"I think I'm going to grow a mohawk."

"Oh man! Get over it! It's just a pencil!"

Protector of Silence

Chapter Thirty-Five - The calm before the storm

May 10th. Despite the freezing grip of winter just a couple of months ago, the spring weather was swelteringly hot. Nick blamed global warming. Keith blamed the unfairness of life forcing them to remain indoors on a sunny day.

As you could imagine, the heat driving them inside had officially bored Keith. Several people had retreated to the library to study or were hanging around in the dorms after class, but Kate and Kellyn were reading some fiction novels in the common room. Or, trying to at least.

"I'm serious, what's a keet?!" Keith complained, flopping down on one of the armrests of the sofa Kellyn was sitting on. "Kincaid called me an annoying little keet this morning, and I need to know what it is so I can call him something as equally insulting back!" Kellyn sideways glared at him.

Reading he signed Leave

"Weeeeell" Keith leaned over to look at book Kellyn was reading "Whatcha reading?" Kellyn awkwardly and rather grumpily shuffled away further down the sofa away from Keith.

"It's a fantasy novel" Kate stated, not even looking up from her own book "And a very good one at that. You wouldn't get it, Dazuru."

"You're right, I don't get it. What's so amazing about fantasy books?" Keith muttered "Take Harry Potter for instance. It doesn't even make any sense!" This comment earned him a glare.

"Oh, so now you actually listen to me…" Keith grunted.

The only people who don't like fantasy are the ones without imagination

Keith suppressed a grin at the attention he was getting. "Ouch. Getting defensive about a certain wizard who isn't magical enough to fix his eyesight?"

Kellyn sighed and pushed Keith off the sofa as roughly as possible. Kate giggled at the display.

"Hey!"

Serves you right

This indignant comeback forced Keith to look for attention elsewhere. In the meantime, Luna trotted into the common room from up the stairs, miraculously not being spotted by any teachers or students along the way. She jumped up onto the sofa with a small whine and curled up next to Kellyn, her front paws and lowered head on his thigh.

'Heya' he smiled down at her 'You get bored of playing with Shadow?'

"He and Starlight had to go somewhere" she yawned "And it's too hot to do anything." Her eyes closed as she started to doze. Kellyn tickled her behind her ear before returning to his book. Across the common room, at one of the tables, Verity punched a few more numbers into her calculator.

'I wonder where everyone else is' Kellyn couldn't help but think. His eyes suddenly widened as he stared at the page. 'Max's dead?! WHAT?! NOOOOOOOOO!'

"Hmm… I think I'm going to grow a mohawk" Liam decided, a hand-held mirror in one hand, running his other hand over his buzz-cut. Some people in the library shushed him. Nick, who was reading up on Water Pokémon Biology, was one of them.

"What?" Sami looked up from her Nintendo at him "Why did you suddenly decide that you want a mohawk?" Liam paused, biting the corner of his lip in thought.

"…I dunno. Maybe because by shaving off all my hair, you've opened me up to brand-new experiences. Hair-styling experiences."

"I'm surrounded by idiots" mumbled Sami, returning to her Zoo Tycoon game. She grimaced as she saw how much money she had left and quickly sold the pizza stand. Some little people on the screen almost seemed to look up at her as if to say 'Oi! I was queuing for that!'

"What did I do?" Nick asked from his seat across the table "I didn't do anything yet."

"There you have it - yet. Your words, not mine."

Nick rolled his eyes, but leaned back in his chair, returning to his textbook.

"Dammit!" Sami hissed as the little notice informed her African Lion 2 had just had another cub. The other people in the library shushed her and shook their heads, but they didn't understand the dire situation. She was gonna have to expand the African Lion cage at this rate, and that would mean getting rid of her aviary.

Nick suddenly jerked upright and pulled his book-bag onto his lap. He rummaged through it for a bit, slapping a jotter onto the table, and then frowned deeply.

"Alright, who stole my pencil?" he demanded.

"Hmmm?" Liam and Sami looked up at him.

