9: My Other Half
1125 Words
Firewalt felt very different as I strolled through the grounds; just telling someone your very terrifying and somewhat confusing secret could do that to you.
Surprisingly, Mr. Gavin hadn’t reacted in the way I had expected him to; in fact, he hadn’t reacted at all. He only told me he was going to look into it and I shouldn’t tell anyone else- not a problem, Mr. G.
I was feeling a lot better after the meeting; well, better except for the nasty head and body aches which still made my acquaintance every now and then. But it was a lot better than dying so I was grateful.
I stopped to examine a rose when someone suddenly shoved me out of the way. No surprise there really hen I looked up; my annoying half-brother had finally found me. “Don’t you have something better to do with your time, Stan?” I asked, getting up and dusting myself.
“You mean, better than making your life a living hell?” he returned with a silly smirk on his face. “I don’t think so.” I noticed he had brought three friends with him; guess Mr. Take-it-all couldn’t actually handle me alone.
“What exactly do you want?” I asked- who knew, maybe if I tried, he would be reasonable and not venture into getting himself hurt, right?
“I said I want everything you have,” he replied, “or do you want me to spell it out for you, halfshell?”
Okay, I was really starting to rethink my position about not letting him get hurt after that statement; maybe that would teach him to keep his dimwitted mouth shut. I wasn’t angered by the ‘halfshell’ remark anymore but that kid should really learn some respect, I was his elder brother for crying out loud. Well, half elder brother actually, but he still needed to respect me.
“And now to teach you how to dish a proper lesson in pain,” he said and his friends got ready to attack.
“Do you think you and your silly friends can fight me and win?” I asked, trying to sound tougher than I feel. Truth is, I didn’t think I could take them all on, especially not with me still recovering from a Soul strain.
They were about to put me to the test when someone suddenly said, “That doesn’t look like a fair fight,” and Cole came to stand next to me. “How about we balance the scales a little bit?”
Two of Cole’s other friends joined us and I felt really elated; now, we were evenly matched. Actually, it had become more like ten to one; each one of us was twice the man they were.
Stan’s friends must have reached the same conclusion as they took several steps backwards with really frightened looks on their faces; no one who liked his head wanted to face off against a powerful year five, especially not someone of Cole’s calibre.
“A little scared, are we?” I asked as I took a confident step forward; Cole was feeding my confidence fire and no Stan-like water could quench it.
“They are,” replied Stan, “I’m not.” I really felt sorry for him in that moment. If he thought he could win it, he was going to have another thing coming. I was about to give him my heartfelt advice when a sudden loud explosion followed by a bone-chilling scream froze us all in our tracks.
Instinctively, we all took off in the direction of the scream, reaching there to find Angela, Vic’s student, and another male year one lying unconscious under an apple tree.
“What happened?” asked Vic as she came running with Francesca from the main school area.
“We don’t know,” I replied. “We heard the explosion and came running.”
And speaking of the explosion, there wasn’t even a tiny bit of evidence to suggest that it happened at all- what the hell could make that much sound and not the impact?
Francesca walked up to the unconscious kids, created a shining blue liquid out of thin air and used it to revive them. Angela was the first to open her eyes and she gave another bone-chilling scream as she saw Francesca- yep! That girl definitely had the lungs of a large blue whale.
She would have gone running into the bushes if not for Cole’s quick intervention; that guy’s pace reminded me of Roy. Vic quickly sprang into action too as she took over to hug and soothe the already freaking-out-of-her-mind girl back to reality. “What happened?” she asked after a while when the screaming finally stopped.
Angela took some time to collect herself before replying, “A man attacked Nate and I, he was very fast and we couldn’t see his face properly as he was covered in a purplish smoke or something like that. Before knocking me out, he told me to show you guys this.” She lifted up her shirt and cleanly tattooed on her belly were the words Welcome ad ceteras tuas dimidium.
“What does that mean?” asked one of Cole’s friends.
“It’s Latin,” I replied almost instantaneously. "Welcome to your other half." Now, where the hell did that come from? I wasn’t supposed to understand Latin and now I was doing translations?
That was big time strange and I could only hope someone else didn’t come to that same conclusion.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky. “Since when did you know how to speak Latin?” Vic asked me.
The question caught me so off guard that I stuttered before I could catch myself. “I... Umm... I... I’ve been receiving lessons, you know, from a human tutor,” I finally managed to reply dumbly.
“Riiight,” Victoria drew out, suggesting that she wasn’t exactly eating up what I just said.
I knew that it wasn’t going to end well if my strange moment kept happening but the fact that I was suddenly a Latin scholar or a disgrace to the World Liars Council wasn’t topmost on my worry list right then. Thing is, there was only one person I knew that could possibly have had a circumstance of that exact sentence I just translated; me.
- Writer
