-1Wow, this took forever. College has really put a halt on my writing for the time being. And of all the stories I could have continued, I don't know why it was this one. I guess I just picked one at random. For all the people who read my other stories and are actually looking at this one, I promise, they're not all gone. I have intentions to finish ALL of them (except all the 5-year-old suckish ones I have completely forgotten what I was doing with, but no one reads those anymore anyways). I'm hoping that once exams are done -- they're next week -- I'll have more time to sit down and pick up all my old stories. For now, this chapter will have to do, and maybe it'll get people reading this one and liking it, or at least intrigued by it. Please review; that'll let me know if I should keep doing this one or if I should drop it for now and work on others (of course, I'll do whatever my brain decides it wants to spew out, but if no one's reading something I can convince it to put that one on hold for a while, lol). Thanks, and… have a nice day. :P
Chapter One
Gar was late. But it wasn't his fault; his alarm hadn't gone off! Well, okay, so maybe it had, but someone must have turned the volume down, because he hadn't heard it. And, you know, it wasn't his fault either that someone messed with his alarm like this at least once a week… what was a boy to do, then, when he got in trouble for being late for Homeroom? After all, it wasn't something he could control! Right? Right.
So here he was, scrambling around his room, grabbing clothes that he thought might be clean and snatching up books and papers from the floor and trying to get dressed and shove things into his backpack all at the same time -- which was resulting in more of a mess than anything, but hey, this was routine. He'd pull everything together in time, even if he might lose a page or two of his homework along the way.
He finally managed to attire himself in clothing that was not-too-wrinkled and to shove every schoolbook and scrap of paper he could locate into his backpack, and took a short moment to examine himself in the half-length mirror on the back of his closet door. Baggy, torn jeans and a rumpled T-shirt declaring 'Wake me when class ends' seemed appropriate. Fangs, imp ears, and an overall green colour somehow did not. Where was his hologram inducer?
Gar finally located the little watch-looking device under a pillow on the ground, and put it on, switching it on before looking in the mirror again. There, that's better. Tan skin, human teeth, normal ears, black hair. Much more socially acceptable. Much less freaky.
See, Garfield Logan was not exactly normal. He was, in fact, living proof that 'it's not easy being green'. The product of a lab accident he didn't honestly know much about, he not only looked quite unusual, but was blessed with an odd ability -- to become any real animal that struck his fancy. Although, the blessing came with the added, at times unlikeable concept: he was currently an 'inmate' at the local secret science lab. Oh, sure, it looked like a boarding house -- until you got to the basement. But hey, he could deal. It was better than being a Scrounger on the street, or living in one of those government Orphan Homes, or… well, worse. And hey, he got his own room. And, truthfully, the hologram inducer they gave him was very useful, letting him live a relatively normal life with no one really knowing that he was anything but a normal sixteen-year-old boy. Which was nice sometimes. And the people here were nice enough... All-in-all, not that bad a situation.
Self-examination done in the time span of about thirty seconds, he spun and rushed for the door. He had seven minutes to get to class. If he made it in time, he'd break his current record of eight and a half -- by board, of course; there were faster ways, but when it was between bursting into the classroom on his skateboard or whipping in as a green cheetah, he knew the doctors who ran the lab would be much more in favour of the skateboard approach. Either way, it was time to go.
He dashed down the hall, passing a few of the other occupants of the lab -- Flash was fast enough that he never left until about a minute before class; Oryx could teleport; and Felinas' super jump would get her there as usual, plus she was so laid back that she never worried about such useless things as getting to school on time -- and almost ran smack into Mrs. Dr. Jeuta, the wife of the head scientist of the lab and the main caretaker for the 'students' who lived there. The tall blonde simply side-stepped him with a small grin. "Alarm troubles again?"
