Chapter 55: A Prelude of Sorts

YES! I was finally able to add in a Linkin Park song to a chapter! And it only took me fifty-five chapters to do it. I'm so proud of myself. *rolls her eyes* It's called Valentine's Day, by the way.

Also, I'm quite glad that people responded well to Pervy!Ben. I kind of knew you would. ;) Though there won't be many resurgences in the near future due to plot related reasons.

As for this chapter, I'm not proud of it. I didn't want to start the next episode after all the drama from last chapter, and this was the result. On the plus side, there are plenty of plot-related tidbits in it. Can you guess where I got the idea from? XD

It was a few days later when Carter could officially receive visitors. Sam and Evan immediately skipped class once they heard the news; Ben would have gone with them but they shooed him away, saying that he had to stay in school and learn.

"So do you," he retorted.

Evan gave a flippant wave of his crutch. "We went a much more advanced school than this Tennyson. We've already learned most of this stuff."

"Besides, we need to give Carter her homework," Sam said. "The sooner she has it the better."

Ben raised an eyebrow. "You could still give her that after school. What's really going on?"

Sam sighed. "I'm tired and I want to skip class."

"Same here," Evan said.

"Yeah, you guys are so convincing."

"Oh, shut up," the two of them said in cadence.

The truth, when it came down to it, was that they really missed their Goth friend. The three of them couldn't be called a trio if one of them was missing. And when inseparable friends were suddenly separated, it felt like they had been ripped apart from each other for no good reason.

And then they heard just who was visiting Carter first and, well, long story short: they needed to go to the hospital yesterday.

After school

Kevin and Gwen were less than impressed when they heard what Evan and Sam did.

"So they skipped school?" Kevin asked. "Wow, they're so bad." He rolled his eyes good naturedly.

Gwen gave him a look. "They shouldn't have skipped at all. They'll get in trouble."

"I don't really think they care Gwen." Ben gave her a sheepish smile as they walked through the halls toward Carter's room. The door was somewhat ajar and they could hear the vague sounds of someone singing with the accompaniment of a guitar.

"My insides all turned to ash, so slow
And blew away as I collapsed, so cold
A black wind took them away, from sight
And held the darkness over day, that night"

The voice itself was small and scratchy. Whoever was singing had obviously not practiced in a while, possibly due to illness. It was easy to tell that the singer was good at her job though. She was able to hit the notes without needing to strain her vocal cords too much, wisely opting to sing in a throaty whisper. No one wanted to know how she hit the high notes though.

Ben slowly pushed the door away. The inside of the room was an odd scene: Sam and Newt were off to the side, kneeling on the ground and arm wrestling on the tiny table. Evan was sitting near Carter's bed, playing an acoustic guitar. Carter herself was on the bed, sitting cross legged, her mouth stretched open to sing.

"And the clouds above move closer
Looking so dissatisfied
But the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing"

Ben stumbled into the room, tripping over his own feet. The strings on the guitar twanged as Evan stopped. Carter closed her mouth and turned to them. Even Newt and Sam stopped their game and looked up.

Carter grimaced. "You weren't supposed to hear that."

"Why not? You were great!" Gwen gushed. "And you're looking better too."

Indeed she was. Carter had lost the gray skin tone, her skin turning back to its normal pallor. Her hair was clean and brushed, and her eyes had their normal steely glint. Ben was rather sorry to see that she was no longer wearing her funny pajamas with the gravestones. Instead she was wearing purple basketball shorts and a black racer-back shirt. It was as if she was trying to show off the bandages around her neck, or rather, she was making it easier for the nurses to examine her wounds. Either way she wasn't dressed like she was a hospital patient.

In fact, Evan was the only one remotely dressed lazy, wearing the same sleeveless green shirt and khaki shorts. His hair was loose and he was still moving around on crutches. Sam had dressed in her normal black miniskirt and her red halter top and matching knee-high lace-up boots. Her hair was no longer brown, back to its usual red, orange, and yellow hues. Newt was still dressed like a punk, with a ripped up black t-shirt with a skull on the front and white sleeves and ripped jeans with a chain attached to the pocket. He hadn't even bothered to dress up for his cousin.

"You never told us you could sing," Kevin said lightly. Carter's eyes flickered to Ben before going back to Kevin.

