Specials

Chapter 2- Morning

The morning came with the ringing of the alarm, and Dawn only just realizing that she didn't have her gloves on before slamming the off button. Dawn had accidentally taken her gloves off in her sleep, to let her palms breath. Dawn considered herself lucky this time, as she had somehow managed not to touch anything with her gloves off, other than the gloves. This was why her gloves were black, because for some reason, her powers didn't work on black colored objects. Dawn pulled her gloves on, along with a red t-shirt, jeans, and her standard combat boots before she realized that Chameleon was still sleeping obliviously in bed. Dawn was then faced with a choice: Should she wake her roommate up, or give her the extra ten minutes of sleep, as Dawn had got dressed quite quickly. Dawn decided against the latter, as she didn't want Chameleon to be late for her very first day. Dawn went over to the sleeping, calm blue frame of Chameleon, gently shaking her shoulder. Chameleon murmured some gibberish and rolled over, still sleeping obliviously. Dawn let an impatient huff escape her lips, then shook Chameleon harder, to still no effect. A mischievous grin lit upon Dawn's face as she saw Chameleon's iPod, sitting sweetly on the desk, just asking to be used. Dawn picked it up, taking a few minutes to figure out how it worked, as Dawn had never had anything like that back in Wisconsin. She clicked a roundish button, and the display glowed to life, displaying a background splashed with the members of some band that Dawn hadn't heard of. Dawn smiled, the iPod wasn't even password protected, and it only took Dawn a few swipes to find the music app and to turn the volume all the way up. Then, Dawn scrolled through Chameleon's music list, looking for the perfect little something to give Chameleon a wake-up call. Finally, her eyes landed on something that looked perfect. It was called "Hey, You!" By a band called Bloody Pigeons, just the look of the album cover was enough to reassure Dawn that there would be lots of screaming. Dawn made sure she was positioned at one of the desks, calmly reading a book, before stretching over and clicking the play button before snapping back to her previous position in the half-second it took for the song to start playing. The result was instantaneous.

"HEY, YOU! HEY! YOU!" The lead singer screamed out, then dissolved into more screaming. This, of course, blended perfectly with Chameleon's shriek of shock, as she back-flipped out of bed in an instant, nearly sending her punching fist through the window and blasting a jet of yellow-red light at the iPod, silencing it. As Chameleon realized what had happened and her yellow-red color of shock turned to the bright purple of indignation, she turned on Dawn, who was dissolving into a fit of laughter.

"NOT FUNNY!" Chameleon yelled at Dawn.

"You wouldn't wake up, so I had to do something!" Dawn gasped through her giggling. Chameleon rolled her eyes, and slowly returned to her usual hot pink state, if a little more purple than usual.

"You made me wreck my iPod!" Chameleon complained.

"You still have your computer, and if you don't get ready soon, you won't have breakfast, either," Dawn countered, grinning.

"Oh crap," Chameleon said a few more swears under her breath, quickly jumping into her clothes while Dawn read a few pages of her book. Soon, Chameleon was ready, and they exited the dorm to face their first day at Tanya's School for Gifted Children.

*

The lunchroom, to put it bluntly, was absolute chaos. After ducking and weaving past tons of older students just standing around, the two girls then had to find themselves a spot in line, and were finally in the line when it occurred to them to wonder how to pay for their food. They hadn't been told much in the way of currency, only that their parents would pay a certain amount of money at the end of the term, as it wasn't a set fee, it depended on the amount of fees a student racked up. This was what made Dawn nervous, but Chameleon was a light shade of mint green for a completely different reason: all the people. There were so many of them, and each one could kill you if they felt like it. This is what made some people turn away Tanya at their doors when she came to talk to them about the school. The sheer number of children. They aged from middle school age through high school age, all of them from all corners of the world, all of them with extraordinary powers. All of them, packed into this one room. Of course the cafeteria was quite large, with nearly a hundred tables, but that didn't make it any less daunting. As the line edged upwards, Dawn was slightly reassured by the fact that the kids were just grabbing trays of food from the counter, there were no cash registers or stopping, just the food. The food was sliding out of a slot, one by one, no servers or lunch ladies visible, just blue plastic trays of food sliding out of a contraption that looked like the mail slot on a door. Dawn tried to see what was on the menu today, but it was not posted anywhere. And, stranger yet, the food seemed to be changing with each student. For a tall, athletic girl with glowing purple hair, it dispensed a salad and a glass of water. For a boy with skin that looked like it was covered in blue-green scales, the tray was filled with a glowing substance, rather like if someone had taken pure moonlight and placed it on his tray. The list went on and on, all sorts of exotic foods to suit any taste sliding out of the little cat door.