"Which one?" Liam asked "Don't you have, like, a bunch of them?"

"You know this one - it's the red one with all the Pikachu stickers on it and a Pichu rubber on top" Nick informed him "I swore I had it with me in Biology today..." Nick paused for nearly a minute, before he turned to glare at Liam. Sami noticed this and decided to glare at Liam too, but she wasn't sure why - she was just glaring at Liam because it gave her some self-satisfaction.

"What?" the blond looked at them both curiously.

"That's Rhythmi's mirror" Nick stated. Liam shrugged. "So what did you trade for it?" For Sami, the pin dropped.

"Liam..." she uttered a low growl.

"What?! I didn't take it! Honest!" Liam insisted, briefly lowering the mirror.

"Oh please, Liam!" Sami rolled her eyes "You wouldn't know honesty if I tied you up and smacked you with it!" Nick's eyes lit up with hope and he jumped to his feet.

"Alright then!" he grinned "You tie him up, I'll go find some honesty!" Liam rolled his eyes.

"Oh ha ha! Very funny!" he grumbled, returning his gaze to the stupid mirror.

The door blew open suddenly, causing everyone in the library to look up from their previous activities. In a whirl of black and green, Tamie whirled into the library, slamming the door behind her and leaning against it to keep it closed. She was panting heavily, as white as a sheet.

"Dare I ask?" Isaac asked, peering his head from around the bookshelf he was sitting behind. Tamie stared at them all, grey eyes wide with fear.

"If Becs comes in here, do not let her find me!" she yelped. Immediately, she bounded across the library over to a bookshelf with a tree-shaped cut-out stuck to the front of it. She scampered up to the top of the bookshelf, hiding as much as she could behind the 'leafy' top of the tree.

"Well...that was random" Sami blinked.

"No, that was normal" Nick grumbled as he sat down again, rolling his eyes as they returned to the page of his textbook since he couldn't take notes without his awesome pencil. Sami returned back to her game, but had only stared at it for a few seconds before:

"ARGH! Dammit!"

"Shhhhhh!" Nick and Isaac both hissed.

"Sorry!" Sami hissed back. One of her elephants had broken through the cage and was running rampant.

"Okay guys, seriously" Nick folded his arms, tapping his foot against the floor "Where's my pencil?"

"Your superbly awesome pencil?" Liam enquired.

"Yes, Liam" Nick sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose "That pencil. Now where is it?!"

"I...I can't tell you" Liam hung his head.

Nick pressed his lips into a tight line. "And why is this?"

"I lost it."

"Where?"

"I dunno - I lost it."

Cars were parked everywhere in the car park for the show. Ducking down to avoid the spotlights, Jesse, Jim and Alexis crept from car to car, slowly towards the tanker that hid the showground from view. As they darted behind a pickup truck only about twenty metres away from the tanker, they heard the megaphone sounding again, but couldn't make out what it was saying.

"Who's voice is that?" Alexis asked in a whisper.

"I don't know" Jesse whispered back, moving to peer around the edge of the truck but freezing as the spotlight whizzed past them. They paused for a few seconds, listening and trying to understand.

"I think we should go back" Jim decided, crawling back a few steps.

"No! Wait!" Jesse hissed, grabbing a hold of his wrist "We have to get a better looked before we leave."

"Better look!" Jim whispered incredulously, staring at Jesse as if he'd grown a second head - blue hair and all. "Better looked at what Jess?! Let's go!"

"One of us has to get closer before we go, we have to see what's going on!" Jesse insisted.

"Well I'm not leaving Lexie here" Jim decided immediately. Jesse looked at him, then the tanker. He took a few deep breaths before nodding.

"I'll go" he agreed. He ducked out of sight and scramble out into the aisle towards the tanker.

"Jesse no!" Alexis hissed, grabbing the hem of her friend's jacket. Jesse looked back at them, his emerald eyes hard with a grown-up superiority they'd only ever seen in him before a handful of times.

"If anything happens, run!" he told them in a low whisper.

