Element

Chapter 2

"Come on! You need to get going or you'll be late for the big assembly!" Elle yelled at me. "I don't want to go to the assembly." I grumbled.

I grabbed my bag and filled it with books. I didn't really need that many but I wanted to read some, to calm my nerves.

I slipped my shoes on and shoved a blue jacket into my bag. As I walked out the door into the sunshine I took a deep breath. I checked that all of my spirit stones were in the pouch tied to one of the belt loops of my shorts. Elle appeared next to me and said "Let's do this thing!" in a positive voice.

I started walking over to the main school building. I saw the ocean crashing against the cliffs on my right. To my left there was a brilliant green forest. I walked for about five minutes before turning left. From there I could see just how big the school building was.

It was more like a castle than a building. It looked hundreds of years old, made from stone and repaired with concrete. It had four coloured domes on top. From left to right they were red, yellow, green and blue. Looking around, I could also see four coloured dorm buildings. They were all made from wood, with a coloured roof. These weren't too big but still looked big enough to fit in 200 people each.

I looked back towards the building that I had come from. It was made from a really light blue concrete, with a bright white roof. I looked back towards the main building. There wasn't a white dome in sight. "Hmmm..." I pondered. 'I guess I'll find out later.' I thought.

As I entered the main building, I found that everything inside had been made to look very modern. The hallways were white, with sliding metal doors leading into separate rooms.

In the foyer of the building I saw a sign pointing straight ahead labelled 'main hall'. Two minutes later I was lost in the labyrinth of corridors. I looked at my watch. I had one minute to get there. I started to walk faster, then to run down the corridors.

Suddenly I turned a corner and bumped into someone. I fell backwards around the corner onto my bag. 'Ow!' I thought as my back slammed into the corners of five to fifteen different books. I started to get up when a hand reached down and grabbed my arm, hauling me up off the ground. I looked at the person that had helped me up. He had messy brown hair almost down to his shoulders, big brown eyes and a cheeky grin. "Sorry about that, didn't see you there!" he said in an American accent. "That's ok, I was running too fast anyway." I replied. "Oh you're from England! You must be one of the new transfer students. Aren't you meant to be in the hall?" he said, hearing my accent. "Yeah, I got lost." I said with a sheepish grin. "I'll show you where it is, I'm meant to be there too. I'm a student here. Oh yeah, my name's Jesse." He said quickly.

We sprinted down the corridors and burst into the hall just as the principal said "And now our transfer students. From our british counterpart, Jasmin Rose!" I sprinted past tiers of seats and leaped almost two meters up onto the stage. The principal smiled as I walked up to the microphone and said with a wave "Hello everyone! Sorry I'm late."

I walked over to the left of the stage as everyone applauded me. I'm not sure why, it might just be a welcoming thing. I wasn't sure where Jesse had gone, but I assumed that he was sitting amongst the crowd. The principal stepped over to the mic and said "Now from our northen counterpart, Gabriel Skye!" An average height, muscled, blonde boy walked up to the mic and said "Hey guys!" in a strong Canadian accent.

He walked over to my side of the stage and stood next to me. "So you're from Canada?" I whispered. "Yeah! How did you know?" he replied, barely moving his mouth. "I recognised your accent, I've been to Canada before." I said. He turned and smiled at me. "Well, I guess us transfers should stick together so it'd be good to know where everyone's from." he said with a grin.

"Next from the east, we have Leo Vasconelos!" the principal announced. "Hola mi amigos!" a skinny boy with tanned skin and a mop of brown hair said in a squeaky voice, imitating the childrens TV character 'Dora the explorer'. He ran over to this side and started grinning as people cheered at his humour. "Spanish?" I asked him "Yep, and proud of it!" He said with a glance, still grinning madly. I couldn't quite contain my giggles.

"From the west, we have Jim Blair!" the principal began. "G'day mates!" a taller boy with black hair, wearing a 'cowboy style' hat, a brown vest, black jeans and cowboy-ish boots said in a completely over the top Australian accent. I had to cover my mouth to contain the laughter that was threatening to burst out of my enormous smile. He jogged over to our side of the stage, but instead of going to the other end of the line he came over to my end of the line and stood next to me. "I'm assuming you've been to Australia before then?" he said in what you could tell was his normal accent. "Yep!" I said over the laughter and applause from the audience. "Judging by your smile, I think you could tell that that accent was fake." he said with a grin. "Yep!" I said again, unable to say anything else without bursting out in laughter.

The principal signalled for quiet. "Finally, from our southern counterpart, Austin Ford!" A boy with messy golden brown hair down to his shoulders, wearing a button down shirt with frilly-ish sleeves and a blue vest ran to the mic and asked "Hey y'all, how ya doing?!" There were shouts of 'Great!' and 'Good!' among the applause this time. Austin waved to the croud and ran over to this side of the stage, standing next to Leo on the other end. "This is a big school, huh?" he whispered. "It certainly is." I replied as the others murmured yes.

The principal continued on to the next part of the assembly, and I started to look around. After about five minutes I noticed that all of the other transfer students were wearing the different dorm colours, just like the crowd. Jim was wearing green, Gabriel was wearing yellow, Leo was wearing red and Austin was wearing blue. I was wearing mostly white, with a bit of each colour somewhere on me. My shoes were green, my shorts had flecks of red all over them, I had a yellow crystal on a necklace that I was wearing and the ends of my hair were blue.

After the principal had finished his announcements we were directed to an office to get our timetables. The other transfers and I walked off the stage and followed the crowd to the office. We were the last ones to get there, but when we arrived Jesse ran up to me. "Hey! Come over this way, you'll get your timetable quicker." he said, before running over to the side and beckoning for me to follow. I looked behing me and saw the other transfers following, wanting to get out of the crowd. Jesse waited for us to catch up, then led us over to an empty reception desk. He tapped on the window and said "Excuse me! May, I got the transfers!"

A girl the same age as us popped up from under the desk and put up a sign saying 'TRANSFERS' on the window. She then gave Jesse six timetables and took the sign down. She dissapeared under her side of the desk and walked out a small door on our side of the desk. "Hi, I'm May!" she said with a grin. "I sometimes help out at the front desk, and Jesse asked me to get you guys your timetables." Jesse smiled at us and handed out our timetables. The others looked at their timetables, asked which way to go and said that they'd see us later. They all ran out of the crowd towards their assigned classrooms.

May looked at my timetable, then pulled a timetable from her pocket. "Hey," she said, comparing Jesse's timetable with ours. "We all have the same first class! Spirit duelling practical. That means that we get to duel in our first lesson!" "Are either of you good at duelling?" Jesse asked. "I'm ok, what about you Jasmin?" May said. "I don't really know, I've only ever duelled one person other than exam instructors before, so I don't really have much to compare with." I replied.

"You must be good to be able to get into this school! I can't believe you've only ever duelled one person before! I'll make sure that I get you as a partner in the next class so that I can see how good you are." Jesse said excitedly. "Come on!" he said and started running towards our classroom.

"He runs EVERYWHERE! It takes a lot of energy just to be able to keep up with him!" May complained as we ran after him. 'Let's go and see how good I am at duelling.' I thought excitedly.