"It never came up," Carter told him.

"Well, you're good," he complimented her. He held up the flowers he got her. "These are for you."

Carter smiled and took them. "Thank you."

Evan blinked and looked at the small bouquet in her hands. "You want her beheaded?"

Everyone froze before Kevin sputtered out, "No!"

Carter turned to him. "That's not what lilies mean."

Evan raised an eyebrow. "Really? They why don't people send lilies to sick patients then?"

"Because other flowers look better," Sam pointed out.

"And where did you get beheaded?" Gwen asked. "There are other meanings."

"Lilies have meaning?" Kevin arched an eyebrow.

"There's this whole language of flowers," Gwen said dismissively. "Anyway, lilies mean chastity and virtue, not cutting off people's necks."

"And you would know that how?" Ben had to ask.

"Reading."

"What kind of book is that?" he muttered under his breath.

"Where did you get that anyway?" Kevin asked Evan. The boy with the guitar wouldn't answer. Instead he looked at something very interesting at the far wall.

"…You got it from Detective Conan, didn't you?" Newt said slowly. Evan stared even harder at the far wall. Everyone face palmed.

Carter rolled her eyes. "Idiot."

"So when are you getting out?" Ben asked suddenly, trying to steer the conversation somewhere else.

Carter happily leaped on it. "If all goes well, by the end of the week."

"You're going to have so much homework," Sam teased. Carter groaned and eyed the backpack leaning against the bed. She kicked it sending the entire thing headfirst onto the floor.

"Go away," she moaned, burying her face in her hands.

"No! The evil homework monster is going to haunt you forever!" Newt said in a spooky voice, his voice trembling up and down, his shoulders hunched, his fingers curled into claws. Carter threw her pillow at him.

"So, has there been anything else on the alien front?" Sam asked, turning serious.

Ben shook his head. "Everything's been quiet. How're things on your end?"

"We've been patching things up, but the recent attack was a serious blow," Carter explained. "We don't know if we'll have enough manpower for the invasion."

"Of course we will," Newt scoffed. "We're Slayers."

"I'm just hoping the invasion itself doesn't start in the next few weeks," Evan admitted. "We may have the manpower but not the weapons. We need to upgrade."

"Uh, dude, we don't upgrade our weapons," Newt pointed out. "We just reuse old ones and tack on a bunch of new gadgets."

"Isn't that technically what upgrading is?" Carter mused. "Tacking new apps onto old machines, that is."

Everyone had to think about that for a minute. Ben eventually just shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever. We'll still kick High Breed ass. Hey, what happened to Count Fluffula?" Every turned to look at him like he was crazy.

"Who is Count Fluffula?" Gwen asked, screwing up her face.

"The king of all vampires," Carter stated an innocent look on her face.

Kevin looked at her. "That's Dracula."

She glared at him and put her hand under the blanket. With a lightning fast flick she threw the stuffed cat at Kevin, startling him.

"GAH!" He slapped the winged thing out of the air. It bounced off the wall and fell into Gwen's hands.

"Run! It's after virgin blood!" Carter yelled out hopping out of bed. She and Ben gave theatric screams and ran out the room, leaving many a confused person in the room.

Gwen looked at the fanged toy in her hands and said, "The fuck just happened?"

Later that day

Newt was back in Isaac's study, sitting behind his desk. He flipped through the ancient leather-bound book that happened to be open. The pages were old and crinkly, the black ink aged and somewhat faded. Every Latin word was in Isaac's loopy handwriting. There were even sketches dotting the pages, some small and taking up a small corner of a page, others large and filling up half the space.

Newt idly flipped through the sheets, only stopping once he got a glance at a few particular sketches. One was an alchemical sigil that he didn't recognize, but since he never actually went very far with his studies he didn't bother examining it further. What piqued his interest instead were the four lifelike drawings at the bottom of the page. The anatomical sketches were of people, two men, two women, two adult and two children.

This struck Newt as odd. While he didn't have much in the way of alchemical knowledge, he still remembered from his lessons that people shouldn't be involved directly in a transmutation. Yes they could draw the circle and sigil inside it, put the raw materials inside it, and command the spell to work, but that was it. No person was supposed to put themselves inside the circle. It was strictly taboo.