He then dashed along the aisle until he reached the unguarded strip of land before the tanker. A spotlight flickered across it before continuing its round. Jesse took a few deep breaths, waiting for the spotlight to go by again, and then legged it. Seconds before the spotlight flickered across the path again, Jesse flattened himself against the side of the tanker, out of sight. Alexis and Jim watched him stay there for a moment before bending down and sliding underneath the tanker. Then, for a few seconds, he just lay there, unmoving.

"What's he doing?" Alexis asked, both nervously and urgently. Jim shrugged. Then both nearly died of shock as they made out part of the megaphone speech, and it wasn't good.

"Please follow orders, or you will be shot."

The two of them stared at each other in shock. What in the world was going on? Alexis then almost screamed as she heard loud voices, then a gunshot, followed by people screaming.

Jesse suddenly stood up and bolted towards them.

"Jesse!" Jim bellowed across the car park in what he later considered to be a stupid move "Stop! You'll be spotted!" The spotlight then washed over Jesse, illuminating his pale face and emerald eyes for all to see. Jim and Alexis weren't sure where from, but they heard gunfire. Jesse bolted towards them, throwing himself behind the pickup truck as a car nearby them exploded with a rush of burning air.

"Run!" he yelped. The three of them, ducking down to avoid the gunfire, dashed in the direction of the exit to the car park. They were pretty close to the exit when the car behind them exploded. Alexis shrieked and cowered behind the nearest car, Jesse throwing himself back to join her as a bullet zipped through a car door a few inches from his head.

"You okay?" he asked though pants of fear and exhaustion.

"Yeah!" Alexis as panting hard too "Where's Jim?" Jesse looked around. He couldn't see that cowboy hat or bandaged face anywhere.

'Please don't be dead' he prayed silently "He's probably gone ahead!" Alexis nodded, wanting to believe him. They heard the sound of engines starting and driving somewhere.

"Come on!" Jesse cried, grabbing Alexis' wrist and dragging her along "They're coming! They're coming!"

"Kate! You're reading aloud again!"

"Oops! Sorry Verity!"

"Moron."

"What?" Liam looked away from his own 'dazzling' reflection to look at Nick. The freckled brunet was scribbling notes in his jotter with a pencil he had borrowed from the pot in Miss April's classroom - a pink pencil.

"If it wasn't for your excessive need to look at yourself so much, I would have my old favourite pencil back instead of this pink monstrosity!" he seethed.

"Oh man! Get over it! It's just a pencil!" Liam groaned. 'A rather cool pencil though.' his thoughts added. "Besides, pink isn't that bad a colour."

"Pink's such a girly colour" Nick grunted. Sami let out a yowl of anger, surprising the brunet enough to make him apologise: "Sorry, Sami. I didn't know pink was your favourite colour."

"It isn't - it's orange" Sami sighed, still not looking up from her Nintendo though "And I wasn't growling at you. I was complaining because my chimpanzees are unhappy with their new enclosure."

"Oh" Nick nodded, then turned to Liam, who was spinning in his swivel chair that he had nicked from the computer. "Well, what's your favourite colour Liam?"

"LASAGNE!"

"Lasagne?" Nick stared at the blond in confusion. Liam was staring into that darn mirror, his face positively lit up. "Liam, lasagne's not a colour."

"Huh?" Liam turned to look at him now, at little strangely "Nick, lasagne's not a colour! Geez, even I know that! I mean, I know cos it's on the menu for dinner tonight!" Nick facepalmed and stood up.

"That's enough randomness for me" he grunted "If you need me, I'll be with Kaplan and Claire." He then stalked out of the library, slamming the door after him. Liam shrugged and returned to staring at his own vanity. Sami continued cursing her massively reproducing lions.

Half-an-hour later, Liam had finally finished staring at his own reflection and was getting bored. His feet propped up on Nick's chair under the table, he folded his hands over his stomach lazily looked around the library for something to do. His eyes finally settled on Sami, who was concentratingreally hard on her Nintendo game.