"Yeah, can't talk, gotta skate!" he called out, charging past her and whipping around a corner -- amazingly not crashing into anyone this time. He grabbed his skateboard from the foyer and darted out the door, jumping down the front steps and landing on the board to take off for school. A yell overhead caught his attention and he glanced up to see Felinas waving at him from the lab's roof; he waved back and grinned as she took off as well, leaping from roof to roof. Race time.
In all reality, Felinas had the advantage. The roofs were clear of Scroungers to dodge around and had fewer Brethren Soldiers to avoid. But Gar knew his route, and he'd skated it a thousand times, so it wasn't much of an advantage in his eyes.
In the end they tied -- both burst into their homeroom at the exact same moment, right as the bell rang. Twin cheers of "Yes!" came from both of them and they exchanged a high-five, electing laughs from the other students and a slightly amused smile from the teacher.
"Ah, yes, Garfield and Sara. How nice of you to grace us with your presence today, and right on time, there's a nice change. If you would please take your seats…" And with that, the school day began… routine, as usual.
Well, the beginning of the day was routine. But from there it just started getting weird. He kept seeing this odd guy around -- he knew it wasn't one of the teachers; he'd never seen the man before -- and it was like he was following him. Oryx called him 'BB' when they passed in the hallway, then looked confused and walked away without another word. He kept getting these odd feelings, like something wasn't right or he should be doing something else, even though he was doing exactly what he was supposed to -- he wasn't even breaking any rules. Little things, really, but still weird.
But he could explain them away. The guy might be a sub for some class, and it could be pure coincidence that he kept showing up wherever Gar went. The feelings could be completely random; he'd had such days before, where he just didn't want to be there and kept feeling like he should do something else. And Oryx… well, she did stuff like that a lot. It had something to do with her powers -- she was some sort of psychic; he didn't really understand it all -- and she'd probably just had a 'moment' and confused him with someone else or something.
And then it was time for history class. Gar didn't like history class; it was boring. But his best friend Lance -- well, best friend not from the Lab -- was in the same class, so it could be worse. Probably the most annoying thing about the class -- besides Mr. Smith, who was even less original than his bland name suggested and in a phrase duller than dirt -- was the seating arrangement. Lance sat in the back of the classroom, fifth row; Gar was directly in front of him in the third. Between them was this odd girl named Rachel -- he only knew her name because Smith called it so often, whether she wanted him to or not.
There was actually a bit to be said about Rachel. She looked weird, Gar thought -- then again, without his hologram inducer, he was one to talk, but for a regular human girl she looked weird. Her shoulder-length hair was purple, for one thing, and since buying, selling, or using any kind of dye was strictly forbidden he could only assume it was natural. Her eyes were purple too; another oddity. She was amazingly pale, paler than anyone Gar had ever seen before. And she had this red gem on her forehead -- he guessed it was some sort of fashion statement. He couldn't say for sure; who could understand Goth 'fashion statements'? And she was Goth, he figured, what with the black clothes and the silver rings and crimson jewels, and that dark blue hooded jacket she always wore. But again, he didn't pay much attention to her. He did know that she always had a book with her, and that she never spoke unless Smith specifically called on her -- which, as before mentioned, he did a lot, because she never seemed to be paying attention and yet she always knew the answers. Gar only knew what he did about her -- which was, basically, just what she looked like -- because, thanks to her position between himself and Lance, she had become their unofficial 'note barrier'.
It was almost like a game. Along with not attracting Smith's notice -- which wasn't hard, the man was half-blind and most of the time seemed to have been bored into a stupor by his own lectures -- they had to get the note around Rachel. She seemed to completely ignore their note-passing, as long as said note never touched or bothered her. They could skid it along the floor, toss it over her head, even bounce one across her desk, and she wouldn't do a thing. But if they hit her or the book she was reading, she would catch it, tear it into bits, and stick the scraps into the back of her book to be dumped into the trash can on the way out, effectively destroying sometimes page-long conversations without even a glance. Gar just couldn't understand it -- had it been him intercepting a note, he would want to read it! But she never did; just tore them and threw them away.
