I'm baaaaack. Hello to everyone who isn't completely pissed at me and decided to continue reading this story. I have no real excuse for not updating, I was really just sort of lazy and didn't want to work too hard at this. But lately I've had like no homework, which is surprising since I'm taking four honors classes, so I've come back to the story. And I recently got a laptop for my birthday, so I can now type without worrying about people reading over my shoulder. But school and just having a life might interfere with how much I can actually work on this. There are a lot of personal updates I could give you lovely people, but I'm kind of tired and just want to post this, so I'm not going to say any of them. Here's the chapter, don't own DP, and sorry for any errors or OOCness.
I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could, hoping against hope that anything but the worse would happen. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a felt a faint presence and tried to draw it forward. Then-
"Are you almost done yet?" Tori's voice yelled from where she sat in the car. "I'm getting bored here!"
"Then you should have brought something to do!" Derek yelled back. "It's your fault so shut up."
"Yeah, look at Julie, she's perfectly happy, aren't you?" I said, opening my eyes and glancing at Julie, who was spread out on the ground a few yards away with a book. She just nodded and motioned for us to quit bugging her.
"Go look at some of these things if you're that bored," Derek suggested. Tori made an angry shrieking noise.
"You can't even read them!"
"'James T. Cirk,'" Miles said, examining a headstone near him. "With a 'c.' We're doing this one next!"
"Oh stop being such a Trekkie," Julie said, sounding annoyed.
"Well I can't read them," Tori cried.
"Can we please just lock her in the car?" Derek muttered.
"One more interruption and I'll gag her too," Miles whispered. Derek and I exchanged a look, both thinking of Tori's little gag-and-lock-me-in-a-crawlspace act. "Anyway, go back to working Chloe, you had it. Then after a little talk we'll move onto Cirk."
I smiled slightly before turning my attention back to summoning Jackson Dawson. With only a day and a half left until we were to start our road trip, Miles had decided to finally give me another lesson, in a graveyard. I had told him what happened before, but apparently he thought it didn't matter. I didn't think it would turn out well, but there was no denying I needed to have more control, around bodies at least, so I agreed. Derek, of course, said it was dangerous and reckless and wouldn't let me go without him, but never actually said not to go. He seemed to be thinking the exact same way I was. Then somehow, Claire decided to turn this into a grocery shopping trip as well, and was sent Tori and Julie with us.
After a short conversation with the old cranky Englishman that was Dawson based mostly on our "ridiculous and peasant clothing," Derek, Miles, and I migrated a few graves over to the Cirk guy.
"Oooh, this guy's more recent, 1931," Miles said. The cemetery we were in was old, mostly people who died in the 1800's. Miles had chosen it because if another mishap would happen, the bodies wouldn't really be able to do much since they would be mostly bone, and there would most likely be no one there, which there wasn't. There also hadn't been any mishaps, although it was difficult to summon the spirits and keep them from getting too close to bodies. "You want to try this one without the necklace?"
"No," Derek and I said together. I glared at him, and he quickly said, "Sorry, just agreeing that it's not a good idea."
"Alright then, just do what you were doing before."
I sat down cross-legged and began searching for the spirit of Cirk. I found it, and pulled it towards me until a deep voice said, "Who the hell are you?"
Opening my eyes and looking around, I found a fairly short man about Miles' age standing next to his grave in a suit.
"What's your middle name?" Miles demanded immediately. Cirk just looked confused.
"Uh… Timothy," he said, still confused.
"Damn," was all Miles said. Derek and I laughed.
"See Miles, no one would name anything Tiberius unless they were from a weird future world."
"I had a fish named Tiberius," he muttered, sounding annoyed.
"Well I don't mean to interrupt this obviously important conversation," Cirk said, tapping his foot on the ground. "but I'm still wondering why you people interrupted my perfectly happy afterlife. And why you are asking for my middle name."
"Meet necromancer in training, Chloe," Miles said, gesturing to me. When Cirk continued to look confused, Miles added, "Someone who can communicate with dead people, like myself. And your name is almost identical to a very famous captain."
