SIX
Even though Jaela had been walking all night to get the flag, it was less than a thirty-minute walk back to the school. She understood, though, why it happened - Raevyn herself had pointed out that everything was fluid and changing all the time here - and enjoyed knowing that fact.
She waited on the grass in front of the school for Zevi to straggle out of the woods.
Eventually, she did. Her clothes were soaked with blood; her face was distressed and covered with what looked like claw marks.
"There's a warehouse in the woods with an infinite closet," Zevi told her, explaining the relatively-new clothes. "But I am never playing again."
Jaela laughed.
"I'm going to get my schedule and look around the school instead of sitting at breakfast, if you don't mind," Jaela said. "You know by now that I don't need to eat."
"And I know that that is extremely normal," Zevi replied sarcastically. They both laughed. "But go ahead, yeah."
They entered the school, and while Zevi turned down the hallway to go to the gym, Jaela turned the opposite direction and began to walk to the office.
She walked down halls that were growing more and more familiar with the passage of time. Jaela walked into the office's lobby and then into Tala's small room.
Tala looked up as she walked in. "Need a schedule?" she automatically asked.
"You guessed correctly," Jaela grinned. "Zevi transformed last night."
The white-haired woman's smile faded. "She was playing?"
"Yeah," Jaela told her.
"Poor girl," Tala said absently. She looked lost in thought. "Here's your schedule, though - room number, class name, class time," she indicated, tapping a pen on each of three columns on a sheet of paper.
Tala gave the sheet to jaela and resumed what she had been working on, although more distracted than she had been before. Jaela let herself out of the room.
She left the office, checked her schedule, and set to work finding the rooms.
Jaela was running. She was running quickly, as fast as she could, from some hooligans on the other team that had probably been following her for upwards of an hour.
The silver blade she had recieved from Raevyn the night before had fallen out of her pocket when she first had started running. Now she had no way to defend herself against them.
Zevi was not out in the woods that night, playing the game. Jaela hadn't made her, and she didn't want to.
But she would have wanted the help, as she needed it now. She was tiring quickly.
The stalkers were catching up to her, chasing her rabidly. Eventually, all hopes of escape were lost to the wind and darkness in the forest.
"What should we do with her?" one of them asked.
"Throw her in the river," another answered. "That'll get rid of her for the rest of the game... at minimum."
They chuckled to themselves before they grabbed her and trekked towards the relatively far-off sound of running water.
Eventually the group - Jaela and her captors - made it to a large river that Jaela hadn't known was in the forest before now. The trees had opened up considerably, letting much more light into the woods.
They stopped on the bank and counted off slowly, before throwing her into the middle of the river as hard as they could.
Before she hit the water, Jaela knew all was lost.
Everything was a swirl of light and darkness for a moment; a single moment before all was dark.
(A/N): Well, I decided to waste a page or two in my notebook and can an A/N on paper. I'm counting down the pages remaining until I'm done with this notebook I've only had for about a month. The current count? 49.
Also, we've passed 10,000 words on the seventh chapter (according to of course; it's truly six chapters and a prologue). Yay! We're well on our way to my goal!
So, here to canned A/N!
This chapter was shorter. I know that. I was minimally inspired for Sunday (in story-time (I'm so creative), not real time), as several things had been moved around because a few events on the super-packed Monday wouldn't make sense withous Sunday, etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah, blah blah, etc. etc...
Sorry if I bored anyone to death. Don't worry - you don't yet know a few characters by name, but being bored to death is better than what they're getting.
Yes, getting. Although the punishment Saturday's (once again, in story-time) flag protectors got was harsh, yes, around twenty characters are getting worse than that.
Have I bored anyone to death with the A/N, even? Gah, I need to start writing the next chapter.
In it, we'll meet the last two of the Starring Four (Jaela, Zevi and two others we'll get to know more in-depth later (one of which was a minor character you've already met, assuming you haven't been skipping chapters)), go to class (a bit boring), and, depending on where I cut off, see more interesting stuff with Jaela (hehehe...), and learn more about Tala and Devin (Mr. Admon, you know?) and their extremely complex, extremely depressing relationship status.
Anybody die? No? Good.