"So, what are you doing over the Summer holidays, Sami?" he asked. Said brunette raised an eyebrow at him.

"Summer holidays? Seriously?" she asked "It's May!" Liam shrugged.

"Well, better now than never" he told her. When she didn't reply, he decided to go first instead. "Alright, I'll go first. Well, I'm going back home to Kanto - where I relaxing on the Seafoam Islands resort for as long as the days can last! I swear after all this work I'm not going to lift a finger all summer!"

Sami rolled her eyes. "Of course you wouldn't. That's what you're like all the time."

"...okay, I guess I should've seen that coming" Liam sighed. When Sami still wouldn't give him attention, he asked in an overly-exaggerated tone: "So, what're you doing over the break Sami?"

The brunette finally looked up at him, making his grin in satisfaction at the attention. But he was bitterly disappointed when a second later she turned her head back to her Nintendo and muttered:

"My cousins are visiting."

"Oh. Cool" Liam shrugged. After a few awkward seconds of silence (or, for Liam, HOURS!), he inquired: "Soooooo, what are you planning on doing with them?" Sami looked up form her game, her gaze in the corner of the room, biting the inside of her mouth in contemplation.

"Well, first I plan on getting them hopelessly lost in the woods. Then I'll rig their bedroom doors to set off the alarm every time they open them. Then I'll throw more or one of them off the waterfall behind the farm. Then I'll swap their trousers for long johns..."

"Okay, I give. Seriously, what's up with it?"

Kellyn looked up from his book yet again. Keith was back, and pointing at the Luxray sleeping at Kellyn's feet. Actually it was acting as some sort of footstool, but the Luxray hadn't woken up or complained about it so Kellyn was making the most of it.

It is called Sparks

"Wonderful, and?" Keith pressed. Kate also looked up to see what the commotion was about.

And he saved my life

"Why does that not surprise me" Keith sighed, shaking his head. Kellyn sent him a disapproving glare.

He was a prisoner of Hunter J. I saw him being captured as a Shinx. Someone freed him and he found me whilst running away

"And it's now got attached to you?" Keith finished. Kellyn shrugged and the ginger pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to look more mature than he actually was. "Yeah, I forgot. Even since Luna got here, 'Ranger School' has just been a code word for 'Homeless Shelter'. OW!" The complaint was yelped as Keith was hit in the side of the head with a cushion tossed by the other ginger in the room.

"Oh shut up and go make a mud pie or something!" Kate scolded him, returning to her book. Upon seeing Kellyn had also returned to said activity, Keith snorted and strode off into the boys' dorm.

The annoyance gone, Kate looked up again, this time at Kellyn.

"Do you think Lunick sent him?" she asked in a whisper. Kellyn looked over his shoulder to make sure Verity still had her earplugs in before shrugging.

The conversation was interrupted as the door of the girls' dorm was thrown open with enough power to cause a seismic earthquake. Becs stood there, glowering, hate in her chocolate-button eyes.

"Where's Tamie?!" she demanded. Everyone shrugged with Verity giving a:

"I dunno."

Peeved, Becs stormed off down the stairs, resembling a rampaging Regigigas far too much. Once normality had sunk over the common room, Kate returned to the previous conversation.

"You're lucky" she told Kellyn "You have so many people watching out for you." Kellyn didn't reply in any way, but the smile of his face was enough to tell Kate he was grateful. And although she would never admit this, Kate found that smile to be one of the most adorable things in the world.

"...and then I'll throw them in the pantry and wait to see how long it'll take them before they scream and wet their undies."

Sami finished her little list of a speech by frowning at the Nintendo screen. She had just restored the pizza stand, but for some reason the peoples who had been standing in that space hadn't been moved. They were sort of under the stand and expected to walk out on their own. Weird game mechanics.

Liam meanwhile just stared at her wide-eyed.

"If that's your hospitality, I don't wanna see you kicking someone out!" he gulped.

Sami blew a raspberry. "Liam, definition of hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were."