"A fictional one that captained a spaceship on a TV show," Derek said, still sounding amused. Cirk still seemed perplexed, and Derek added, "Which of course you don't know much about because television only became popular in the U.S. during the late 20's."
"Where the hell do you learn this stuff?" Miles asked, sounding slightly disgusted.
"I read a book about the history of television a few years ago," he said shrugging. Miles just shook him head and looked back at Cirk.
"Anyway, thanks for your time. Now please start screaming every swear word or insult you can think of at this lovely little girl."
"Wait what?" I said, feeling just as confused as Derek and Cirk looked.
"Your problem isn't summoning, it's banishing, and this will help practice banishing under pressure."
"Well I don't like it," Derek said, giving Miles a pissed off look. I reached up and patted his thigh, the highest point I could reach.
"No he's right," I said, then turned back to Cirk. "Go for it." He still looked confused but after a few seconds started a steady stream of insults and curses.
It actually was very distracting. Not as panicky as when there's a re-animated body crawling towards you, but for practicing it worked well. It took me around three minutes to fully banish him, at which point Cirk had to start repeating himself and Miles had to join in and sing whatever song popped into his head in the most annoying voice possible.
"Okay, that actually wasn't bad," Miles said encouragingly. "Obviously it needs to be better when we come across a nice zombie that wants to eat one of us, but with the distractions and all not bad. I completely suck at reanimation as I have said before." He looked at his watch as he stood up. "Okay, Claire wants us back in two hours, so let's say one more guy and we call it a day." I agreed and got up to follow him.
"Well I really enjoyed Miles' singing," Derek said quietly, walking next to me as we trailed behind Miles.
"I seriously think he just made up half the things he sang," I said laughing, and looking up, to see him scratching hard at his neck. "Derek." I reached up and pulled his hand away, just in time to see a muscle jump on his shoulder. Another Change was coming.
"Oh, didn't even realize that," he said seriously, feeling his neck to see if it was bleeding. "This day just keeps getting better."
"At least Claire will probably let you off pre-packing duty, the making of the grocery list alone was a nightmare. Then just fake sick like James has been doing tomorrow and you won't have to do a thing." When he didn't say anything, I glanced at his face to see him deep in thought. "What?"
"Oh, nothing," he said too quickly, looking down and giving me an obviously forced smile.
"You seriously think that's gonna work?" He looked at me seriously.
"I'll tell you later, it's nothing you really need to worry about."
"Okay…"
"Hey!" Miles yelled from the grave he was kneeling by. "Less alive chats, more dead!"
"Seriously, it's nothing that important to either of us, possibly me just over thinking things."
"That's probably more likely," I said jokingly. He looked slightly offended, but I just elbowed him and sat down next to Miles.
The last summoning and banishing went better than the last few. We didn't really waste time with a real conversation, and it only took three minutes from when I start summoning to when the ghost disappeared. We then packed up all our crap and loaded back into the van.
"Okay, Derek and Chloe: cans, foreign foods, breakfast, beverages, and pasta isle. Tori and I have frozen, baking, dairy, meat, fruit, and deli. Then Miles, you have snacks and desserts."
"Yes! I have the fun job!" Miles gloated while taking his list from Julie. We were at the store, having our shopping assignments handed out. There were three lists, each typed, perfectly organized, and to the point of overflowing the page.
"That's only what Mom said to get, you guys can pick up anthing else you want. Meet back by the fruit in around 30 minutes." And with that, we each went our separate ways.
"You still want to know what I was thinking about earlier?" he asked as we made our way to the pop aisle.
"Yup."
"Fine, wait a minute though." He didn't say anything until we had started loading cases of Pepsi onto the cart.
"Okay, so you know how James has suddenly gotten 'allergies?'"
"Yeah…" I said, not sure where he was going with this.
"Seriously Chloe? He's constantly itchy, feels like shit. Casey even referenced Talladega Nights when she said he lost all muscle control."
