A/N: OK, this was inspired by (but NOT based on) Tamora Pierce's fantastic 'Circle of Magic' and 'The Circle Opens' quartets. If you like fantasy novels (and especially if you like Harry Potter) go check them out! Wales is the country tacked onto the left of England, for those of you who don't know, and it's my native country. WALES 2, ITALY 1!!!!!!!! Yeah, we're still celebrating –or at least I am-after our last football win just over a week ago, so I had to put that in.
Circle of Six: The Mage Digidestined by Rubii Firestorm
The Digidestined have a new, very different, leader… When six new teenage Digidestined hit the DigiWorld, their odd powers dazzle the old kids: Cymra manipulates fire without a second thought, plants obey Sinead's every whim, while water is Splash's domain. Then there is Sam, for whom the weather changes with his every mood; Kyle, the Child of Electricity; and Chan, the reclusive Ice-Child. Can these international Digidestined defend the DigiWorld from a brand new evil?
St. Michael's Private School, London, 2:21pm (Local Time), Friday 15th September
Fifteen year old Ceridwen- Ceri for short- Powell took yet another long stare out of the Cooking classroom's large glass windows, peering in an attempt to see her latest crush playing football on the large games field belonging to the neighbouring school, St. Joseph's School for Boys. Ceridwen's own school, St. Michael's, was an all-girls school, which meant any boy was prey to the inhabitants and that everybody chose Catering and Biology (both of which had classrooms overlooking the St. Joseph's playing fields) as their subjects for GCSE.
"CERIDWEN POWELL!" There went the strident blare of the optimistically named Miss Patience Ridley, whose most polite nickname amongst the girls was 'VPL', since she always had one (A/N: VPL means Visible Panty Line, by the way, just don't ask how the girls noticed…). "Will you PLEASE pay attention to what I'm trying to teach you?"
"Oh, shut your trap, you old bat," Ceri muttered in her musical Welsh accent, raking her hands through her waist length, perfectly straight black hair in despair. It stood up on end, of course, so she dived in her bag for her brush, evoking yet another dirty look from the teacher.
"Roll on the weekend," muttered her thirteen year old, Irish best friend, Sinead O'Shawley, shaking her head so that her short dark brown curls tumbled and danced.
"Yeah," agreed the two's other best friend, fourteen-year-old Meaghan 'Splash' McBrady, whose jaw length goldish blonde hair was thick and wavy. Nobody knew why the Scots girl was nicknamed Splash, although Ceri held that it had to be due to her love of swimming. "It's all I'm living for."
"That and boys, of course," chuckled Ceri, nodding her head as she put her brush away again and began to doodle on the pad she always carried with her. There were general murmurs of agreement from the surrounding girls, but then someone noticed that there were instructions to be copied from the white board at the front so everyone studiously bent their heads once more, as illicit notes flew around the classroom, a method of communication far safer than talking, particularly when Miss. Ridley was in her current mood.
When Ceri's parents had won the lottery jackpot, their first move had been to transfer her, kicking and screaming, from her perfectly decent old Comprehensive, which was absolutely free, into the expensive St. Michael's, on the grounds that it was 'better'. This, as Ceri quickly discovered, simply meant that it was a 'better' way for her parents to show off their newly won riches. The same thing had happened to Splash, only a little earlier, but Sinead's family had always been wealthy. The three girls had met on their first day of school the previous year, with Ivy in the first year (or Year Seven), Splash in the second (Year 8) and Ceri in the third (Year 9) and had become instant friends, but due to their different ages Catering was the only lesson the three shared. Ivy was tiny for her age, but clever, with a pointed, elflike peaches-and-cream face with massive green eyes. She always wore small oval glasses and was very shy. Ceri, on the other hand, was of medium height and confident, with a fiery temper, street smarts and a whole lot of attitude, though she often needed her own space and tended to dream a lot. Splash was the loner of the group, often moody but with a passion for all sports and rock music. She was the tallest of the three despite being a year younger than Ceri and liked to skateboard.
At last the bell went for the end of the lesson: yawns were stifled and lippy was hastily re-applied as people packed their bags away and left.
"I've got the scintillating company of Miss Seniormanure and the joys of ICT next, how about you?" enquired Ceri of the other two, who giggled.
"Oh, I've got the singularly volcanic Mr. Mladenobitch in maths, wonderful maths," replied Splash, imitating her friend.
"Hahah, you've got really crap lessons and I have hockey. MUAHAHAHAHA!" teased Sinead, trying out her mock evil laugh. Ceri rolled her eyes.