Again the door slammed open, but this time so hard the handle actually dented the plaster wall. Becs stood there in the doorway, resembling an angry Rottweiler.

"WHERE IS SHE?!" she seethed. Immediately Isaac shushed her. She rolled her eyes and repeated her previous demand in a whisper. Following the agreement Tamie had asked of them, they all shrugged. Becs' eyes immediately moved to the 'treetop' where Tamie was hiding.

"How dare you!" Becs roared, no longer bothering to whisper, marching towards the bookcase Tamie was hiding on top of. "And what the heck are you doing in a tree?!"

Isaac groaned, holding his head in his hands behind his massive stack of books! "I think they've defeated the purpose of the word 'library'."

So you've really got no plans for the hols?

Kate glanced at the message before re-folding it back into a paper aeroplane and sending it flying into the recycling bin by the styler recharger.

"No" she shook her head, darting her gaze between her book and Kellyn, who was now sitting on the floor and running his hand through Sparks' fur. "I mean, I've got to help Percy with Sorrel's birthday party, but other than that I have no idea." She transferred her gaze to Kellyn fully. "What about you?"

Half a minute later, another paper aeroplane came her way. She unfolded it, read it and then sent it on it's way to the recycling bin.

I think Mum wants me to hang out more with Melissa. She wants to be a ranger too

"I see" Kate nodded her head. She paused to think of how to phrase this next question. "Were you ever...close to her? Or to anyone in your foster family?" Kellyn looked thoughtful for a least a minute before sending another paper aeroplane.

I don't think so. I mean, they're like a second family - but I never wanted to hang around with them like a regular son would with his family

Kate didn't reply to this, just sent the paper towards the recycling bin again. Unfortunately, this time she missed.

"Ow!" Keith helped, grabbing his forehead where the aeroplane had just hit him "Who's throwing planes?!"

"Sorry Keith" Kate apologised, returning to her book afterwards "I just asked Kelly he was doing in the Summer Holidays."

Kellyn frowned in disapproval at the nickname before turning to Keith and (because he didn't think Keith would appreciate any more plane aeroplanes) signed:

What about you?

"Me? Well, I'm going back to Saffron City to see Lind" Keith tapped his chin "And then, I wanna board the train to Goldenrod and visit the radio tower!"

"What?!" Kate squeaked, looking up at Keith in alarm. Kellyn did too.

"Is he nuts?" That was Sparks, his head raised slightly and acid-green eyes half-open. Luna was still asleep on the sofa.

"What what?" Keith blinked "What's wrong with Goldenrod?"

He not hear about Team Rocket? Kellyn signed, his back to Keith. Kate shook her head and returned to her book. A few seconds later, Kellyn returned to his prior activity too.

"I don't get it, what's so bad about Goldenrod?" Keith blinked. Kate rolled her eyes, not looking up.

"Keith, there's this show that comes on every evening at six" she grumbled "I was wondering if you'd ever seen it before. It's called the news."

"Ohhhh! That show!" Keith's eyes widened as realisation spread across his features, looking very proud of himself. "Yeah, I've seen that before!" He then frowned in concentration. "I think...which one is it again?" Kate sighed in exasperation.

"It's the one where they begin with 'Good evening' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't" Verity called over from table where she was doing homework. Keith's eyes widened.

"Oh! I know that one!" he grinned "I saw it once."

"Just once?!" Kate stared at him "Seriously?!" Kellyn wrote a note and sent it across the common room as a paper aeroplane again.

What were you expecting, really?

Kate giggled and nodded. Keith looked between the two of them, confused.

"Okay guys, stop flirting and tell me what you're saying about me" He folded his arms. Kate and Kellyn stared at him in something akin to horror before looking away from each other and blushing furiously. They all looked up though as Starlight burst into the common room in a whirl of pants and sweat, Shadow right behind him.

"Starlight? What's the matter?" Kate asked, now over her little embarrassed moment. Starlight was panting so hard it took him four attempts to get the words out.

"Come quickly! There's something I need to show you!"