The Tale of Ezra: Book 1

Chapter 7: My awakening

After being told our mission we started to pack our bags. Finn and Jay were really excited to get to go on a mission. "Alright guys, lets not do anything stupid or rash, our job is to find out any information we can and report it back to here" Ariana said. "But do we have permission to fight if needed?" Jay asked. "Well I'm sure when the time comes, we'll know what to do" Anna said reassuringly. We packed bags and brought with us a lot of guns and other weapons. Jay packed with him a scar, he said it was his favorite gun. I decided to bring along a handgun and a pocket knife. Not like it would be much help anyway. We set off. 
We got into one of the undercover cars and Jay drove since he was the only one out of all of us that had a license. We drove a couple of miles toward the border. We passed by a couple of cities. The border of Regalia was located in a small town with not that much people. Across the border was a river which was like the border line separating Regalia and Georgia. "This must be the place where the first war took place to claim the land of Regalia" Anna said. She knew a lot about the history of Regalia. I mostly slept during those history lessons. After arriving at the small town we got out. Finn needed to use the bathroom, so we made a quick pitstop. We decided to stop at the gas station. When we arrived at the gas station, Jay decided to stay in the car along with Anna and Ariana. Me and Finn would go in the gas station. We opened the door and the guy at the register welcomed us. "Do you guys have a bathroom here?" Finn said. "Why of course, it's right down to the left" Finn rushed to the bathroom while I decided to wait for him outside. The cashier though was a bit too friendly. "So, how's your day going?" he asked. "Oh it's good." I decided to leave it at there and not ask how his day was going. But he kept on looking at me with a big smile on his face. I thought he was looking at me expecting me to buy something, but I wasn't interested, and I didn't have any money on me. 
I don't think he knew that we were in the NGO though. 5 minutes had passed, and I felt that something was wrong. Finn was keeping a bit too long and I know he only had to take a piss. But there wasn't a sound coming from that bathroom. The cashier was still looking at me with a smile, which really creeped me out at this point. I wanted to tell him to stop looking at me, but I was afraid I'd come out as rude. Maybe Finn was stuck in the bathroom, I thought to myself. But if he was stuck he would of called me or something. A few minutes went by and I decided to go over to the bathroom myself. The door was closed and I knocked on it. There was no sound or response. "Finn?" I said. "You good in there?" Again, no response. I saw that the cashier had followed me down to the bathroom. "Something wrong" he asked while still smiling. "Uh, yeah, my friend has been in the bathroom for a long time and he's not responding to me." "Hmm" he said. "Do you have like keys to the bathroom or something?" I asked. "No that won't be necessary," he said. I was confused, beyond bewilderment. "But my friend is in there and I'm not sure if he's okay or not." "No that won't be necessary" He repeated. Something was wrong, something was dead wrong. I started getting bad vibes all of a sudden. The cashier's smile started getting bigger. I banged on the door and shouted Finn's name and still no response. "What did you do to him?!" I said to him aggressively. The cashier stayed silent, but I could see that slowly his smile was fading away and it slowly turned into an evil smirk. "Right here boys" he said. I saw 4 armed men appear out of the bathroom that Finn went into, and I saw Finn laying on the ground unconscious. "Finn!" I shouted. The armed men pulled out their guns. I held my hands up in the air. "Who are you guys?!" I said. My attention was drawn to the logo on their shirts, it was the Georgia flag. I easily recognized it, they would always make us have a good look at it when we were at the academy, since that would be the symbol and flag of the enemies we would be facing in the future. 
I quickly went into my pocket and pulled out my handgun. No way I was going to strike fear into 4 armed men with just a handgun. The cashier himself pulled out his own handgun and said "Drop the gun" sounding more aggressive and less nice. This time I could tell he would shoot it. I didn't know what to do. My friend was lying down on the ground unconscious and I was held at gun point by 5 men. I couldn't just run or take out my phone to call my friends. If I screamed the my friends wouldn't hear from the car since the walls were too thick. But just at that moment the store door had opened and there Jay, Anna, and Ariana came with guns. I was relieved. "You didn't lock the door?!" one of the guys said to the casher. "Let Ezra go!" Jay said. The 5 guys weren't planning on doing that. "Shoot" Ariana commanded. All three of them fired their guns, but one of the guys leaped just in time and took the shots, protecting his comrades. 
