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Chapter 25 - Christmas Feast

The first week of winter break was amazing. Miles had more time on his hands than he knew what to do with, and that was saying a lot. It was actually the longest amount of time that Miles had ever gotten to just relax and be himself, without school or chores or summer jobs that don't pay because you're under sixteen years of age. It was on the border of too much time, but his friends kept him busy enough.

The break so far had consisted of lots of basketball, cards, training, and other various games. Miles felt like he'd improved a little at basketball, and he and Jason could finally put up a fair match with Caspar and Kane, although they still hadn't won a game against them yet. Caspar still dominated in the games of one-on-one, but he seemed to be having a harder time against them than he used to. Miles and Jason had started playing a lot of standard deck card games, and everyone else had followed suit after. Now, all six of them spent at least two hours a day playing everyone card game they could imagine, in every possible combination of teams, if the game was played in teams.

They had even started getting creative, and making up their own games. Jason had made up a card game that seemed to be a mix between Go Fish and Blackjack, but Miles wouldn't know as he had played neither until a week ago. Caspar had made up a really fun game as well, which he called Archery Golf. It was an archery game where each player would shoot at a certain distance or angle and got points based on where it hit. A bulls-eye was worth -2 points, the ring around the bulls-eye was -1 points, and then the ring under, which they had determined was par. That one was worth 0 points, and then it went up 1 point for every bigger ring around par you hit. The game turned out to be pretty flexible and really fun, and they spent a lot of time playing it.

Captain R had decided to let them use his classroom whenever they'd like in order to use their stations to get in some extra training over the break. They usually spent about an hour and a half in there a day, each of them working for 15 minutes at their station while the rest of the group watched and encouraged. They went in the order that their stations were arranged, meaning Caspar always went first. His training station was interesting. The first half of it was wires stretching from top to bottom of his station, leading to a dozen different small, colored light bulbs. The idea was that Caspar would control the electricity travelling through the wire and lead it to a certain light bulb. It sounded simple enough, but proved to be quite a challenge for Caspar to undergo. The second half of Caspar station was actually not in the station. There were several red rings around the giant basement room that Caspar would try to teleport into. This one was fun for Miles and the others to watch, as teleportation was a very interesting subject. Some of the rings were wide, and some narrow, so Caspar would have to get more precise with his teleportation every time. Sometimes he would get in one of the narrow rings first try, and other times he would badly miss one of the widest ones. It was completely random, and had a different outcome every time. That was what made it so hard for Caspar, but so fun for the other five watching.

Dawn's station was a little more complicated. Dawn's training station consisted of some scientific components, but that wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was that in Dawn's station, there were two animal cages, holding a gerbil and a parrot. The idea was that Dawn would control the animals' emotions, and would even try to make them feel like doing something, like getting more water or feeling tired all of the sudden. Lilly had early on made Dawn make a promise to never try and make either animal feel like doing something that would hurt them or make them uncomfortable. Dawn had readily agreed and assured Lilly that all she did were simple things with the pets, but Lilly was still skeptical of the whole process.

Jason's, Lilly's, Kane's, and Miles' stations were all neighbors to each other. Jason's station contained some metals and other materials that Jason would try to heat or catch on fire. When they started the break, Jason couldn't do much but spit a little burning spit on the metal, but Miles and the other five kept encouraging him, and he had improved greatly. He could now produce something that wasn't quite fire but close enough from his mouth, making the metal considerably hotter. It drained Jason, though, and he would take a nap after Lilly, Kane, and Miles had finished their sessions in their stations.