Laughing thunder [#Wattys 2018]

Chapter 13: We go one! On one! With words!

 I walked towards Ms. Hill's class and was met with the familiar feeling of soil that's her classroom floor, as I sat down in my seat waiting for class to start.

"Hello Thomas, are you alright?"

"Hey Noel and yeah why'd you ask?"

"You look really tired"

"Do I? huh well you remember what I did when we fought against Oak and I speeded past him."

"Yeah."

"well in my powers class Mr. Watts had the idea to test the class with a test that involved catching him. But he has similar powers to me so he used a perfected version of what I did and so to help everyone I copied his technique which to be honest wasn't that good and I got exhausted as soon as I stopped the current"

"Ah, okay here this should help." she drew Runes in the air that read Energy. Which glowed a pale transparent white with edges of blue. When the light entered me I was filled with new energy.

"Woah cool thanks! You've been practicing huh"

"No problem and yes I have, what do you think we'll be doing today?"

"Don't know we'll have to wait and see" After a few minutes of talking class finally began.

"Hello children how are you today~," she said sarcastically. Most of the class shrugged or wasn't interested.

"Okay good discussion, today won't be as easy as yesterday. Today you all are going to fight each other using runes so I hope you've memorized them or else this will be a travesty and I don't want that to happen" she said painfully nonchalantly.

"You shall be facing the person beside you so go and line up"

"Okay I'm screwed I haven't memorized them at all"

"I'm sure you'll do great."

"You say that but I'm up against you. And you have memorized them already"

"okay enough chit-chat let's get this over with because from the look on most of your faces you haven't studied at all. Well, tough luck because I'm not helping you at all. So let's get started this should be fun"

If your expecting a miracle of amazingness from the class you'd be wrong because we absolutely sucked. We all could barely make a word to launch and whatever we did make it was volatile to the caster and the opponent by being unfocused and just a scramble of letters. Eventually, after many screw-ups, it was finally Noel and my turns.

"Okay Echo and DI Angelo begin," she said reading her magazine.

Noel began the assault and fired out sound waves which I noticed were more powerful since it was her own power. I raised my arms to block it but I was pushed on my back anyway. I lifted myself up from the blast.

"Crap that was strong" I muttered This continued with her switching up attacks and projectiles. Basically, I was a ragdoll and a sturdy one at that which was annoying since we go until either Ms. Hill deems it necessary or we can't continue. I began thinking of the Runes I know and I had this idea when did she ever say runes had to be symbols

"Hey Ms. Hill do runes have to be the symbols or can we just write the words?"

"Well no they don't the symbols are just the best font to use for the desired outcome. Why'd ya ask you have an idea?"

"Yes!" I wrote storm in my spirit energy and a storm appeared.

"Oh this is gonna be fun, you ready Noel"

"Always" I sent the storm towards her and wrote lightning beside it and immediately lightning arced. Noel wrote a rune symbol that blocked the storm.

"A shield huh, well try this one," I wrote, hook and a hook wrapped around her. as I wrote pull behind it. But Noel was quick as well and made a rune that forced me to be thrown back. That forced the rune to stop pulling her. In front of me, I saw her create a wave. In retaliation, I wrote part. forcing half of the wave to part as I wrote for myself to leap and I went through the middle.

Now we each stood in front of each other eyeing each other warily with it being obvious we were each exhausted from using so many runes back to back. This would be each of our final attacks. So we both decided to write our powers to defeat the other. I wrote thunderstorm and she wrote Soundwaves and when the two attacks clashed it made a small shake each force vying for superiority over the other. To continue we each continued enhancing the attacks with our spiritual energy until there was one last massive shake and I knew it was over as I saw my rune fade as the rune from Noel overthrew my storm and sent me flying, but instead of going into a tree I was caught by vines.

"huh"

"very good you two. Ms. Echo congratulations on memorizing the runes and having a good skill with them. Mr. Di Angelo good job thinking on your feet and yes like I said the symbols are just a font, but they are the most useful to use, but just writing out the word itself in another font is also a good way to conserve energy, but." The vines on my arms tightened.

"Ow!"

"Mr. Di Angelo take this as a lesson and learn the rune symbols. It's not good to just rely on writing in English as you could see in your fight. But once again you both did well. Alright, what are you all waiting for we still have time in class step up! Next and remember to thank Di Angelo for saving your lazy butts"

This continued until it was time to end class with the trumpets.