The Mysterious Students

Chapter #14 Red

It looked like Mrs. Vesper used her mind ability on George, when he was thinking on how his school clothes would not work for this type of training.

Before the kids began, the instructor passed out black shirts and shorts for the boys, and shirts with stretchy pants, black too. She also provided them with the same shoes she wore, different sizes of course, so they could fit their feet.

At first, the kids were skeptical of their own stations. Would they actually help them improve their powers? They seemed a bit too cheap looking to be able to help powerful Guardians like them with their abilities.

But then, just after a hour, their skills seemed to have gotten better than before. Mrs. Vesper even saw a difference while observing each one. Half of the students had fun, with George laughing and talking when he would get a good score for punching at a good level. And Lily was joyed by her performance when she would teleport random empty cans and bottles to the assigned places a voice from a speaker said. Mrs. Vesper praised them happily.

However, she wished she could see some fun and excitement from the other half. Rayne would beat herself up when she couldn't hear something that the screen had up. Mrs. Vesper would assure her that she didn't have to be good at controlling her ability now, and reminded her that it is the first session of many. She will get better.

All that was happening with Vincent was him getting angry at the treadmill for speeding or slowing down the speed. He would want to go fast, but the machine would go faster than he wanted. When he wanted to slow it down, it would slow down much more than he wanted. Mrs. Vesper had forgotten how complex the treadmill was compared to the other three stations. Thankfully, she had much knowledge of the machine, so she taught him how it properly worked.

On the other hand, Vincent had gotten quite sweaty and he was panting more like a dog from all the running he had to do already. She suggested he have a 20 minute break. He gladly agreed.

Unfortunately, the satisfying sight of the kids improvement didn't last long. The dreaded assessment to test what they learned on each other. From the beginning, George knew that he wasn't the only one who hated the idea.

It was like Mrs. Vesper could feel the angry tension between George and Vincent. She have them fight against each other. Instead, Rayne fought Vincent, and George fought Lily.

It looked like George was going to win against Lily, from how tall he was and had much more weight to him compared to her. The confidence that built up in George after hearing those comments, didn't make him think twice on going in for the first strike, but in his case, just going in.

He full on ran towards Lily, thinking of knocking her down like bowling pins. Although, none of his confidence would prepare him for what would happen, not when Lily decided to make use of her abilities and teleported George behind her. It caused him to fall right on his face. Luckily for him and everyone else, Mrs. Vesper had put several of the dark blue wrestling tarps incase things like this happen.

George groaned while Vincent cackled. "Nice move, Hirsh."

Mrs. Vesper could see his cheeks turning red, not just from the sudden contact with the matts, but the feeling of embarrassment creeping into his soul. She thought of something that could redirect the situation.

"You're lucky it wasn't you, Vincent." She shot back.

Rayne softly chuckled at the remark, agreeing to her. That shut Vincent up, as he continued to watch.

As George slowly sat up, Mrs. Vesper turned to the person who made the whole scene happen. She didn't have to read Lily's mind to know that guilt was going through it. It reminded her of the fact that, she and the rest are just kids. Guilt is what they are going to be feeling later on in the future, and a lot more than now.

But she couldn't think about those things. Now, she has to help the students get ready for what's to come. She glanced at Lily and praised. "Good quick thinking on the teleportation, Lily."

Weirdly enough, Mrs. Vesper could see a bit of red on her cheeks when fiddling with her fingers. "Uh, Thank you."

"Those types of moves are necessary for fights and battles, but not always." She turned to face the pair that fought before, but spoke like she was talking to everyone.

"As demonstrated, it is important to know what your next moves are going to be even before your first attack. If you fail do so..." She took one glance at George, giving him and everyone else the picture of what she was going to say. "Consequences must be made."

The kids remained quiet with their eyes focusing on the instructor. This is what she needed to get them on the right track.

She continued, taking another glance, but towards Lily this time, still aiming her tone to the group. "Also, you do not always get to attack first, the opponent could before you, so you must prepare and think to be ready at all times."

She looked around to everyone then. "Everyone understand that?"

"Yes." The students said at different moments, but meant it in all.

It gave Mrs. Vesper satisfaction with her saying, "Good. That is all for today."

The four sighed as they walked back to the classroom, so they could gather their backpacks. They didn't talk to each other much, with exhaustion weighing them down enough to keep them from talking at all.

Fortunately for them, it was a Friday, so they had the weekend to rest their now sore muscles. George didn't expect the rest to experience the same level of soreness as he did. It made him struggle to move in his bed, more specifically sit up.

He didn't notice at first, but his phone had been buzzing on his nightstand. When he picked it up, he could see the many messages of exclamations of his friends talking about the sudden change of coloring in the sky. They made him forget about the soreness when he effortlessly got up from the bed to look out his window, already seeing what his friends were talking about.

There was no ounce of blue. The only color everyone could see was bright red and a bit of orange. It was a huge overwhelming change that it acted as fog, since George couldn't see past two of his neighbors houses, like he usually could.

He went back to his phone and saw that the sky wasn't the only one that changed, but the atmosphere did as well. All his friends could smell when they ran out, was smoke. Fire was one thing George thought could make the sky this red, but when he learned that his friends could smell smoke, he came to fire as the reason.

His friend, Raeden, then sent a CNN news article link into the group chat. George didn't know what it was about until he clicked on the link, and the headline was pretty clear. "Multiple, Massive fires erupted in several parts of Coldburne."

It explained that the fires were from a IHOP, a Home Depot, a construction site where they are building a massive apartment complex, a random mechanics shop, and a 7 eleven gas station. No one died or got hurt and the fires look like they started one after another. The IHOP one was the first and got caught at around 3 am and stopped at the 7 elevan at 6:39 am.

As George quickly got to the end of the article, all he could understand was that no one knows what caused the five enormous fires. There was no evidence of someone who could have done it, it was either that or the cameras, but they were burned as well.

George was watching as his friends were coming up with theories about what caused these fires while thinking the the four really has to make a group chat.