Another guy took out a grenade and dropped it on the ground, it went off and the whole place exploded. I found myself on the ground, with a little blood on my face. Jay, Anna, and Ariana were also on the ground. The guy had killed himself since he was right next to the grenade. The grenade wasn't that strong though since it didn't kill us. We were outside of the exploded store, and I got up and started shooting my gun. I hit one of the guys directly in the head which impressed me. The cashier snuck up behind me and grabbed me from behind. One of the guys was shooting at Jay and the others but Anna quickly got up and shot him. The guy was hit in the arm and wasn't giving up so easily. He got out a handgun and started shooting rapidly. Ariana got out a sword and deflected all the bullets. She definitely passed sword classes with flying colors. Jay got out his scar and shot the guy in the head. Anna ran over to where I was, but the cashier held the gun up to my head. "Take another step and I shoot" he said. There was one more guy and I'm pretty sure he was hiding waiting for the perfect time, or he might have been calling for backup. "Just shoot him. Don't worry about me" I said trying to sound brave. I wasn't brave at all, I was afraid of dying, I was a coward. Jay, Anna, and Ariana couldn't do anything. Since they didn't want me to die. We were stuck. "Now you guys are going to drop your guns, now!" he said. "Let's just do it" Anna said. They all dropped their guns, we were defeated. Just then a shot hit the cashier's head. It had almost hit my head. The shot was from Finn. He was awake and came in with the clutch. The cashier fell to the ground. The last guy had already been taking down by Finn. "Nice job Finn!" Ariana said. "All in a day's work" He said. I could tell Finn was relishing in those words that came from Ariana.  "Are you alright, Ezra" Anna asked concernedly. "Yeah, I'm alright" I said. I really wasn't. I almost had a heart attack to be honest. I actually thought I was going to die. The scar that I had got from my last battle with Ezekiel had started to hurt again. "You need bandage replacements?" She asked. I was surprised that she knew" It kind of made me think that she liked me or something or maybe she was just caring for me. There were still some left-over snacks on the ground that weren't touched. Finn decided to grab them and save them for later. After Anna had replaced my bandages, we all got in the car. "So those guys were soldiers from Georgia huh" Jay said. "Yeah, I didn't know they would be all the way out here" I responded. "Do you guys hear that noise?" Anna said, bringing our attention to the noise that was coming from above. 
We all got out of the car and looked up, it was the aircraft. It was right above us. "Well looks like we found it" Finn said. "But how are we supposed to get all the way up there" Ariana asked. "Don't we have grapple hooks in all our bags" Anna said. We all looked in our bags and sure enough we found grapple hooks. "I didn't even know I packed this along" I said. Well we were saved, now we could get on the airship. 
We used our grapple hooks and grappled onto the airship. It wasn't so high up in the air so I grapple hooks could reach it. Finn aimed his grapple hook a little too high and went all the way on top of the airship. 
We were all able to successfully get inside of the airship. The airship was quite big. "Are there any cameras on here" Ariana asked. "Maybe" Jay said. The airship had purple lights, we walked a little bit an a door just opened. We found ourselves in a lab. There were a lot of tubes and other scientific things. I even saw an eyeball. Freaky. Our main goal was to get information if we could. "We should probably split up" Ariana said. "Yeah lets split up" Finn said. "Me and Ariana can go on one side and the rest of you guys go on the other" Finn was being a bit selfish, you could tell that he just wanted to be with Ariana alone. Well I wanted to be with Anna alone too. Glad Jay wasn't interested in her or we would have a problem. 
Ariana didn't seem to have a problem with our groups and so didn't the rest of us so we split up and went our separate ways. Another door opened and we were in the weapon room. We saw lots of guns and other weapons. "We should take some ammo" Jay said. I saw this cool lightsaber looking sword. As soon as I touched it though the blade turned into blue aura. Now it really looked like a light saber. "Whoa, Ezra, that's cool, let me see." Jay said. I gave it to Jay to have a look at it but the blade's blue aura faded away and was just a regular steel blade. "How come the blue aura faded away from the blade" Anna asked. "Yeah. Strange." Jay said as he handed the blade back to me. The instant I touched the blade the blue aura came back and it looked like a lightsaber again. This was weird, very weird. Every time I touched the sword the blade part with turn into blue aura. I saw this red button on it though and I pressed retracting the blade back in. It was just left with the pommel. I figured that if I pressed the button again the blade would come back out. "Come on, lets get out of here" Anna said. 
