Dark Blood

Chapter 28: Better Days

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Minor trigger warning
this chapter contains a few depictions of manipulation, upsetting imagery, grief, torture, and pain. reader's discretion is still advised.

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Almost a month has passed since Virdis attacked the mansion, since then things have calmed down with no further Arkum or Fallen attacking. However, the peace they had received left the most foolish of the group to relax and laugh the days away, thinking the worst was finally over. On the other hand, the wiser and more cautious ones were training and getting prepared for the inevitable attack from Insaro and his army. But as the days went by more kids were turning into Zerku, so in order to keep up; Ivan, Kyle, Sarah, and Isabell made a rule for anyone who has become a Zerku to report it to the older kids immediately so that their powers can be recorded and tested. Now out of the 124 remaining kids at the mansion 47 were officially Zerku.

The ones that didn't know how to control or make their powers work were in the mansion practicing with Isabell, Walter, Sound, and Sarah. The others Zerku and humans who were willing to fight were outside at the large field training with Cane, Jackson and Sam watching them train while Kyle was out on a scouting trip. Half of the trainees were doing sword exercises while the other half got into pairs and were sparing. As Jackson was walking past the trainees that were sparing, he saw some of the other kids laying under the trees.

"*sigh* they can't be serious." Sam then noticed Jackson not paying attention to the trainees, so she walked over to him to see what was wrong

"what's up?"

"Them!"

"Oh yeah, just let them be Jackson, if they want to waste precious training time for relaxing then that's their problem, not ours."

"we're going to need all the help we can get girl! Regardless of whether they want to help or not they still should!"

"To be honest I don't even know why we're training."

"What?"

"We have Kyle on our side and he's like superman for crying out loud! He could probably take out all the Arkums in the blink of an eye!"

"Oh yeah! And while he's out there doing all the fighting, we can just sit here and relax with some smoothies!"

"... I was just saying."

"I'm not going to be useless anymore girl. Besides Kyle can't watch over us forever, he may be the strongest guy we know, but he's still just a kid like the rest of us. He needs help fighting those things and I plan on being one of the people to give him that help."

"Are you serious!" They both looked to one of the slackers under the trees who was now talking and walking toward them.

"How could you possibly help Kyle?! You may be a Zerku or whatever, but you're not anywhere near his level! Just do what we do and let him do the work!"

"you guys are cowards! Hiding under trees while others are fighting for their lives!"

"it's not cowardly to run from a fight you know you can't win, it's called being smart, you should try it sometime!"

"Whatever, I don't care anymore! If you want to keep slacking off and be useless that's fine by me and the others are gonna keep doing our part in making sure we win this war!"

"War?! You think this is a war?! You're crazy Jackson! You need some help man!" Jackson just grunted and walked off back to the trainees trying to ignore the slacker. The slacker just kept laughing at him while walking back to the trees. They continued training for another 10 minutes before the trainees were dismissed for the day. Everyone then either went under the trees to relax for a little while others went back into the mansion. Jackson started walking to the mansion as well, but Sam stopped him.