Usually they did pretty well getting the notes around her, since she never made any moves to stop them. But Lance seemed to be off his game today. Every other one he tried seemed to bounce off her head, hit her in the shoulder, land on her book, or even drop into her lap. It was like there was some weird fource just throwing them all into her. Gar was honestly a bit amused -- Lance, on the other hand, was not. At first, Gar had wondered if he was doing it on purpose to try and get a reaction out of her, but a look at how annoyed Lance was getting told him otherwise. Rachel, though, seemed to come to the only logical conclusion -- seeing as it was usually a rare thing for them to hit her with more than two a class -- and assume he was doing it on purpose, which resulted in the first actual reaction Gar had ever seen her give -- a glare so fierce it would have stopped a Bretheren Soldier in their tracks. It was enough to convince Gar to stop sending the notes on his end, and that eventually stopped Lance as well, since it's not much use trying to pass notes to someone if you don't get any back.
So they suffered through the last half of history without any notes to slake off the boredom while Rachel sat happily reading her book, seeming thoroughly content with the lack of flying papers. Smith even called on her less than usual that day -- he was giving a particularly boring lecture and seemed loathe to interrupt it by asking questions.
She might have made it out unscathed had Lance not been so mad. Gar had to admit, his friend had a temper, and it wasn't pretty when he got angry at people -- and for some reason this whole thing just had him ticked off. Plus, the school's rules only encouraged it; if you had a problem with another student, you dealt with it how you saw fit, and the teachers didn't intervene unless things got really serious. So when Lance roughly snatched Rachel's arm as soon as they got out of the classroom and dragged her away from the door, Smith didn't even glance up.
Lance started yelling at her, accusing her of stopping the notes on purpose, ranting about how she did this every class and he was sick of it. Rachel just stared back at him coolly and didn't say a word. Gar hung back for a minute, not sure what to do, waiting for a pause in Lance's ranting to intervene. "Dude, leave her alone, it was just a fluke," he attempted, to no real avail.
"Stay out of this!" Lance snapped at him, then turned back to Rachel, whom he still had by the arm. A crowd was beginning to gather, and that seemed to make Rachel uneasy; she looked nervous for the first time, breaking her usual cool, calm attitude. Lance noticed this and took advantage of it, shoving her roughly against a set of lockers. She gave a startled little yelp, sounding almost pained, and Gar instantly felt a surge of anger towards his friend that he couldn't explain, a strong urge to stop him and protect the girl.
"Dude, lay off, she didn't do anything!" he snapped, moving to grab Lance's shoulder as he stepped towards Rachel again, poised to hit her.
Everything seemed to happen all at once. Gar's hand fell on Lance's shoulder, Lance swung to slap Rachel across the face, Rachel flinched and huddled back against the lockers, and then everything was interrupted by a series of loud popping sounds overhead and the lights in their section of the hallway were suddenly gone as shards of glass rained down from the light fixtures. It took Gar -- and everyone else -- a moment to figure out what had just happened: all the overhead light bulbs had exploded all at once.
The sound and the resulting screams from startled students as glass rained down brought teachers hurrying out into the halls, and in the resulting chaos the impending fight was forgotten; when Gar looked back to the lockers Rachel was gone, having apparently managed to slip away in the confusion. Lance hardly seemed to notice; he was trying to brush glass out of his hair, cursing up a storm as shards cut at his hands. Gar looked up at the lights -- the light bulbs had literally exploded; there were few traces of them left -- then down the hall, where he was sure the girl had to have run off, saved by the insuing chaos of the exploding bulbs. While everyone else was busy wondering what on earth had just happened, Gar had enough experience to be able to guess the 'what' -- someone had just saved Rachel from getting beat up, that was the 'what'. He had another question in mind as he peered around at the gathered students, none of whom he recognized from the Lab. Who the heck just did that?