind me as I limbered up. "Think tall thoughts: beanstalks, herons, lampposts."

I pinched my left ear and concentrated hard.

"Two centimetres. Not good enough. Again!"

Galbrathian constructed a fiendish course of gradually higher shelves with tantalising glasses of thirst-quenching water just out of reach.

"Four centimetres. Do better. Think taller! Touch that ear!"

I exhausted myself running up and down the library steps for hours on end.

"That is entirely unnecessary." Galbrathian observed. "We are not training for a physically demanding activity."

I spent my free-time on the outskirts of the Medium District, observing the High Class through a telescope to deepen my understanding – watching how they carried themselves, how they walked, what height they were.

"Taller, taller!" Galbrathian urged, in the library once more. "Cutting between scenes doesn't work well in a novel," he continued. "This is a misguided use of the story-telling medium. Taller, I say!"

My fingers brushed the edge of the tallest shelf, close but not quite.

"Again, taller! Remember, the chosen one knows best. Trust your instincts."

I concentrated, feeling a power well up inside me. I snatched the last glass of water from the tallest shelf.

"Very good." Galbrathian smiled slyly.

I looked down at him panting. Then I grinned as I realised I had done it. I had grown over a foot!

Over dinner that night I caught the others up on my progress.

"That's amazing," Chip whispered. "You can grow taller whenever you want to now?"

"Yes! Now I've cracked it, it feels so natural - it's just like breathing." I replied. "Once I've triggered the growth with the ear touch, I can maintain it as long as I keep concentrating."

"But shrinking is harder, isn't it?" Jayla asked.

"Yes, Galbrathian says for shrinking, it's the right ear. But it's much trickier. I still can't get it to work yet."

"Growing taller is the important one though, right." Sky whispered, "I can't see any fun in pretending to be Lowlie. But if you grow, you can blend in with High society. We need information from the High Class to be able to plan a viable attack."

Galbrathian was always going on about the importance of taking things slow and training up before doing anything. But while I'd been training, my friends had been planning together in secret. Trying to work out ways to fight the Upright and bring down Miles Vyle.

Sky was a great strategist. She had been spending hours in the library reading up on tactics of guerrilla warfare, gorilla warfare, and just general facts about gorillas.

Jayla and Munk had been working on secret weapons and armour we could wear on our missions, while Sim the robot dog scampered around them. Jayla had occasionally managed to steal tools and half-broken mechanical parts from her agricultural rations' coordinator training, which Munk could use for her inventions. They seemed to be getting along really well together.

Most often, Chip joined me on my reconnaissance missions to spy on the High Class. He was growing on me a little over time. At first, I had found his cheerful kindness and unwavering affection repulsive. But I was starting to find it merely disgusting.

After dinner that night, Chip and I slipped out once again to the shore of the High Seas. We lay side by side on our stomachs in a small shelter, sharing a telescope between us. I gazed across the clear blue sea, lit by the rays of the setting sun.

"So beautiful," I said admiringly.

"Yes," Chip agreed softly. Though to be honest I don't think it was an informed opinion. He was looking at me and couldn't see the sunset at all. What an idiot.

"I wish that this whole terrible conflict could be over quickly so that we can just enjoy a nice life with the people we love," I said wistfully.

"I agree wholeheartedly," said Chip taking my hand.

"Yes, I also agree with me," I said, squeezing his hand and smiling at him. On closer reflection, his sparkling eyes and supportive comments weren't completely vomit-inducing. Perhaps I could learn to not despise him completely.

I sighed, weighed down with fatigue. "Sometimes this huge responsibility weighs down on me fatiguingly. I just want to run away."

"It's been a tough three days," Chip sympathised.

"It must be so much easier to live a nice life in High society. Now I can grow, I guess I could just run away from Medium and all my responsibilities and pretend to be Tall?"

"I'd follow you anywhere Kit," Chip said earnestly.

This guy was really missing the point. He didn't have magic growing powers so he'd be obviously murdered if he followed me to the High Class. What a moron.

The evening sun lit up Chip's kindly, concerned face.

"It's been so hard looking after Munk all this time." Chip said. "No parents to look after us, no security from execution by the Upright. Elevatia is cruel. Not just the unmeasured compound, the Medium District too, the whole thing. I don't think we'll ever be safe until Miles Vyle is brought down. But I didn't ever think it was possible before. You give us hope Kit."

His little speech warmed my soul. It had started off a bit me-me-me at the beginning but then he turned it around at the end. I took his face in my hands.

"I think I can be strong," I resolved. "To save my friends."

I leaned forwards in an amicable way, gave him a long friendly smoochy smooch against the backdrop of the setting sun.

"Hnghgnhgh," he said in a daze. No doubt enjoying my chummy gesture.

A few minutes later when he unfroze, I snuggled up to him genially as we snatched the last few moments of reconnaissance.

Chip took the telescope and focused on the city across the High seas.

"The Upright are practicing manoeuvres again, the usual two platoons" he said.

I noted it down in our log book.

"A few High Class passing by the grounds. Huh. Strange, one of them didn't salute."

"Oh, that's interesting. Maybe a revolutionary sympathiser?"

"He looks young. Got a face that looks like it has been chiselled from marble by a sculptor who's really good at doing hair."

"That's Ace!" I cried, snatching the telescope from Chip.

"Who's Ace?" Chip asked casually. "Some of sort of occasional associate, right?"

"Pretty much yeah. I spent most of my childhood in the unmeasured compound with him every day dodging sniper fire hand-in-hand. Just an acquaintance."

I lowered the telescope determinedly.

"I think I have a plan."