Cody Martin felt the cool breeze flow across his face. It was the wrong month, in his mind, to be outside for gym. He could ignore the cold but the wind was the last thing he wanted at this moment. All throughout the semester, he had been unable to hit the simple target. This time, he would. He made all the necessary calculations. The angle, the force needed, the tension in the string, the force of gravity, and the mass of the arrow all factored into his equations. He even tested each pull on a force scale to practice the exact pull needed. Variables however, he had not been able to. He could wait, just long enough for the wind to die down, but not so long that the teacher would become angry. He could not allow a simple archery exam keep him from his 4.0 GPA.
"Mr. Martin, whenever you are ready," the teacher instructed. He would when he was ready, or when the wind would let him.
"Come on buddy, you can do it," Zack said form beside him. Athletics always came easier to his brother, but this time Cody could use his knowledge to counter Zack's natural talent.
"Don't worry, I have this," he said calmly.
The wind finally died down and Cody fired the arrow. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see it drift. He had faith in his calculations, but could not bear to see the one thing that would determine is grade in gym, either hit or miss. He could hear the arrow soaring through the air, and heard it stick into the target 15 feet away. He heard the class around him clapping and he opened his eyes to see the teacher walking to him and saying, "Well done, a perfect bull's-eye. That is just enough for you to ace the semester in gym."
Cody was both ecstatic and relived at the sight of the perfect shot. He had never had to put that much time and effort into earning an A. The brutal classes, such as advanced chemistry, came to him without too much difficulty, but athletics were another story. Even with his brother scoring two points higher then him throughout the year, he walked away content.
As he moved away from the target, to allow the next person their turn, he heard an explosion behind him. Cody turned and saw the pieces of the target on the ground with the middle barely hanging to its post, and being engulfed in flames. The class panicked and ran in every direction. The teacher was one of the few able to remain calm through the situation. "Zack, you should know where the fire extinguisher is by now. Go grab it and bring it out here.
"Gotcha teach," he said running into the building. The class began to clam down and slowly backed away from the flame. Moments later, Zack emerged and put out the fire.
"You were supposed to give it to me Zack," she scolded him.
"Aw, this was more fun. I wasn't going to just run inside for nothing." She decided now was not the time to argue with him.
"Cody, how did you make the target explode like that?" she asked him.
"I don't know," he said. There was no way a simple arrow should do something like that. The target just exploded though, so something must have caused it, and what else but the arrow that struck it seconds earlier. Cody thought back to anything strange that happened to the arrow and target that day. Perhaps, there was something inside the target that caused it to explode. That wouldn't make any sense though. A dozen other students had already fired at the target, some even hitting the bull's-eye, but none of those caused the explosion. Perhaps it was the arrow then. He had carried the arrow with him all day to calculate and practice with it. For a second he thought Zack might had done something to it, but he knew nothing about explosives. "There is no way that should have happened," he finally said after several seconds in thought. It really should not have.
"It was still really cool," his brother said.
"Did you mess with my arrow?"
"Whoa, calm down Codester. You told me and mom that we would contaminate your calculations so I stayed away from it," Zack said holding his hands up in defense backing up a couple steps. Cody thought about the strangeness again. Zack wouldn't lie to him, actually, he would, but he's not irresponsible enough to cause an explosion, actually, he was. "I promise I didn't do anything to cause this." Cody could tell his voice was sincere. This time at least, he was being honest.
"Targets should not randomly explode though," Cody said as he and Zack walked away from the group.
"Well did you do any strange science magic that could have caused it?" Cody was appalled by Zack's confusion of science and magic. One consisted of explainable actions while the other involved abandoning logic.
"All I did were some simple physics calculations. I didn't add anything to it that should have caused an explosion. Unless," Cody stopped and thought again.
"Unless what?"
"Well I went over my calculations in chemistry once we were done with the lab. Maybe some chemicals contaminated it." Cody's heart raced as he began thinking of how he could have just blown up the school.
"I really doubt it. You may be the science geek, but even I know a few small chemicals could not cause something that big." Cody nodded in agreement. A few vapors from a school chemistry lab at most could cause some irritation, never an explosion. "We should get back to the others before they notice we disappeared."
Cody did not notice how far away they had gotten. They ran back to the class right as they reentered the building.
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"And so it begins," the figure said to himself from the roof of the school, "Those two boys have no idea what is in store for them." The figure vanished as discreetly as he appeared.
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A/N: I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this. I love getting reviews, so please press that button. If you have any ideas for this, please tell me. I just got the inspiration for this last night, so I don't know where this story will go.