Newt took a look at the text Isaac had written out. The Latin words seemed like the older version, the language the Immortals used before founding Rome. At that point the language became the bastardized medley the world knew today. Many of the words were similar, but it was like reading Shakespeare; it was nearly impossible to tell what the author meant unless there was an interpreter nearby. Newt would have settled for page notes at the bottom, like with the Shakespeare stories at school.

Frustrated he turned back to the drawings and saw something he had missed earlier. How he did though was beyond him. He took a better look at the adult male and female sketches and saw funny markings on their arms and legs. They looked vaguely like scales, though they were too tiny to tell what kind of scales they were. Newt turned to the children to see if they had the same markings. No, but there was something off with their eyes, something easily missed. They were unusually sharp, their eyelids drawn with heavy kohl, their pupils too large for their irises.

Newt leaned back in Isaac's chair and let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Something was up with his grandfather's work. Isaac was a wizard, a master alchemist. He shouldn't have such illegal writings in his possession. He may be the carrier for the Lyrica gene, but if anyone found out about this book he would be nothing more than a common criminal, doomed to life imprisonment and possibly execution.

Unless… Newt took a better look at the archaic letters written across the page. He had a hard time reading, but he could almost make out a few expressions in the text. Nothing about them said that this funny transmutation circle and human drawings were supposed to be used together. Perhaps this particular set of pages was a warning Isaac thought up to remind himself never to attempt human transmutation.

Newt slumped back into his seat, relieved. If that was true-and it most likely was-then Isaac wasn't in any trouble with Slayer law. Having written and keeping the book would be shady, but it certainly wouldn't be illegal. And while it would be best to simply get rid of the tome, no one was going to storm his house and take it from him.

In the meantime, perhaps it would be best to hide the book. Newt couldn't get rid of it himself; it was still Isaac's property, after all. Newt closed the book, holding the soft red cover in his hands. He opened a drawer and gently put the tome inside. Just as he was closing the hiding spot, he could hear footsteps outside the study room.

Newt immediately kicked his feet up and got out his phone. He pretended to be relaxing in Isaac's seat as the man himself walked through the door. He took a look at his lazy grandson and gave a good natured sigh.

"Newton, please put down your feet," Isaac ordered. "That desk is old and I hate to replace it."

Newt obediently put down his feet and pocketed his phone. He got out of the chair and stretched. "So what are we doing today, boss man?"

"More training," Isaac answered. "But first, tell me: how's your cousin doing?"

Newt looked at him, surprised. "You haven't visited her?"

Isaac shook his head. "Not for the past two days, no. I was busy patching things up in HQ. Cordelia couldn't give me much of an update either."

"She's doing fine. She might get out at the end of the week," Newt said. "How are things underground?"

Isaac sighed. "Not too good, I'm afraid. We lost many a good man in the attack and it's hard to replace them. And upgrading our security hasn't been fun either."

"When was the last time the Bellwood branch was infiltrated?" Newt was afraid of the answer, but he was too curious not to ask.

"Never," Isaac said solemnly. "The only ones that were breached were the Washington D.C., Honolulu, Chicago, and New York branches. Bellwood's too out of the way to be considered a vital point."

Newt slumped back in the chair. "Holy shit."

"Language, Newton," Isaac scolded. "But yes, it is frightening to think about. Especially when you realize that the Bellwood branch's security system wasn't nearly as good as the ones in D.C. and the other three I mentioned. There just never seemed to be any point to upgrade until now."

"Lesson learned, huh?" Newt said sardonically.

Isaac gave a bitter smile. "Lesson learned indeed. Now, the High Breed invasion is coming up soon. We need to schedule in more practice sessions until then. Are you ready?"

Newt closed his eyes. He could see the now murky vision of Gwen in Morningstar's arms, her skin gray and corpselike, and her eyes dull and lifeless. This was soon replaced by a more recent image: his cousin in a hospital bed, IVs strapped to her person, her pale skin grayish. Blood soaked through her bandages, her mouth stretched out in a tortured moan, her eyes bright and feverish after the surgery.

Newt opened his eyes. "Let's do this."

At around the same time…

"You do know I have better things to do right?" Ben complained as he trudged through the halls of the Carmichael mansion. "You know: things like homework to help with my education?"

