The Virus Within- Changing

Velociraptor Hunting Patterns (Not Really)

The next two days passed in a blur and we visited a few other strongholds. We bunked down for the night at Goldfinger Stronghold.

This stronghold was different from the other ones. It had an Assassin. She was a few years older than me and was a secret. We automatically knew from the scent. None of the adults in the Stronghold seemed to know, either, but her younger brother(I could tell from the similarity) seemed to give her just a little distance and followed her stare to me.

But aside from that, as I soon found out, the stronghold's inhabitants were nerdy.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Being a nerd isn't an insult, but it was surprising to see so many in one place, and it was a good surprise.

Most were in two categories: Book nerds, who were fans of Harry Potter and other great books, and science nerds, one of which informed me that squirrels occasionally ate rats and aerogel was the lightest solid in the world.

I fit in both categories.

I tried not to get too involved, but I had to enjoy the experience. I made friends with a group of kids my age who were both books nerdy and science nerdy.

There was Cindy, Seth, and Warren. Cindy loved Harry Potter and biology, Seth was a fan of Rick Riordan and space, and Warren practically breathed Artemis Fowl and technology. They found out what I was in the first thirty minutes that I knew them because they were genii, and none of them were fazed.

They were all big readers, they all had favorites, and they all knew facts about their favorite science topics. We were in one of the conference rooms, and they were talking about Quidditch when somebody walked in.

He was a teen a bit older than us and behind him were three jocks.

He had a smile plastered on his face, but I could tell that there was a hint of cold.

Seth and Cindy were up in an instant. Warren backed up, his book in hand like he was going to throw it.

"What do you want, Devon?"

"I want to know the new kid, of course." Devon beckoned to his cronies, and they started towards me. I stood calmly while the others backed away.

"You might not want to fight him," Cindy said.

"And why not?" Devon sneered.

They came to me, and I ran at them. The first stopped, surprised that a boy would attack three jocks. I jabbed him in the solar plexus, then kicked him into the others. He smashed into the ground.

Devon paled. He ordered, "Get Tim out of here." They retreated out of the room.

After a few minutes, I turned to the others. "You really should stop them."

"Nothing seems to work. If we tell, they beat us up. We obviously can't attack him, and he's too smart to get pranked." Seth sighed.

"How about velociraptor hunting patterns?" I spoke up. "You know, distract him with an obvious prank but set up a better one?"

"That could work." Warren mused. "But, for the record, those aren't velociraptor hunting patterns. The actual velociraptor probably was much smaller and hunted alone, as opposed to Jurassic Park."

"Duly noted," I said.

Cindy started sprouting ideas. I grinned. This was going to be fun.

They had retreated into a meeting room of their own, and we quickly set up the trap and hid in the room opposite to their own. This one had one-way glass, which was excellent.

Seth had told me that the cronies' names were Tim, Ulysses, and Long.

Long opened the door but didn't go through. A bucket of water hit the ground and missed, but it also pulled a string. Then Devon walked forward as another bucket, this one full of honey, poured slowly onto him. He spluttered and ran forward, hoping to escape, but instead ran into a tower of cups, where the top was full of feathers. He was covered in feathers. He backed up into the conference room again.

Seth, Warren, and I grabbed our supplies and moved into position.

Tim came out with Ulysses this time. I turned a crank which squeezed the paint bottles that were in my contraption, and since we had tweaked the nozzles a bit, instead of a single squirt, nothing came out for a few seconds, and then a light spray splattered the boys, causing them to hold up their hands and close their eyes.

This turned out to be a bad idea because Seth splattered Colorgoo onto them with a water gun.

Colorgoo was Cindy's concoction of mustard, ketchup, glitter, shaving cream, orange juice, and a few other disgusting condiments. It stained in rainbow colors and was very hard to get off. Then Warren used non-toxic spray paint to spray L's onto their T-shirts.

Then we dropped everything and ran.