Inversion

Round Two

The incessant chirping of my alarm finally rouses me from my slumber and I feel around for my phone to shut it off. After a few moments of blindly groping around I finally achieve blessed silence and try to go back to sleep, but the sounds of my housemates downstairs getting ready for class forces me to get up. I quickly throw on a pair of jeans and a flannel, grab my bag and head down to the kitchen. Everyone except Sparrow is sitting around the table finishing up the last of what looks like a good breakfast.

“Oh, sorry Jack. We thought you two weren't going to get up in time,” Ceri said apologetically, “I can make some more if you want?”

“No, no, it's fine. Don't want to make you late for class. I'm gonna go wake up Sparrow, I'll see you guys in History,” I answer somewhat disappointed and go try to find Sparrow's room. It doesn't take long, he has a poster of Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean on his door, which he probably thinks is hilarious. I knock a few times and wait, hearing some sounds moving from behind the door and after a few moments a bedraggled Sparrow answers the door in his boxers, wings stretching as he yawns.

“The fuck man? It's like, 4 am.”

“No, it's like 8:30. That light coming in from your window? It's called the sun. We're gonna be late again if you don't move your ass.”

“Oh shit, thanks- just give me a second,” he said slamming the door. I hear some rustling and seconds later he opens the door back up, fully dressed with his wings tucked away and his bag shouldered like he had been waiting on me, “Let's roll Jacko.”

We got to History just barely in time, Professor Balder acknowledged us with a nod as we took our seats. Class passed by quickly, this time we were studying our runes as a group and since I had digested yesterday's information dump I was actually able to focus and make some progress understanding the Futhark. Biology was fairly boring as well, we had no new specimens and spent the period rehashing yesterday's lesson. On the way out the door she gave us some basic anatomy worksheets to do as homework for tomorrow. Jared was, of course, very excited about that. His enthusiasm for lame things seemed to know no bounds. Phys Ed was up next, and I just hoped they changed up the pairings for today or I felt like I might go home in a body bag.

Lucky for me, they did. I got paired up against a scrawny kid with a long blonde ponytail, Terry something or other. In our first few rounds I just stayed on the defensive until I could figure out the specifics of his power, he could shoot lightning from his hands but the bolts weren't very strong. Each time it hit me it felt like a taser set to the lowest setting, and I got the feeling he either didn't know how to make it more powerful, or he had to draw the energy from another source and he was low.

Still not used to the specifics of my power I was sticking to traditional fighting methods, which was doing a decent job as it prevented him from having a range advantage against me. That is, until he started using his ability to charge up his palms and shock me. It was much stronger at close range and almost knocked me out the first time he did it. I staggered back in pain and he tried to follow up with a barrage of small shockwaves but I held up my arm to block and it began to glow fluorescent blue, when the electric balls hit it they deflected back at him. The deflected hit made him fall to his knees and I looked down at my arm in confusion, there were cracks in my skin with bright blue light pouring out, it was pulsing to the rhythm of my heart. I slowly unclenched my fist and the light faded to a very dull blue but didn't completely go away, it looked like an intricate tattoo that took up my whole arm and I could feel a sort of power emanating from it.

Terry something-or-other got back to his feet and looked at me angrily,

“What the hell was that?”

“My ability, I guess. Hey, can you do that again? I want to try something,” I asked excitedly. I had blocked the first wave with my right arm and it had sent his attack back at him, which gave me an interesting idea.

“What? Fuck no. Why would I do that?” he asked, crossing his arms and trying to act tough.

“Just, come on. I promise I won't send them back at you, I just have an idea I want to try, and if I'm wrong you'll probably knock me out anyways. Win-win.”

“Ok. Fine. But if you deflect them back at me again I'm calling it quits for the day, I can't deal with this shit on day two, I'm just learning how my ability works myself,” he says this and begins to charge up. I get into a defensive position and wait, this time he seems to be trying for quality rather than quantity and the energy ball he has looks a lot more painful than the ones he had been using earlier. I really hoped my plan would work.

The ball shot at me so fast I couldn't follow it with my eyes and I barely had time to raise my left arm to block it. Time seemed to slow down before the moment of impact and I saw cracks run down my left arm in a similar pattern to my right before they started glowing bright red. The ball of electricity hit my arm and the sheer force of it made me slide back a few feet in the grass tearing it up as I went, but I didn't feel a shock or any pain. Instead I watched the ball dwindle in size as I apparently absorbed its energy. The red light glowed even brighter and I felt a surge of strength flow into me.

“Whoah,” I heard Terry exclaim, but I was too entranced by the power I felt to look up. I felt like I had just drank an entire pot of coffee. I was completely wired, all my senses were running in overdrive. There was a tree next to us that we had been practicing beneath, I aimed my left palm at it and did what felt natural, released. The energy ball shot back out of my palm and blasted a hole right through the tree like a cannon ball. The red lines on my arm faded like the ones on my right, but also didn't entirely disappear. I could feel the loss of energy however, and collapsed. I laid on the grass flat on my back holding my hands up in front of me, panting and examining the criss-cross markings that now covered my arms. I felt like I had just run a marathon. After a bit, a shadow fell over me and a hand extended to me. I took it and got to my feet. It was Terry.

“Thank you for not aiming that at me,” he said with a relieved laugh.

“Yeah, uh, no problem. I didn't actually know it would do that. I just had a feeling,” I answered slowly, still worn down from expending that much energy. I saw a figure moving towards us out of the corner of my eye and knew I wasn't going to like what happened next on an instinctive level,

“This your doing Sloane?” Coach said testily pointing his clipboard at the smoldering hole in the tree and tapping his foot in anticipation.

“Err, well, yes?”

“Good job! You just earned yourself fifty laps around the courtyard maggot. You're just lucky I don't send your scraggly ass down to the Dean's office! Destruction of school property isn't a joke. Get going. And you, Terry was it? Find yourself another partner, Sloane here is going to be very busy for the rest of class.” Terry shot me an apologetic look coupled with a 'what can you do?' shrug and jogged over to a nearby throng of students. I groaned and started my first lap, hoping I could just phone it in and half-assedly power walk them, but Coach wasn't about to let that fly. Once I got about halfway around my first lap he started leisurely jogging beside me shouting insults about my physique, intelligence, appearance, and just about anything else he could think of. This was going to be a long day.