"I admit, education's important," Phineas began, "but the High Breed invasion is coming up and that really takes more precedence than some report."

"Tell that to my mother," Ben grumbled.

Phineas stopped in his tracks and turned around. "Ben, do you really think you're learning anything in school?"

He gave the older man a look. "Uh, yeah. My parents wouldn't be spending tax dollars on my school if they didn't think I was learning something."

Phineas shook his head. "What you've been taught for the past fifteen years isn't learning. What you're teachers have really been doing is filling your head with facts and telling you that it's teaching. Learning is when you apply the lessons you've been taught to real life situations. Tell me, how can you apply the Trail of Tears into your current life?"

"That was the result of a racist president moving various tribes far away from their homeland without considering their opinion," Ben told him like he should already know this. "There's no way something like that can happen today."

"And is writing a paper about it really going to matter to some kid who can't even comprehend the feelings behind that movement?"

"Excuse me?"

"You said it yourself Ben, the Trail of Tears would never work in today's world. You can't comprehend the racism and the political greed behind the movement because you grew up in a world where racism is considered a bad thing. You can't write an effective report on it because you don't have the mindset to experience it."

"So we shouldn't learn about history to learn from its mistakes?" Ben asked impetuously. "Should we just stay ignorant and let history repeat itself?"

"Oh no, you should definitely learn your facts," Phineas said smoothly. "Learning to not repeat the mistakes of your forefathers is a valuable lesson. I'm just saying that what the world doesn't need is another regurgitated paper written by a kid who couldn't understand what went on behind the scenes."

"So, what you're saying is that I shouldn't write another paper ever?" Ben asked hopefully.

Phineas gave him a sardonic smile. "Sure, if you want to fail." He turned and began to walk again.

"You're very contradictory, you know that?" Ben told him truthfully. The older man just snorted.

Soon enough they arrived before the basement, walking down a dark staircase with very little light filtering through. As always, Ben felt the need to fill the silence.

"So how much time do you think I have to learn all this?" he asked not for the first time.

Phineas thought for a moment. "Not very long. Probably a couple weeks."

"Can I master everything before then?" he asked worriedly.

His grandfather snorted again. "Oh hell no. You've done well, getting this far in the short time we've had, but there's no way you're going to master Ventus's powers by the time the High Breed invade."

"Then why did you say I had to?"

"Call it my naïve hope," Phineas answered. "Besides, even if you haven't mastered it you can still use your powers against the High Breed. You know, as long as they don't know you have them."

"Don't worry they don't," Ben reassured him. "And I gotta admit; this wind power really got me out of a few tough spots."

"That's good," Phineas said before flicking on the lights. The cavern they appeared in was small and covered wall to wall with wine bottles. Disturbed dust quickly settled back down.

"Are you ever going to open any of these bottles?" Ben asked not for the first time.

"I tend to open some of the newer ones for special occasions," Phineas explained. "But the older ones I'm selling. You'd be surprised how many people would pay top dollar for a single bottle of aged wine."

"I seriously doubt it. So are we doing this or what?"

Lightning crackled through the dusty air. Phineas smiled, electricity flowing from his hair, his hands, the very aura around him. A black hole suddenly appeared beneath Ben, dropping him into the time pocket. He screamed as he fell through.

"Let's get dangerous," Phineas said as he fell through the hole himself.

At around the same time…

"Why are we in your house again?" Evan asked out loud.

Sam gave him a look. "I already explained this to you twice."

"But I forgot," he whined.

"Not my fault you're stupid!"

"Why is your house such an anachronism?" Gwen asked to diffuse the tension.

Sam shrugged. "Ask my parents."

Kevin slid down the hallway holding a large box. "Is this what your dad wanted to move?"

"There should be more of those boxes where you found them," Sam said, looking behind him.

"This was the only one," he said.

"But he said there would be more."

"What exactly is in that box?" Gwen asked. "You were really vague about that."

Sam shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, my dad wouldn't tell me."

Evan leaned against the wall, his back hitting it fairly hard. There was a faint hollow noise that resonated throughout the narrow hallway. Evan turned around, studying the wall.

"…What was that?" Gwen asked slowly.

"Sounds like a hidden room," Sam said in a bored tone.

