Can somebody give me a basic summary of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
Danny banged on Sam's door. "WAKE UP SAM! IT'S ALMOST SIX! YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE!"
He was answered by an even louder yell. "ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! I'M UP!" Danny smirked and waited for her. Sam stumbled out of her room with bags under her eyes. "I hate you."
Danny smiled and shrugged. "It's not me. We need to head to the field or we're going to be late." They ran down the hallways to the field, with Sam grumbling the whole time.
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Danny was tired and sweaty. They had run ten laps around the field, and he could not remember ever being in such pain. And what made it even worse was having Sam lap him when she was half asleep. "How can you run that fast? You're not even fazed!" They were walking to the breakfast hall. Tucker was grumbling and glaring at the back of Sam's head. She had been right. Even though she was a vegetarian she had run laps around him.
Sam shrugged and yawned. "I run fast. I need food." Danny rolled his eyes and groaned. The dining hall was piled with food, but not yummy sugar filled stuff. Oh no. The Academy expected them to eat oatmeal. Sam looked at it in dismay. "I think I may cry." She said in a dry voice. Danny nodded.
After their fabulous breakfast, the Commander made an announcement. 'Students, today is your first day of real training. Because of your range in abilities you will be split up into different learning spaces. Follow me." The Commander walked out of the hall. Everybody fell into single file line behind him and nobody talked. The Commander just had that effect on people. Ghizima lead the students down about four flights of stairs. (Lexish whispered, "Haven't they caused our legs enough damage?") At the very bottom, they entered a cavern. On sight, it was clear whom it was for.
The cavern was basically a cave. There was a waterfall on the far side next to a flight of stairs that lead all the way up. There were ledges surrounding the pool. The pool itself was about a mile long and looked to be very deep.
The Commander continued. "Anna, you will be training here with Allison. She will be arriving in a minute or two." Anna dutifully stepped out of line. "Mitchell, this week you will be in this room training with Allison and Anna. Next week, we will assign you a different training area." Mitchell stumbled out of line, clearly exhausted. Maria snickered, but nobody else had the energy to react.
As the group headed up the stairs the heard Anna shriek, "YES!" And a large splash.
The group trudged back up the flight of stairs, minus two members. The Commander this time led them to a room that looked a lot like a gym, but had been painted all white. There was some exercise equipment in the corner. The Commander turned to the group again. "Maria, Lexish, Ethan and Gavin will be working here. You will be working with Zach and Amy who will also show up in a few minutes." The group trooped into the room.
They heard Maria say with fear, "What's with the barbells?" The group headed to another pair of stairs. This time, however, they only climbed down two flights.
The Commander opened a door to a room filled with every kind of rock and stone imaginable. Jewels and metals littered the floor. Hillary walked in as if in a daze. "Hillary, you will work here. Susan will be supervising you. We figured all you needed was more rocks to work with." Hillary nodded without taking her eyes off the treasure in front of her.
The group soldiered back up the stairs and onto the field. "All right, who do we have left?" The group lined up in front of him. Sam, Danny and Tucker were left. "Students, Amy is working on a project presently, so today you are without an instructor. Your goal is to find the extent of each of your powers. Today, your goal is to help Miss Manson here to avoid another incident." Sam hung her head and blushed. "I trust you will behave yourselves, or consequences will be dire." With that, the Commander turned and walked off the field.
The three looked at each other. "Okay." Danny said. "Sam, do you want to practice flying?"
Sam shook her head and took a step back. "I can't. The only time I ever do is by accident."
Tucker raised an eyebrow. He then turned to Danny. "Why don't you fly her up in the air and help her?" He said. "I'll watch from the ground."
Danny grabbed Sam around the waist. Before she could protest, they were thirty feet in the air. Danny said. "Do you recognize the feeling?" Sam nodded, but continued to stare at the ground below with horror. Danny noticed this and said, "Close your eyes." Sam did so, but she became only slightly calmer. It was then Danny dropped her.
Sam let out a piercing shriek. She threw out her hands and was able to stop herself before she fell more than five feet. Sam turned to Danny, looking enraged. She spat out, "You. Are. So. DEAD!" Sam then shot up to Danny's level. Danny's eyes widened and he fled, with Sam following close behind. On the ground, Tucker was laughing hysterically. Sam finally caught up to Danny and grabbed his arm. "You're going down ghostboy." She said.
Danny smiled. "Well, at least you're flying." Sam looked at the ground and yelped. She started to fall again, but this time she saved herself in quite a different way.
