Zodiac War

Fiery Change

It was a normal summer day in Honolulu Hawaii and I was just reading a book in my room until late in the evening.  I was so focused on my book that I didn't even notice that my room was starting to fill with smoke until my eyes started stinging.  I looked up to see smoke and a orangey glow coming in from under my door. My house was on fire and my family was asleep! I yelled, “Wake up!  There's a fire.” Hopefully they heard me and would meet me outside but at the moment I had to figure out how to get out of my room since the fire was right outside my door.  I quickly scanned my room and realized I was trapped. My window was too small and too high up and the door was also not an option. I couldn’t believe that this is how my life would end.  I hadn’t even reached anything yet. I was still in school. But before I completely panicked, I remembered learning about HVAC in class. Those vents pulled in fresh air from outside, so if I could get into that, maybe it would lead me to the outside.  I pulled the vent cover free and barely managed to fit my tall skinny self into the vent. I crawled forward, but the metal vent was slowly burning me. The metal was becoming hotter and hotter from the flames down below. It didn’t take long before I knew I had to leave the vent.  The next room I came across was where I made my exit. Luckily, this one didn’t have flames yet, so I could actually take the door and the stairs in the apartment building. Not long after I got out, I saw my home collapse behind me. Now it was a new start for me since it seemed like I had been the only one to get out.  I looked down at my left forearm since it seemed to be on fire and was mesmerized by a glowing rat that seemed to have formed itself there. It looked like a tattoo, but I had never gotten one and now I suddenly had this covering my entire forearm. It looked like the rat was on fire and it didn’t take me long to realize that this was my zodiac animal and element.  I wondered why it had suddenly appeared on my arm though.

I stumbled away from my previous home and tried to think of where I’d spend that night.  I ended up just going to the park and sitting on a bench and waiting till morning. In the morning, I went back to my collapsed apartment to see if I could find any of my belongings.  The news and fire department were there to sort through the debris and seemed surprised that someone had actually survived so they set out to find out what they could from me, but I knew just as little as them.  Thankfully my parents had left me quite some money, so I just decided to settle on the other side of the city and just work at a cafe since school was kind of out of the question now. Life went well for a while and I got used to my new routine, but then noticed that I was being followed.  At first, I didn’t think much of it since I didn’t really have anything expensive anyway, but then the day came that he confronted me. He caught up to me and right before I could run away, He grabbed my left arm and pulled up my sleeve and saw my mark for the first time. He cussed and left just as quickly as he had arrived, but not before I saw that he had a fire mark on his arm.  It looked quite similar to mine except that there was no animal, but the mark of Aries. I tried to run after him, so I could find out where he had gotten his mark and to learn more about the mark, but he had disappeared. I was left staring in the direction he had gone with a feeling that I was in danger. I tried to shake the feeling, but the confusing events of the fire that only I had survived, the strange mark, and now being stalked, left me feeling very nervous.  But I had nowhere else to go, so I just went back to my new apartment.

The next few days at work went by without more people stalking me, so I was starting to forget all about it and thought it was just a random drunk person.  At my work, it went really well and we even got an invitation to go on a cruise to provide food to the guests. Of course, the boss accepted this wonderful opportunity.  He chose me and a few of my coworkers to go on that cruise and represent his work. I happily accepted even though I knew I was highly allergic to water. It seemed like any time I swam in a lake, pool, or got dishwater on me, I ended up with a really bad rash.  But that shouldn’t be a problem, since a cruise is on a big boat and I could just avoid the water. The next day, we got to the harbor early and were about to board the boat when suddenly a group of masked men attacked. I’m usually not the brave type, so I just wanted to listen to what they said and get away without being harmed.  They didn’t say anything, but I saw them getting knives out and pushing everyone towards the edge of the dock. It seemed like they were planning to drown us all. I put up my left hand in a defensive position because I knew it would definitely be my death if I even touched the water. To my surprise, my mark started glowing and their attention shifted to me.  They let everyone else go and seemed to just be focused on driving me closer and closer to the water. I waved my arm back and forth and to my surprise one person just disintegrated when my hand was turned in their direction. This was enough of a distraction to the other masked men that I was able to make a run for it. I didn’t stop running until I was far away from them.  Then I took the long way home, so that there was no way that they could follow me home. I thought back to that day and realized that most of them had a glowing water mark on one of their forearms. It seemed like they knew that that was what I was my weakness.

This made me think back to my stalker of a few days ago and thought that maybe there was a connection between these events.  He had cussed about the fact that I was fire and had muttered something about me not being metal and having wasted his time. I realized that maybe he had been sent to kill me since they didn’t know I was a fire element.  The news had just said that I had used the HVAC system to escape, so maybe they had wrongly assumed that I was metal since the metal HVAC system had allowed me to survive. Then I assumed that the attack at the cruise had been because now they knew that I was a fire element.  That still didn’t explain why they tried to force everyone into the water until my mark started to glow. Unless it had been too dark during the previous attack and they didn’t know which one I was. They had seen my shirt from my work, but might not have seen any other distinguishing factors.  That would explain why they left all the other people alone after they saw my mark. Maybe my mark made me a target now, but why was still the question. I decided to go back to the harbor the next day, to hopefully find some clues.