Mutation

The Bonding Ritual

Mrs. Hoy returned a few minutes later.

"They're ready for you," she sighed, looking down at her watch. I nodded along with Amber and Cedar.

We started on our way to wherever we were going in silence, up until Amber piped up from the back.

"Where are we going, when will we get there, and what's happening?" She asked.

"We are going to the armory, we'll get there soon, and you're getting fighting clothes and a place to keep your "special" weapons." Mrs. Hoy spat out the word 'special' like venom.

We carried on in silence to the armory. I was still wondering why she was so angry. She almost sounded... Worried?

We arrived to the armory in about five minutes. To do so, we walked down a forbidden hallway.

There were six forbidden hallways, or at least six that us fourth years weren't allowed into.

We stepped into a large room that had a... Kiln in the middle of the room? Is that actually what it was? It looked way too mechanical, but... You never know, I guess. Maybe it was an Old World thing that was salvaged from the ruins after the Evolution War.

An old man appeared from behind the kiln-thing.

"Is this them?" His voice was old and raspy. Mrs. Hoy nodded almost solemnly. Mystery man also nodded and took in a breath.

"Follow," he commanded. Amber looked at me, so I shrugged. We followed.

The man led us into a dark room with purple light coming from the many cracks in the walls. Why are there so many cracks?  I thought curiously.

"Stand by the wall, weapons out." The man commanded bossily. Why was he so bossy? We did what he commanded anyway.

Amber was on the left, Cedar was in the middle, and I was on the right.

The man walked up to me with a stick. The stick had lines periodically along the edge of the stick, but the lines were of different sizes. Another Old World relic? Why were ancient humans so weird and confusing?

The man put the stick to my side and murmured to himself while writing something down on a pen pad that had mysteriously appeared in his hand.

He flipped the stick sideways and put it on my near-flat chest. I blushed. Amber, who was watching the man do all of this, giggled when her attention was finally on my flat chest.

I have her one of my many death glares. This glare was the one that said ' I WILL KILL YOU.' Amber gave me an amused look in reply that said 'we'll talk about this later.'

The man, however, had stopped paying attention to me and started on Cedar. It took longer to use his stick on Cedar for some reason. Was something wrong? The man seemed to have a problem measuring Cedar's legs and hips...

When the problem was fixed by the man having Cedar take off his baggy pants and to let the man use his stick on Cedar in his underwear, the man started working on Amber.

When he was finally done, he moved to the kiln-thing. The man touched a control panel and was... Inputting our numbers? Maybe...

"My name's Camo, by the way." Said the old man. "I didn't really have time for formalities earlier. I just wanna get this over with."

I looked at Amber and Cedar, confused.  Why does he just want to get this over with? What's wrong? I thought worriedly.

I resounding "beep" came from the kiln thing. Camo folded tan material in half and put it into the machine. A high pitched beep sounded as a blade cut into the material, forming a sheath. And then a second.

The blade stopped and the material shifted. I looked at Camo, but he was not the one moving it. The material was shifted to a sewing machine, where it sewed the material to form closed sheaths. Now the swords would not fall out.

I smiled and thought about wearing sheaths with slits in the sides.

Camo pulled the material off of the surface. He handed the sheaths to me. I was about to swing them onto my back until Camo's rasp interrupted me. It was filled with anxiety.

"Stop! Wait 'till I'm done with the other's!" He'd shouted. Confused, I stopped. Camo took in a breath.

"Okay, lemme finish them..." Camo put more material into the machine and the same process happened, except this was just a long, slim, sheath. Probably for Cedar and his katana.

Camo handed it to Cedar and told him to also wait. As he did this, Cedar shot me an anxious look. Why the worry? I thought again.

Camo moved to the machine again, and for a third time the same process was repeated. In about five minutes, Amber was holding to long sheaths in her hands.

"Okay, put 'em on," Camo piped from a good distance of fifteen feet away. We did. Moving in unison, we lifted the sheaths to their positions: Amber's to her waist, Cedar on his back, and me to my back, crisscrossed under my wings so the blades would stick up and I could easily grab them and still have complete control over my wings. This was with out incident.

"Okay, now shove the blades in 'em. This'll bond you to your blade." Camo murmured with quiet enthusiasm. And so we did. We were still in unison. But then... Something happened.

Amber screamed and fell to the ground. I stared at her and Cedar did the same. Even from my position four feet away, I could tell the were unconscious.

A tingling started in the small of my back where my blades met on top of each other. Pain exploded from the tingling spot on my back. I fell to the ground, unable to move.

My vision went in and out of focus, my head throbbing. I saw Camo walking over to me. He waved his hand in front of my eyes, and clapped his hands together.

And then everything went black.