Now some writers use the term, "the ground came up to meet me." That does not mean the ground walked over and shook your hand. That means you fell so fast, it had the appearance that the ground was falling towards you, instead of the other way around. (Sorry. I'm feeling a little Lemony Snicket-ish.) In Sam's case, however this term was applied literally. Sam actually subconsciously pulled the ground up twenty feet to meet her.
Sam got up and looked around. The entire field was twenty feet higher than it should have been. Danny slowly lowered himself down to the newly risen ground, looking at Sam. "What?" Sam snapped.
Danny got look off his face quickly. "Nothing."
Tucker marched over to them. "Do you do this all the time?" He exclaimed.
Sam shrugged. "Kind of. I actually flooded my school once, but other than that, no." Sam frowned and ran a hand over her necklace. Instead of it's usual cheery tinkle, the noise it made sounded dull. Sam's frown deepened.
Tucker sighed. "Well, fine. But can you get us down please."
Sam shrugged. "I don't know. I've never un-did anything I've done before."
Tucker looked at her incredulously. "You mean you've let everybody else pick up after you?" Sam blushed and looked ashamed. Danny gave Tucker a reproachful look. Tucker said, "What?"
Danny sighed and shook his head. Then he got an idea. Sam continued to examine her necklace. Danny turned invisible, grabbed her shoulder and said, "Boo!" Sam was in such deep concentration, se screamed when Danny did this. But another effect was that she lost whatever concentration she had keeping the ground up and it flew down twenty feet underneath them. The three tumbled through the air and landed hard in sprawled positions on the ground.
Tucker was the first to get up, as he was un-bruised and unaffected from the fall. "Sam, forgive me if this offends you, but I really hate your powers."
Sam nodded. "Me too, Tucker." They all got up and brushed themselves off. Sam, like Tucker was not affected from the fall. Danny was covered in bruises and dirt, but it didn't look like he had broken anything. He glared at them jealously. Tucker and Sam exchanged a look and looked away quickly so as to avoid laughing hysterically.
"Okay." Tucker said in a slightly strained voice. "Now what?"
"How about we get Sam to work on earth?" Danny said. "I mean, that's kind of the area she does the most damage in." Sam blushed. The group headed over to a particularly large boulder. "Okay. Try to shape it." Danny said. When Sam looked at him quizzically, he said, "Do the same think to it that you do with water."
Sam sighed and took a deep breath. She put out her hands and concentrated on forming something. When she heard Tucker and Danny snicker, she opened her eyes. Nothing had happened. She blushed.
Danny walked over again. "Sam, I really don't know anything about this, but why don't you try to made it more moldable first." Sam nodded.
Once again, Sam held out her arms and tried to concentrate. But his time, instead of thinking about a shape, she thought about heat. Lots and lots of heat. Volcanic rock, molten lava, surface of the sun kind of heat. She thought she could even feel some heat on her face and she smiled. When the heat against her face became nearly unbearable, she peeked through her eyelashes. The rock was nearly white with heat.
The peek broke her concentration. The rock collapsed into a puddle of lava that was spreading out over the ground towards her. Sam shrieked and jumped back. Danny and Tucker had already climbed up different boulders. "SAM!" Danny yelled. "MOLD IT!"
Sam screwed her eyes shut and tried to think of a shape, any shape. The first thing that came to mind was a bubble. So she applied her picture of a bubble to the pool of molten rock and concentrated. After a while, the heat on her face cooled and she opened her eyes.
In front of Sam was a huge bubble. It was a vast ball that they could see through and looked a little like speckled glass. The bubble had a black sheen to it, like finely cut obsidian. Danny and Tucker came up beside her. Tucker turned to her, "Congratulations! That was your first piece of artwork you did on purpose! Take a bow!"
Sam mimed a fancy bow. "Merci, Merci, bon messieurs."(Thank you, Thank you, good sirs) Danny and Tucker laughed.
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Sam and Tucker laid sprawled out on the ground Danny had been practicing his powers for the last two hours and they were all tired and hungry. Sam finally got up. "I don't know about you guys, but if I don't eat soon, I'm going to hurt somebody." Both boys readily agreed to search for food.
When they found the dining hall, it was empty, except for dirty dishes. Sam was so mad; she caused the metal cutlery started shuddering on the table. Danny grabbed her hand and got her to calm down. Tucker walked to the far end of the hall to a doorway with a sign saying, 'kitchen'. He poked his head inside.
Inside the kitchen was a very tall man with black hair, cleaning up from lunch. When he turned around he saw Tucker. "Hey. What are you doing in here?" He said, kindly.
"Do you think we could have something to eat? We didn't get lunch." At this tie, Danny and Sam were behind him and they walked into the kitchen.
The guy looked puzzled. "Your instructor was supposed to bring you over here at eleven thirty for lunch."
