The Chaos Accounts #1: Account of Anxiety

4

After about an hour in the car, Blaine felt himself drifting off. Night had fallen before they'd even reached Luz' house, and the pitch darkness surrounding them currently lulled him to sleep.

Until the car screeched to a halt.

Both him and Luz went flying forward, their seatbelts working at the best time. Eyes wide, they exchanged looks. "Thanks God for seatbelts."

"And that's why I told you to put them on," Arin told them from the driver's seat.

Rubbing the last of sleep from his eyes, Blaine looked at the clock. Apparently, they drove an hour and a half away from their town. To... where? His eyes adjusted to the darkness at an annoyingly slow rate. "Where are we?"

Luz looked out of his own window and amended Blaine's initial question, "The better question is, why are we stopped in the middle of a highway?"

Blaine's vision finally accustomed to the dark of night to confirm Luz's updated question. "What's the deal, Arin?"

"Give me a second, and you'll find out." She reached into a side pouch – one that Blaine hadn't noticed she'd had the whole time – and pulled out a plastic card. A bunch of words and gibberish strings of letters and numbers plastered on the front. The best ones he could understand read, "Division 3" and "Grade O-2". Obviously inside knowledge, and he feared he would inevitably learn all about it. How did he end up in this position again?

Arin, however, flipped the card over to reveal a silver chip, not much unlike the ones now used on credit cards. She firmly pressed over top of it. Loud, mechanical whirring echoed through the barren space around their stretch of highway. Then, a quick jolt of the car dropping caused Blaine to yelp. The descent became smoother as they passed layers of dirt and clay behind clear glass, finally revealing an underground atrium below them.

Once the car touched ground, Arin unbuckled her seatbelt. "Welp, ready to meet everybody?"

As she hopped out of the car, Blaine noticed her movements and words were no longer bitter, instead almost hyper and excited like she had been when they first met earlier that day. He turned to Luz and asked, "How?" His voice came out strained and nearly cracked.

Shrugging as was typical Luz behavior, his friend replied, "Pretty much the same tech as Japan and China has created for underground parking decks to combat their population growth. This one also seems to work for transporting people, which is pretty cool." And, with a small, comforting smile, he then released his seatbelt and slid out of the Sorento calmly and gracefully.

Feeling neither calm nor peppy like his companions, Blaine's brain struggled to comprehend everything slammed on him in the last five hours and felt ready to blow. His heart had barely slowed down since he was around the corner of that café, now inflicting sharp chest pains as a result. Closing his eyes, he utilized his deep breathing techniques. He drifted from one happy place to another. Calm waves and sunrise at the beach. His joy and adrenaline when he performed his impressions. The excitement at six years old of his first trip to-

"Kid, Disney World is overrated. Quit it."

His eyes shot open as he snapped suddenly back to reality. As he gasped for air, his wide gaze met blue irises belonging to a female leaning close to his window.

"Don't diss Disney!" Yelled a male voice, "Disney is the best!"

The woman rolled her eyes and finally leaned back away from the window. "Gael, Kid needs a dose of reality. Plus, a wild, crazy, loud place like the Disney Parks isn't really effective in calming down anxiety, and it certainly doesn't do my head much help either." As if to emphasize a headache, she pressed two fingers to her left temple and rubbed. As she did that, she stretched out her other arm toward the car, hand flat. Then, when she curled her fingers and yanked back, the door separating him from this crazy nightmare of reality shot open. "C'mon, Kid. You're safe here."

Blaine slowly moved his hands toward his buckle and unclicked it. As if walking on crunchy leaves past a sleeping bear, he cautiously left the safety of the Kia.

"What's with the hatin' on Disney?"

Blaine's attention moved to two males approaching them: a tall one a bit older than him and a shorter, obviously younger one, looking about sixteen or so. The younger one's mop of wheat on his head reflected a good number of teenagers back home. However, he refrained from talking, so Blaine refocused on Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Take-Charge.

The young woman rolled her eyes. "Disney is for children. Has no place here." And, with those words, she walked briskly past the two guys and toward the tunnel hallway across the atrium.

"Kid." His gaze darted back to the other two, who stood only a few feet away from them. The older one continued, "You'll have to excuse Kyra. She's pretty grounded and blunt, but comes in handy when you need a kick in the pants." He held out a hand. "The name's Gael, and I'm Division 3's Commander."

Blaine swallowed past a lump in his throat and shook Gael's hand, that static shock barely noticed behind the anxiety he felt. "My name is-"

"Blaine." He ripped his hand back, staring at him with wide eyes. Gael smiled slightly and added, "Someone had to get the intel on you to beat ChaosBlaze. Without my research and monitoring, you likely wouldn't be here."

His face burning up for no reason, Blaine responded with a bitter tone, "So you've basically been stalking me."

Gael rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous tick that Blaine also had. "Yeah, basically. But I know ChaosBlaze has been for much longer than we have, so it's a relief that we got to you first. Hey, you okay?"

Blaine followed Gael's line of sight to notice his hands fiddling in a tight ball. He instantly threw them behind his back. "I'm fine. But, I think she's right."

"Who, Kyra? About what?"

"Disney. It is for kids. And it shouldn't belong in this new reality I've been shoved into." He felt his fingers digging into his palms.

"Don't talk like that!" Blaine looked back up at Gael. "Just because life is new or different or strange doesn't mean we can't enjoy what we have enjoyed in the past. All this new reality means is that a new chapter has opened. The other chapters, our pasts, shaped us and are a part of who we are. Ultimately, it's our past and present that will determine our future." Gael glanced left and right before leaning closer to Blaine. When Gael's hand touched his shoulder, Blaine felt a slight shock again. He must've gotten charged coming out of his plush seat in the Sorento.

Gael whispered to him, "I've got all the classic Disney movies on DVD hidden in one of my secret vaults. Whenever you wanna chill out, just ask. Kyra has no idea-"

"Now she does!" Came Kyra's voice, echoing down the tunnel to them.

Chuckling and shaking his head, Gael sighed, "Should have remembered my Restrictor. That would have worked out much better if I had."

Kyra's voice echoed to them again, "When are you girls gonna stop chit-chatting and get in here? We haven't got all day!"

Gael chuckled again. "Gotta love her and her inability to be patient. You'd think she'd have learned after all these years under my command."

The shadow boy finally spoke up, his voice just as soft and timid as how he appeared: "Gael, to be honest, it's impossible for most to be patient with you. You're kind of a handful."

With a wry smile, Gael responded, "Good. Nice to hear I'm keeping them on their toes."

Okay, now Blaine really liked this guy.

"By the way, Blaine ," Gael ruffled the teen's light, field-colored hair. "This is Saffron. He's a Grade B-2 which means his authority level ranks just below Kyra and I as Grade A's. Blaine, you okay?"

That was an understatement. With very little food eaten that day, coupled with magic humans, guns, fire in his hands, one-and-a-half hour car ride, and a hidden headquarters under a highway, his brain finally gave out. His vision spotted, his body swaying. His ears muffled the worried voices and sounds around him. A tingly numbness spread rapidly through his limbs, so he barely registered his crashing to the floor. Very soon after, the last visible light and consciousness disappeared...