Saving the World, and Such...

Chapter 1: Rowen

"I don't think this is the best idea." Orion said giving me a pleading look.

I rolled my eyes at him. "What can go wrong? It's not like were breaking the rules again!" I argued as I ran my hand through my long wavy golden hair nervously. "Plus we've been planning this for five weeks! You can't bail out on me now!"

Orion sighed but at least he didn't protest anymore. It was our first real older kid party since turning 16. My parents really never wanted me going out because they think I'm messed up. They never babied my older brother Roy, or even my younger brother, Kigly! Apparently I had problems at birth or something where I almost died, which was very unusual nowadays. With technology, hardly anyone has any problems. Some doctors believe it is because of my rare blood type, but my parents still think I'm going to have a seizure or something. Very annoying.

So Orion, my best friend, and I planned on sneaking out tonight for fun. So far the first part of the plan worked. To get in and out of your house and into buildings you had to scan your fingerprint to help prevent burglaries. Easy enough. We got gloves and printed Roy's fingerprints on them while he was actually just in his room. He was nice enough to cover for us just this one night, with a lot of bribery.

We signaled for the levitating transportation vehicle (LTV) to come and we hopped in, plugged in our destination, and plunked ourselves down on the comfy chairs in a "U" formation.

"I heard almost everyone's going to be there." Orion sighed again looking at me with his soft orangey colored eyes.

I bit my lip and nodded.

He shook his head in wonder then asked with a smile, "After this is done, what is our next scheming plan?"

I raised my eyebrows at him and smiled too. "What have you always wanted to do?" I laughed.

"We know how to sneak out, we can practically do anything!" He said gazing at the city behind me.

The LTV slowed down as the others whizzed past. It smoothly came to a stop, like always.

"Orion," I grumbled. "Next I want to hijack one of these LTV's for a bumpier ride."

The LTV opened the sliding door and it descended the stairs. Orion stepped down then reached up to grab my hands and swung me out of the LTV.

"How was that for a bumpier decent?" He asked while I tried to stop laughing. He gave me one of his amazing smiles, and then we walked over to the party building. We scanned Roy's fingerprints and the door slid open. We walked into loud music with a floating disco ball making colors dance across the walls. People were crowding everywhere, dancing, eating, and talking. I was glad I wore my blue ruffled shirt instead of something fancier because this was more of a casual party. Man, I had no idea what to expect. Plus the blue shirt made my electric blue eyes stand out anyway.

Silver platters filled with food zoomed past us. Most of the kids here go to the same education center as me, but now they all look like they're having fun. There was a crowd, well, more like a line, in one corner of the party building so we decided to check it out. We weaved ourselves in and out of people until we reached the line.

"Orion, what are they waiting for?" I asked standing on my tippy toes trying to see. Too bad I'm so short!

"It's some sort of glittery art." Orion explained.

We waited in line until we were close enough that I could see the person sitting in a chair and waited until the artist put a moon shaped stencil on his face, put sticky stuff on it, then covered it with blue sparkly glitter.

"Wow! That looks so blingy!" I exclaimed.

"Yikes! It looks ridiculous!" Orion said pushing me forward into the chair. I gave him an annoyed look while the worker asked what design I wanted. I chose Pink swirls around my eyes just to bug Orion. The paste was sticky on my face and I instinctively wanted to wipe it off. Once he was done, the worker guy gave me a mirror. Oh yeah! Totally Blingy! I turned towards Orion.

"How do I look?" I said, jokingly fluttering my eyelashes. He studied my face for a second before busting up laughing. I sighed and thanked the worker.

"You're next," I said elbowing him. He was still trying to stop laughing.

"Ha, no way!" He ran his hand through his curly brown hair. Orion is funny that way. He likes to just look plain, which doesn't bother me. It works for him. He never did any of the eye electrifying or brightening or skin coloring, but I did trick him into coloring his eyes a little orangey since brown was too plain. He also likes to wear olden day clothes because he claims they're more stylish. Yikes. I don't know what those olden day people were thinking on their choice of clothes, but they were so not blingy!

"Wow, I can't believe we actually came to this party!" I smiled. Orion laughed.

"We are such rebels." He said sarcastically.

"Let's go to the top of the building." I suggested.

We stepped on the floating platform and hit the "Top level" button with my sparkly flat shoes and we started going up. Each level was another part of this amazing party. Wow it was crazy. We reached the very top of the building and a gust of wind fluttered through my hair. I noticed Orion watching me closely. We walked over to the edge of the building and sat down on the edge. We looked out at the big mass of the city. Glowing buildings rose as tall as the clouds, lighting up the busy city at night. To mark the boundaries of each city, so there is no fighting or anything, there is a river going around each city. I could only barely make out its shape from this far away.

"If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?" Orion asked me.

I really had no idea. Each city strongly disliked travelers so they discouraged you to leave your city.

"I don't know, someplace way blingy." I shrugged. "What about you?"

"I'd like to travel to the past. To see how hard their lives really were. I think I'd be able to do it. Live there I mean." He said thinking.

"Ugg. They preserved an old pair of olden day shoes at a museum one time and they made me try them on. Way too uncomfortable." I said shivering. Orion just laughed.

That's one of the many reasons I love Orion so much. We were so comfortable together. We could laugh and joke around with each other easily. But we could also tell what was on each other's minds. We could tell each other what was on our minds and go into deep conversations like it was totally normal.

I sighed. Orion and I have been friends for what seems like forever and I really don't know what I'd do without him. He was the perfect friend anyone could ever ask for.

"Look, that's the constellation I was named after." Orion said pointing.

"Yeah, but he looks buff." I teased. He scowled at me, and then looked back up at the sky.

"Look! There's a shooting star!" I gasped.

"There's another one!" Orion said awed. And we sat there for a while staring at the asteroids streaking across the perfect night sky.