"Oh!" I said as sudden understanding washed over me. "You think he's Changing." I thought back to everything Casey had said about James' sickness and compared it to what Derek went through originally. It wasn't hard to see some pretty big similarities. "Does Frank know?"
"I kind of doubt it." when he saw my shocked look, he rolled his eyes an added. "We've known James for two weeks and we think he's the kind of kid who would fake sick. And Frank's been busy, and I sort of doubt he'd be able to recognize the symptoms after such a long time. Or maybe I'm just over thinking it and he really just has a cold."
"Yeah, that's a possibility too," I said jokingly, although this time I kind of doubted it.
"That too," he said, taking the last 12 pack and putting it in the cart. "So… Cans next?" I nodded and we moved on with our half full cart.
"Okay, so is it just you guys, or is the entire Changing age getting younger?"
"I'm guessing it's just us. I have the messed up genes, and James turns 18 in November or something, so he's not really that early. And the books said that the Change- never mind, I'm just reciting passages from books again." I laughed before looking at the list of cans.
"We so need another cart," I said. "Be right back."
We finished the shopping trip in another 20 minutes, and were pulling back into the driveway 10 minutes later.
"I wonder if Dad's home yet," Julie said. Frank and Kit had left early this morning to pick up the RVs.
"Probably," Miles said. "It wasn't that far away."
"Still, Dad likes to- Whoa." We had pulled around the last corner and ahead of us stood two humongous RVs. As we pulled closer, Kit, Frank, and Casey stepped out of the blue one.
"Oooh, more practice," Casey said, immediately teleporting to the car as soon as it was in park.
"Julie! We have work for you!"
"Oh yay," she said, hopping out of the car with Miles following closely.
"You guys go check out the things," Casey said, pulling out bags. "I got these." Derek and I crawled out of the back seat and headed towards everyone else.
"Wait," I said when we were halfway there. "Where's Tori?" We both turned back and saw her still sitting in the car. "I'm goin.'"
"No, I got it," Derek said, leaving me slightly shocked. "You've had to deal with her enough lately."
"Okay, just don't piss her off. I would prefer if you stayed in one piece." He smiled and turned back around.
"What happened to Derek?" Kit asked as I went up the steps.
"Went back to the car," I said simply while looking around. "Wow, usually things seem smaller on the inside."
"It was," Simon said, rolling off a couch that seemed abnormally long. "You know the Weasley's car in Harry Potter?"
"Yeah…"
"Well it's like that, same size on outside, but it has a lot more room on the inside, thanks to super-secret spells."
"Or just normal ones in spell books," Charlie said, hanging off a bunk bed. "And these beds are actually quite comfortable."
"What happens if we get pulled over or something and they want to search the RV?"
"Easy fix," Kit said. He mumbled something and did some complicated hand motions, and within a few seconds, the couch Simon had been sitting on shrunk a little, and Charlie was pushed off his bed and hit the floor with a huge clunk.
"Why the hell did you do that!" he yelled, scrambling up.
"You guys need more practice," Kit said, shrugging while attempting to conceal a grin.
"Hey," Derek said, stepping inside. Surprisingly, Tori was right behind him.
"Tall guy, yeah you," Charlie said, sounding very pissed. "Yeah, get your ass over here, I need to see if you can fit on this bed." Derek just shook his head but walked over anyway.
"Tori, you want to help make the RV more livable?" Simon said. He'd been trying to make things somewhat less awkward between him and Tori, which is more than I can say for Kit.
"Yeah, sure," she said, trying to sound like she didn't care, although I at least knew she did.
"Okay, then you guys work on that, and Chloe, Derek, and I go help Claire with some crappy job."
"But Derek's gonna Change tonight, and we need to sleep for that," I said.
"Uhg! Come on! I am not doing things like vacuuming the house by myself!"
"Say you want to teach me something during the Change and then you can sleep too," Derek said.
"Yeah, but husband equals personal slave. Well come on, let's get this over with."
After four hours of pointless manual labor, which Frank complained about as much as Casey did, we had finally been set free. Claire had to go make dinner, since it was already eight and people were getting cranky.