Sam, Danny and Tucker groaned. "We didn't have an instructor today." Sam said. "We've been working by ourselves, and nobody told us about lunch at eleven thirty."
The guy smiled. "I can make sandwiches. Do you want those?"
"PLEASE!" Sam said. The guy laughed.
"Okay. Pull up chairs around the counter. By the way, I'm Dylan." The three obliged. "Okay. One Peanut butter and banana, one tofu with mayonnaise and one salami, turkey and chicken." The kid's mouth dropped open.
Danny gulped. "How did you do that?" He said.
Dylan laughed. "It's my power. When I look at someone, or someone's name, I can instantly tell what their favorite foods are. It's kind of specific, but I've worked at high-paying restaurants before. It can be very useful."
"Then why did you serve oatmeal for breakfast?" Sam asked.
"Because oatmeal fills you with energy and is extremely good for you." Dylan said. Sam stuck her tongue out at him when his back was turned. Danny and Tucker tried not to laugh. Dylan served up the sandwiches and dug in hungrily.
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"Guys, can we go back to the dorms? I really want to get my PDA." Danny and Sam mumbled around the apples in their mouth what Tucker took to be a yes. He quickly retrieved the small metal object, whispering to it, "I missed you so much."
"You know, Tuck." Sam said with her eyebrow raised. "I don't think you should really make fun of me when your power is Tech-geek to an extreme level." Danny snorted. Tuck just blushed.
They headed out to the fields. Tucker tapped away at his PDA the whole time, not even glancing up to turn corners. Danny inquired, "So, is that your weapon or something?"
"Yeah. I've been training it since I was in third grade." Tucker opened the doors to the outside without looking up.
"TRAINING IT?" Danny and Sam exchanged looks of horror.
This made Tucker look up. "Yeah. I mean, Sam you make Elements respond to you and Danny makes ghosts respond to him, right?" They nodded. "Well, with me, I make technology respond. I'm fluent in all computer languages and I can extract any information from a computer."
Sam didn't really believe him. "You can't be serious. You can hack into anything?"
"Yep."
Sam crossed her arms and smirked. "Hack into the security computer at my house."
Tucker shrugged. "Fine. So your name is Manson, right? No weird spelling?" Sam nodded slowly. Tucker typed incredibly fast and showed her the PDA. On the screen was a live feed of her mother reading in the library while Minnet, the maid cleaned. She was speechless. Tuck continued. "You must be loaded. I came up with about five hits and they all have the same feed."
Sam's eyes widened. "You can't be serious. The only security computers are in the attic of my house. That would mean somebody's…been spying on us." She ran until she was hovering over Tuckers shoulder. "Where is that feed from?"
Tucker pressed a few buttons. He read off the screen. "Vlad Master's Super Secret Home Computer." Tucker laughed. "Man, he's whack."
Danny started at the name. "Did you say Vlad Masters?"
Tucker nodded. "Yeah, why?"
"I know him! Why would he have live feeds from Sam's house?" Danny walked until he was beside Tucker, too. "Can you get the other video files?" Tucker nodded and tapped away furiously. A list popped up.
"Whoa." Tucker said, eyes wide. "Check this out."
The list read:
Academy Students
Badgerhome
Gothhome
Tech No longer valid
Moodswinghome
Swimbeach
Gemhome
ShapeShiftbschool
Bookieorphanage
Hypnohome
Brainhome
Psyche-training
Water-works
Cavegirl
Musketeers
The three stood in shock. Tucker whispered. "Sam, yours was under 'Gothhome'. 'Tech' must be me, because I don't have a home. Danny, what do you think you are?"
"Badger." Danny said. He was frightened by the implications of this information. "He calls me badger."
Tucker clicked on 'Badgerhome'. A picture of Danny's kitchen popped up. Danny's mom was cooking what looked like ectoplasm eggs. Danny's insides squirmed as he recognized the familiar setting. "That's my house." Danny whispered.
Tucker silently scrolled down the list. He stopped at 'Psyche-training' and click on it. A picture of the gym where they'd dropped off Maria, Lexish, Ethan and Gavin appeared. Maria and Ethan were sitting back to back and concentrating. Lexish and Gavin wee lifting weights and looked exhausted. The group around the PDA felt chills.
Sam gestured at the screen. "'Cavegirl' must be Hillary. 'Water-works' is Anna and Mitchell. So that means 'Musketeers' is…" She let the sentence hang. Tucker clicked on 'Musketeers'. A video feed of the top of Tucker's head and Sam and Danny's back appeared on screen.
Cliffy! Who's freaked out? AHAHAH! I am omnipotent! I decree when this shall be updated!
Run away from the people holding pointy things!