We left the weapon room and went into another room. I was surprised that we haven't even seen any guards yet. Was this just an empty airship? Just as we entered the next room, a red alarm started sounding. I could tell that Jay was startled and he immediately took out his gun. Me and Anna were thinking the same thing. Ariana and Finn were caught by some guards. We rushed out of the room we were in but Anna suddenly stopped and pulled me back. There were guards running out of a room. They had the same black gear as the other guys we faced back at the gas station. "You heard? Two intruders were caught in the rear of the ship" the guard said to the other guard. "They're probably NGO soldiers." "I hate those guys. They think that they can have the land all to themselves and control everything" As they were talking I heard gun shots ring from behind them and ahead of us. I saw Ariana and Finn running. "There they are" the guard said. "Should we help them" Jay said. "Not yet" Anna responded. I could tell that Anna had a plan. Ariana and Finn were being chased down by even more guards and the guards that we were by also started firing at them. Finn quickly dodged the bullet and shot one of them in the head. The guards paused and kept on shooting at them. Ariana got out her sword and deflected the bullets but one of the bullets grazed her cheek leaving a small cut. "Okay, Jay, you stay here and snipe the guys from afar. Ezra, you come with me and take out the other guys with your lightsaber sword." I had no complaints about the plan and neither did Jay. 
Soon we saw Ariana and Finn cornered, that's when me and Anna came out of our hiding place. I took out the pommel and pressed the button. Blue aura came out and it was strong as ever. "Ezra!" Finn said. The guards saw us and started shooting at us. I deflected the bullets with my lightsaber. I cut the bullets in half and they burned. The sword was so light for me. I was never good at using a sword but with this one I was somehow actually decent at using it. Anna started shooting some of the guards. More and more guards started to come. Jay was sniping them from afar, but it still wasn't enough. Ariana started fighting with her hands. One of the soldiers grabbed her. Finn was prepared to shoot but if he shot, he would have shot Ariana as well. Me and Anna were both trying our best to hurry up and help them but there were just too much soldiers. Pretty soon Jay was discovered, and he had to relocate. He was still able to shoot some guys in the head though. I was swinging by lightsaber around and slashing people left and right, it was quite fun actually but there were too many guys. A stray bullet hit Anna and she fell down. "Anna" I cried out. I grabbed her before she could fall to the ground. "I'm okay, it's nothing serious." she said. The guards overwhelmed us. Jay was also shot and fell to the ground. Ariana and Finn were cornered. In just a split-second, things turned out extremely bad for us. 
"Should we kill them?" one of the guards asked. "Yeah let's just get rid of them" Ariana and Finn were both getting held down by the guards and the guards held me down, no matter how hard I tried to resist. They got Anna and got Jay while he was on the ground too. "Shoot them all" a guard shouted. They were getting ready to shoot us and kill us. 
Something was stirring inside of me though; I wasn't feeling right inside. I had a mix of emotions. Anger, anticipation, fear...I didn't know how to feel. I was gonna die right there at that moment. I didn't even get to tell Anna about how I felt. I was actually gonna die...I was a failure, dying on my first mission. What could I do though? Professor Drake told me to never give up but it's looking like I'm about to give up right now...it's hopeless I can't do anything. My head was just invaded with bad thoughts. I didn't even get to learn about my parents. 
I thought about my parents and I closed my eyes, I felt something...I felt some sort of energy surrounding me. Just as all of them shot their guns at us a powerful pressure was released, all of their bullets were pushed back. All of their guns bended, and the soldiers themselves...they all fell to the ground and were knocked unconscious. All this happening as I saw black blueish lightning everywhere. I was able to knock most of the guards unconscious. There were two guards however who were still conscious. They were scared. They were sweating bullets. "Was that just..." "T-T-T-That was just...." those guys couldn't even finish their sentence. I was also wondering what had just happened and how all of those guys were knocked out. "He just used the universal force" one of them said. "The prophecy has come true!!" "The last magic user from a thousand years ago has been reborn" I didn't understand what those guys meant. Magic? Prophecy? The blue lightning sparked once more and those guys were knocked out completely.
Anna, Jay, Finn, and Ariana had all seen what had happened. "What just happened?" Finn said sounding speechless. Anna got back up. "That gunshot wound I got, its gone, and it's completely healed" she exclaimed. The same went for Jay, his wound was also healed. A lot of weird things were happening today. I don't even know how to put it. 
But I knew that this was just the beginning.