The Child of Hecate: The Arising Oracle

Chapter Two: The Long Division Teacher Exploded My School, Not Me!

HELEN

I was purely devastated as I plopped down on a desk next to Akari. The reason I hated Mrs Byron so much was because she hated me. One time, at a test, when you were allowed cheat-sheets, me and Akari had gotten excited. I usually score something like 80-90% on tests, so this was my chance to score better, but still, all the teachers I have ever had hated me, because of things I didn't do.

For example, someone had sneaked into the principal's office on the top floor, and there was only one classroom there. My class was using the classroom after recess, and I was late for the lesson, and someone had rushed past me down the stairs as I was climbing them, with a large empty packet of slime in their hands. I was walking past the principal's office when she came in, and then... she must have sat on the slime that someone put on my chair, because she came out with green gooey stuff on her bum, and accused me of putting it there.

So, with the Mrs Byron thing, she allowed everyone to keep their cheat-sheets except me and Akari so we scored badly. The only reason the school allowed cheat-sheets that time was because the exam was a year level's harder, and well...

I ended up scoring 38%. Bad? Yes. I mean, who the world knows what the answer to this algebra question was?:

Find all rational zeros of P(x) = x3 - 7x + 6.

So you get it. 

I mutter some impolite insults under my breath directed at Mrs Byron, while my head was speaking to the floor, so I didn't realise she was looking straight at me and had asked a question. While I was doing the swearing. Oops.

My impulsive ADHD part of me started noticing little things like chipped-off wood from the chair, my jittery fingers tapping absently against the table, my feet clapping on the floorboarded ground.

"Honey, why don't you come with me to have a... talk?" Mrs Byron asked me sweetly in that sickly, willing voice of hers. She said it as if the word talk could mean several things, like punishment, torture and a bunch of other things that didn't seem very nice. I got up, pushed my chair in roughly and followed her out of the classroom. 

"Oh, and you too, hon," called Mrs Byron to Akari.

She led us to the top floor, and pushed us into one of the empty storage rooms, her laptop still in hand.  

"Now, hon, I want you to type up 'Hellhounds-Ancient Greek' if you don't want to get detention," Mrs Byron commands to me, her eyes twinkling with hate and loathing.

Searching up something sounded a lot better than detention at the time, so I did it on her laptop once it powered up, the blue Greek omega symbol glowing to life. I wondered how I knew it was called omega, and how I knew it was Greek.

"Hurry up, sweetie!" snapped Mrs Byron. "Now read aloud the information."

I read it out. 

"Good, now same thing, except Furies!" Mrs Byron ordered.

I read again.

"Now Cyclopes!" she instructed.

I did so.

"Last one, Laistrygonians!" Mrs Byron directed, an evil glare showing in her eyes. 

I took my best guess at spelling the word. Before I could read it out loud, her eyes started to glow.

"Akari!" I shouted in alarm. My friend stood next to me. A bunch of the monsters I had typed up appeared, and then charged us. My body adrenalin started to heat and pulse.

The next thing I knew was a scorching sensation igniting my body, a fiery red light piercing the room, and all the monsters gone. Akari was showered in rubble, and her hair had come loose. The rubber band was floating at the tail of her used-to-be ponytail. Akari was too busy staring at me to take it off.

I, however, didn't have a spot of dust on me, and a metre circle around me was completely clean.

"What," she began, staring around at the piles of the half-destroyed school, "did you do?"

 I muttered some apology that I didn't even register, and was about to say something when Akari spotted something that chilled by blood to the marrow of my bones. A hellhound, two Laistrygonains and a Cyclops were lumbering towards us, dazed. Then they seemed to get back to their senses and the hellhound lunged and the other three monsters charged. behind them, an entire legion of dog-face human seal things joined the chase.

Akari said what I was thinking. "Run."

Then we bolted off, racing past pedestrians and bikers on the footpath, crossing without waiting for the traffic lights, and on the other side was a man with spiraling horns, curly dark hair and shaggy goat legs from waist down. he wore a T-shirt that said, Nature rules!

Akari  and I screamed, and the goat-man covered his ears.