Chapter 1—Summer

Thanks for stopping in to read this story! I must warn you, though. This is a continuation of my first story, SlugTerra University. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do, or else this will seem very confusing. Please leave a review at the bottom!

"Why do you always convince us to do such stupid things?" Luke demanded as we rode our Mecha's through Snowdance Cavern.

"I didn't know we would wake the Ice Ogres!" I yelled back.

Let me explain this. It was still a couple months before school started back up again, and I convinced the gang to go racing in Snowdance Cavern. There are rumors that the ice gives you a ton of extra speed, if your Mechas can handle it.

We were halfway through the race when we accidentally rode through an Ice Ogre nest. I was a bit too careless turning around a large Ogre and ran into another one, waking up the entire nest.

Needless to say, we were running for our lives. I left Dozer, the Slyren that used to belong to Eli, at the Hideout, and Luke didn't have Singer, his Slyren, with him at the time.

"Yeah, well, your mom's gonna be pissed when she finds out what we did," Emma said.

I was right about to come up with a witty reply when a familiar Slyren shot overhead, reaching velocimorph in time to soothe the Ice Ogres again.

When the singing ended we looked ahead to see Karina Shane standing ahead of us, blaster poised and ready to shoot.

"Jacob," she sighed.

"Sorry…Mom," I replied. Speedy, my Speedstinger, and Yang, my Negashade, hid in my backpack. It was their idea for the race.

I tried to avoid her gaze as we left the Cavern, but it was pretty hard because she was in front of me. Don't ask me how, but she managed to sit on her Mecha backwards so that she could glare at me the entire way back to the Hideout.

"What were you thinking?" she demanded when Mark, Emma, and Luke were sent off to their own homes. "You could've been killed!"

"It was just a bit of fun!" I told her. "We didn't know we'd wake up a whole nest of Ice Ogres!"

"That's not the point! The last time you tried to have fun, you almost got your hand bitten off by a slug hound!" she snapped.

"How would I know slug hounds don't play fair in a wrestling match?" I replied. I know it sounds stupid, but when you have superhuman strength, the rules tend to fade about different topics. It's actually pretty entertaining to watch someone wrestle a slug hound, but it's a lot different when you're the one wrestling the slug hound.

"You need to think before you act, Jacob!" she yelled. "You think that your powers put you beyond rules and injury, but they don't. Everything has a limit, just like your abilities. If I hadn't been there today, you could've been hurt."

"Yeah, but—"

"No 'but's!" she screamed. "If talking won't get through your thick skull, maybe this will," she said. "You're grounded for the next month."

"What?" I demanded.

"You heard me. You are grounded from leaving this house, unless I am by your side," she said.

"I have plans to go over to Emma's house tomorrow, though!" I told her.

"You have been at her house every single day this summer. I'm pretty sure she'd be able to come here," Mom snapped.

I tried to come up with a point to refute her, but when I couldn't come up with anything I screamed in frustration and ran up to my room, slamming the door behind me.

"I can't believe she did that to me!" I screamed.

I stomped around my room for a few hours in anger before I got a video call from Emma.

I grabbed my data pad and turned on the camera as I accepted the call.

A second later Emma's appeared on the screen. I don't know why, but every time I see her I can't help but to smile.

"Hey," she said. "What did your mom say?"

"I'm grounded for a full month," I replied. "I can't leave the house without her with me."

"That sucks," she muttered.

"I can still have visitors, though," I added, noticing the slight frown on her face. That got her to perk up.

"What time do you want me over?" she asked me.

"Anytime," I replied. "What did your parents do when they found out?"

"Nothing much," she said. "They gave a long speech about how I need to be more careful and how you can be a bad influence."

"Same old stuff, then," I told her.

She grinned. "Yeah, same old stuff."

We talked for a while more before she was called away to take care of something.

"The next month is going to be sooooo boring," I commented as I put the data pad away and sat back on my bed.

"Yeah, but you won't be putting yourself in life-threatening situations," Speedy said.

"I know, but it keeps things active," I said.

"Well, how about you start reading this?" Noodle asked me, pushing a book at me.

I picked it up and noticed that it was the book Red Hook gave me. I never even started reading it.

I had nothing to do, so I opened it to the first page and began reading.

The next day Emma arrived at the Hideout at around nine morning, and we hung out around the house for the entire day, doing random things.

Over the next month we did the same thing, occasionally going outside when Mom went with us. Whenever Emma and I weren't hanging out I was either reading the book or working on random trick shots. I was already fairly good at them, and the extra time made me even better. Mario Bravado even stopped by one day.