"How's James?" I asked Casey as casually as possible while we were all sitting on the couch watching yet another random movie.
"Not so great," she said. "He's still got the fever and weird twitchiness, but now he's started getting all sweaty and headaches. So apparently he's actually sick. Hopefully he'll be better by the time we leave."
I glanced at Derek, knowing there was almost 0% chance James wasn't going to Change. He took out his phone and typed something, then handed it to me.
"Can you talk to Casey after dinner? It's probably better if we don't mention the possibility to James just in case." I just nodded. Then his arm started spasming.
"Okay, come on, either we eat now, or go take a nap," I said, standing up.
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."
Turned out that dinner was ready as soon as we got to the kitchen, and we got to set the table. It was a fairly normal dinner, with the adults planning and us doing stupid stuff, which this time involved flying peas.
After dinner, mine and Derek's plan fell into place perfectly. Tori and Charlie got stuck with clean up, Simon and Julie decided to go play Mario Kart, and Derek was told to bring food up to James, leaving me with Casey.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?" I asked as we walked out of the kitchen.
"Yeah, but I'm going up to my room, I want a different background."
"That's fine." When we got to the room, she flopped down on the bed, leaving me in the chair.
"Alright, shoot," she said, turning on her laptop and looking over the screen at me.
"Okay… um… Well I don't think James is actually sick."
"He's doing a bang up job faking then," she said, slightly amused.
"He's not faking it exactly, it's just not some disease or virus. Well… Derek and I think he's going to start Changing. Like tonight." She bolted upright.
"Seriously?"
"What you've been telling us sounds exactly what Derek first went through. And he's only a little young to start in the first place." Then she started laughing. "What?"
"You just made it sound like some sort of second puberty."
"It sort of is." She abandoned her quest for another background and scooted towards the end of the bed.
"So why are you telling me this?"
"Trust me, it wouldn't be good for James to go through that by himself. Even now, Derek gets freaked out about Changing by himself. Don't tell him I said that though." She laughed again.
"Does Frank know?"
"I don't know, he might have guessed, but he definitely said nothing about it around Derek or me."
"Okay, what am I supposed to do about it?"
"Just stay with him all night, and if he kicks you out, stay by the door. He might have figured it out already, but if he starts getting really twitchy, get him outside fast. I don't know if there'll be puking for him."
"There was puking?"
"And that wasn't even the worse part. It's not a pretty process." Casey looked a little freaked, but was taking this all better than I would have thought.
"What time do you guys usually go out?"
"Around 2 or 3, I think. I never really pay attention to the time."
"Well whenever you do, stop by James' room. Let Derek look at him and if he seems like he's going to Change, we'll go out with you."
"Sounds like a plan. You might want to go to bed soon though, it's tiring. Actually, I'm gonna go now."
"K, see ya," she said. I walked to the door, but only got it halfway open before she added, "And thanks, Chloe."
"No prob." I met up with Derek in the TV room.
"You think we should tell Frank?" I asked.
"It might be a good idea," he said. "Plus we should probably tell Dad or someone we're going to be out tonight. I can do it without you, go back upstairs." He had apparently noticed my badly stifled yawn.
"Alright, meet you outside at 2:45ish?"
"Sounds like a plan. Night." We kissed then went our separate ways on the steps.
By the time I got to the patio, Derek was already there waiting.
"So Frank decided this would be a good time for a training session. And he went to go check on James and will bring him and Casey out if need be."
"Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense." We only had to wait another minute for Frank to come out. He was supporting a half-asleep or really weak James, and Casey was walking behind them, looking much less calm than before.
"Come on guys, show us to your clearing," Frank said, sounding slightly urgent. For good reason too, when we reached the clearing, James was on all fours in seconds.
"Shit," he said, looking at James's sweat pants. "Claire will kill me if those get ruined, that's the expensive pair. Casey, take them off."
"Not something you're told by your boyfriend's dad everyday," she said, laughing nervously while pulling off one of James's shoes.