"A hidden room?" Kevin parroted back.

"Yeah, both mine and Carter's houses tend to have those," she explained.

"So this doesn't surprise you."

"Well, after you find so many they just get kind of boring."

"Well, not for me." Evan maneuvered out of the way using his crutches. "Is there a way in?"

Sam walked up against the wall, a hand feeling out the area. She could detect no hinges or thin cracks in it. She knocked on it, making the hollow sounds ring out until she found where they ended.

And then she promptly kicked the wall in, collapsing it and making debris fall everywhere.

Kevin dropped the box as he covered his mouth. Everyone began to cough, waving away the dust as it finally started to settle. When they could finally open their eyes, they saw that Sam was gone. She had already entered the hidden chamber.

The room was small, barely bigger than a closet. It was covered floor to ceiling in blue, a mellow color that soothed the soul. A vent was right in the middle of the ceiling, along with a few tiny shelves that nearly hit Kevin's head when he walked into the room.

"Yeah, this isn't claustrophobic at all," Evan said sarcastically. Gwen's face grew pale and she quickly stepped out back into the hallway. He looked at her.

"You're claustrophobic, aren't you?"

"No!" she said hotly. "I just don't like small, cramped places is all."

"That's what claustrophobia is," Sam pointed out as she further examined the room. "There isn't anything much here," she said after a while. "Whoever used this room probably wanted their privacy."

"Whoever used this room was just here." Kevin took down something from the shelves. It was an old-fashioned pill bottle made with clear, streaky glass. There was a white label in Latin, written in Isaac's loopy handwriting. Sam couldn't really make out the words in the dim lighting, but she could tell that the person who used this last needed prescribed medicine.

"Whoever was in here used this room for a while," Kevin commented as he took down similar pill bottles. Some of the glasses had turned brown from age, the white label yellow and crumbly.

Sam lit her hair on fire and used the aura of light to read the bottle in her hands. It was hard to read Isaac's handwriting, but he could make out a name and a date.

"My grandmother uses this room," she stated, her hair turning back to normal. Everyone turned to her, shocked.

"Lulu uses this room?" Evan asked. "Why?"

Sam took another look around. "It's probably some sort of meditation room. It would explain all the blue."

"But that doesn't explain the medicine," Gwen said from the hallway. "Hey, is there something in there?"

"No, there isn't."

Gwen gave her a disbelieving look. "Bring it out here." Sam handed her the glass and she brought it up to the light. Inside the pill bottle was a tiny speckling; it would have been unnoticeable in the dark. For a second Sam could have sworn that the specks glinted red, a vaguely crimson color before it died back to black.

"…There's something familiar about this," Sam mused quietly, squinting her eyes. "Haven't I seen this somewhere before?"

Evan poked his head out to study the glass. "I kind of remember this too, now that you mention it."

"Like in an old alchemy textbook about…" Sam's eyes widened and she and Evan looked at each other wide eyed.

"The Philosopher's Stone?" they asked themselves, like they couldn't believe the words that were coming out of their own mouths.

"Like in Harry Potter?" Kevin piped up.

Gwen gave them all a look. "Don't jump to conclusions. The Philosopher's Stone doesn't exist." Sam and Evan had the decency to look properly mollified.

"I guess," Evan allowed. "But that stuff does look like some of the examples in the old textbooks," he defended hastily.

"There's no way it can be a coincidence," Sam agreed.

Gwen rolled her eyes. "The Philosopher's Stone is a legend that people used to believe in. There's no way Lucille would be hoarding this stuff away to use it as medicine."

"The Philosopher's Stone has healing properties," Sam pointed out.

She had to give her that. "Even then there's no way Lucille would go through so much of it. It's probably something else. You know; something that isn't out of some movie."

"It's not some movie," Kevin protested. "It's Harry Potter!"

"Whatever." Gwen rolled her eyes. "The point is there's a logical explanation for this. We just need to find it."

"Right, and then when we do find out the truth, you'll see that it is the Elixir of Life," Sam told her pettily.

"And what are the chances of that happening?"

Oh Gwen. If only you knew…

Like I said, I'm not proud of this chapter. It's more of a prelude for what's to come. I don't blame you if you skimmed this, it's really not my best work.