Finally, as Dawn was standing before Chameleon in line, it was her turn. The machine spat out her breakfast with a quiet chink, and the soft flap of the little door flipping open then closed. The breakfast in question was two pieces of toast with jam on them, some eggs, and a glass of orange juice. Dawn was rather astonished, though she had seen the same thing happen to the dozens of kids in front of her in line. The machine had spat out exactly what she wanted, and what she found rather refreshing after months of eating the dry, flavorless cereal that her parents bought. Chameleon got her breakfast, some pancakes, and then the two girls began scanning the lunchroom for an open spot to sit. There were only two that they could see without having to walk too far back, as it looked like the high school kids sat farther back in the lunchroom than the middle school kids. At one, only one boy was sitting at, and Dawn recognized him with horror as the black haired and glowing green eyed jerk who had been hitting on her last night while she waited in line. He was currently winking at her and motioning to the seat next to him. Dawn shuddered. Ew. No way. Chameleon seemed to pick up on Dawn's feelings, as she turned her attention to the other seats she saw available.

"What about by that guy?" Chameleon asked. Dawn looked to where Chameleon was pointing, seeing that there was a table whose only occupant was the boy who had the flaming hair and glowing orange eyes, the one who had the leather jacket over his plain white shirt and blue jeans. Also known as the one Dawn had been dying to meet, and (maybe) crushing on.

"Yeah, let's go that way," Dawn agreed, watching out of the corner of her eyes as the jerk's face fell when she walked away from his table.

"Can we sit here?" Chameleon asked the flame-haired boy, gesturing towards the empty space next to him.

"Sure," The boy smiled, flashing a brilliant grin whiter than his t-shirt. Dawn sat down with Chameleon, feeling uncharacteristically nervous in the presence of the boy with the flames for hair. Stop that! She thought sternly at her stomach, which was filling with butterflies, and her knees, which were wobbling and grateful she had sat down.

"What are your names?" The boy asked, his orbs of eyes betraying nothing of who he was looking at. It was like he was wearing sunglasses or something, his powers acting as a guard to all who dared to look in his eyes, glowing pits of fire.

"I'm Chameleon," Chameleon introduced herself, back to her neutral shade of hot pink. Dawn felt a moment of thankfulness that she didn't have Chameleon's powers, if she did the flame haired boy probably would have laughed at her ages ago. Dawn also felt a moment of awe that Chameleon wasn't flashing a bunch of colors all at once. She must have found a way to channel her emotions, otherwise she'd never be her neutral hot pink for very long. Then Dawn realized she needed to conquer these momentary lapses of thinking about other people and needed to say her name already.

"Err, Dawn. I'm Dawn," She smiled, remembering that this was breakfast and she needed to take a bite of her food, like Chameleon and the boy were. Which reminded her that she didn't know the boy's name yet. "What's your name?"

"James. James Burquette," The boy flashed another smile. Dawn silently swore to herself. That smile could melt cities and burn holes through the ocean with its pure brilliance.

"I like that," Dawn murmured, not even sure if her words had carried to the other side of the table, to James's ears. She didn't look up to check, she was too immersed in her food, looking down, embarrassed, at her stupid comment.

"I think Dawn is a pretty cool name, too... And I like your hair," James said, making Dawn's head snap up and turn her attention back to the conversation.

"Really? The guy with flames for hair thinks my hair is cool?" Dawn asked, a surprised look on her face.

"Well, yeah, it's kind of hard to dye your hair cool colors when it's, you know, made of fire," James flashed another of his gleaming grins, and Dawn felt her heart melt into a little puddle as she laughed along with him.

"I guess we're like, the table of weird hairstyles," Chameleon smiled, as she fluffed her pumped up pixie cut as a demonstration. The table laughed, and the rest of the breakfast was spent laughing, joking, and of course, a little bit of eating, before the bell rang for the students to start cleaning up their trays and getting to their first class. Which, in Chameleon and Dawn's case, was Lessons about Color Pigment with Mrs. Camiolle.