"Your lesson's as crap as ours so far as I'm concerned, squirt. And you really need to work on that evil laugh thing. Meet in the Hole after?" The other two nodded. The Hole was the room they shared: it was sort of like a Common Room, but only for the three of them, with a stereo, comfy couches, a television and a PC; also a mini vending machine and a desk and chair to work at. They could go there when they had a free period, or at lunch or morning break.
And on that note, the three went their separate went their separate ways, tacking onto groups of their other friends.
2:40pm, same day:
Ceri was giggling with her friend Liz, a tall, freckly brunette with steady grey eyes, and totally ignoring what their teacher was attempting to say. Miss Seniormuir –Seniormanure to the kids- was just about to snap, her legendary temper building, when (just as Liz, unerringly recognizing the danger, nudged Ceri into silence) the door opened and the Head of ICT (otherwise known as Computing), Mr. Gennai, came in, trailed by Splash and Sinead. Mr. Gennai, though his name was almost constantly giggled at by every girl in the school, was universally liked, being tall, young and good looking with longish light brown hair. He was pretty quiet but fair and firm and always called his pupils by their preferred name instead of their correct one, a definite point in his favour- especially as far as Splash was concerned.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your class, Miss Seniormuir," he began, "but I'm afraid I want these two to join your class for today. They've not misbehaved, but their teachers are ill so we're dividing their classes up. Splash and Sinead have their best friend in your group, so I thought I'd place them in here- if you don't mind, of course."
Splash and Sinead, barely hiding their grins, threaded their way between the staring girls to sit in the two vacant seats next to Ceri, who looked unusually thoughtful.
"I don't know about your teacher, Sinead," she said straight out, "But Mladenobitch is definitely not ill- I saw him in the corridor on the way here, and he didn't look strange- no stranger than normal, anyway- whoa!"
Out of the PC she sat at had shot three bright beams of light- the red one to Ceri, the blue one to Splash and the green to Sinead; all three cupped their hands around the light. No one else appeared to have noticed, not even Liz or the teacher, as the beams shimmered and faded away, leaving an odd device in each girl's hands. It looked kind of like a child's play walkie-talkie with a little blank screen somewhere near the top. Ceri's was red and gold, Splash's was ice blue and silver and Sinead's was green and bronze. They barely had time to take all this in before the three felt a pull just beyond their navels and were all sucked headfirst into the PC.
~*~
Cornwall, England, Friday 15th September, 2:39pm (Local Time)
"Bingo!" Fourteen-year-old Sam Alred and his Australian cousin, Connor Henderson, who was two years younger, released the PC's joysticks and high-fived, having beaten Ultimate War III for the first time.
"Let's get a drink, huh?" laughed Sam, his stormy grey eyes, that were such a contrast to his light chocolate skin, dancing with achievement. His cousin nodded, a strand of white blonde hair falling into his oddly electric blue eyes.
"Yeah- coke for me, please," he drawled. "But hey, what's that?" The two stared back at the monitor as letters appeared in front of the figures still fighting from the game, forming two words:
WELL DONE.
Next the screen blanked out and new words appeared:
YOU HAVE RELEASED A NEW POWER. TOUCH THE SCREEN TO CONTINUE TO THE SECRET LEVEL.
The cousins looked at each other for a moment, then seemed to reach a kind of silent agreement. Both reached out and touched the screen, and both felt the pull just beyond their bellybuttons and the feeling of an abortive sneeze as they were sucked into the computer.
~*~
Kaitak, Hong Kong, Friday 15th September, 10:39pm(Local Time)
In the centre of Hong Kong, a young boy sat yawning at his AppleMac, rubbing at his forehead, where a lump roughly the size of a chicken's egg sat. Chan Chang was ten years old, and an only child. As a result he'd always been very much a loner and had used the net to escape from the continual teasing and bullying at school for his clumsiness and braininess. The latest lump had sprung from him 'bumping' into the fist of twelve-year-old Wu Huang, an especial 'friend' of his. Chan had told his parents that he'd fallen over on the way to school, and they'd accepted it immediately. He considered it unusual that they'd even noticed- his parents were both important business people, extremely busy and with little time for their ten-year-old son.
At the moment, Chan was chatting over the Internet to his Japanese friend, Tenshi Gennai, when the Mac froze up. He sighed in resignation, kneeling at the hard drive tower, and was about to press the restart button when something flew out of the Mac's screen. With surprisingly good reflexes- he'd always been terrible at sports, another cause for teasing at school- his hand shot out and grabbed it before it hit the far wall. He inspected it for a moment: it was coloured ice blue and steel grey and was rounded and chunky, with a little digital screen at the top, which was blank. As he stood back up, he unconsciously held the front of the strange little device to face the monitor screen. He barely had time to feel the jerk in his stomach before he was sucked inside the computer.