"Derek, you're good for a few minutes right?" Frank asked. He nodded, but I could see his arm twitching again. I'm not sure how few those minutes can be. "Alright, then you two go sit by the edge of the clearing, give us some room." We followed his instructions, and went over to lean against a particularly wide tree trunk.
"Is there supposed to be puking, or was that just you?" I asked quietly.
"I don't know, the books never went into much detail. I don't think there are any partial Changes though."
"Well that's good for James at least." After that, we really didn't say much until his Change was over. There was no puking, but that didn't make the sounds of pain and bones crackling any more appealing. After what seemed like a really short amount of time, James lay on the ground as a wolf, slightly bigger than Derek was in wolf form, and with a light tan coat with parts tinged with gray and darker browns. (If you type in "wolves" in Google images and go to 15th picture, he's supposed to look like the middle one.) I was almost tempted to laugh, because it was weird that I was actually describing James as having a coat.
Frank sat next to his son talking for a few minutes, then walked over to me and Derek.
"Ready?" Again, Derek just nodded. We moved into the middle of the clearing, where Derek stripped quickly and handed his clothes to me. "You up for trying to Change multiple times tonight?"
"Like how many?" Derek asked, rolling his shoulders as started getting into position.
"Not many, three tops."
"Sure…" he said unenthusiastically. I can't really blame him though, it was bad enough watching the Change.
"Then go ahead and start whenever you're ready."
For the most part, the first Change didn't seem to be any different from normal, even with Frank's little tips. It definitely took less time than the last few, but that was about it. Not wanting to waste any time, Derek only rested about two minutes before jumping into a forced Change back to human form. That part involved a bit of a lecture that I honestly didn't listen to much, since I couldn't really figure out how to "pull hair back in" or "elongate limbs." It took longer to get all the way back to human than when the Change just came naturally, but Frank said he did well.
Derek was exhausted at that point, and Frank left us to go talk to James, who had started stumbling around.
"You want your pants back while you're recovering?" I asked, smiling and holding them out. "I think Casey's looking at your ass." As usual, he ended up naked. He was lying on his side with his back to Casey, and a leg covering up the front on my side.
"Oh, forgot about her," he said, taking the pants then laying on his stomach and just using them as a blanket. "Probably should stop shredding boxers during each Change though, those really add up."
"Yeah, but going commando in random woods probably isn't the best idea either. You could do a towel wrap thingy?"
"Yeah that'd probably work. Good idea."
"Thank you." I meant to say add some witty comment, but Frank came back then, and I sort of had none at the moment.
"Now here comes the really ha- difficult part," he said, sitting back down. "Changing without the Change coming on takes a lot when you're just starting out, I'm not gonna lie. But considering how well you did on the forced back, and that you've been doing fine Changing on your own, it might not be as bad. And if James is still going with you guys, I'm going to need you to tell him all this stuff Der, which I realize will be weird, but too bad." Then came another spiel I zoned out of. Frank was right though. The only time Derek had Changed without the actual Change had been before he came after us at the Ed Group headquarters, and that was with stress powering everything. It took even longer than forcing back into human form, and all Derek could do afterwards was collapse on the ground.
"Nice job buddy," Frank said, awkwardly patting Derek on the back. "I mean it too, way better than I did the first time. I'm going to go teach James how to take five steps without falling on his face, then we'll get to the fun stuff."
Derek and I sat there watching James's walking training, which was possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. Casey apparently thought I was too, and started rolling on the ground laughing every time he fell down. It took like 10 minutes, but eventually James was able run several laps around the clearing with no problems.
"K, girl, get over here!" Frank yelled. "Derek, you and James go down the path to the next clearing, I'll be over there in a few minutes."
"This should be fun," I mumbled, patting Derek's head then walking over to Frank.
"Okay, we're going to test their wolfy powers," he said. "You guys are going to run all over the place, then find a nice place to hide out waiting for them to hopefully find you. We'll do that twice then come back here. If they don't find you in 10 minutes though, just go to the patio again." We both nodded. "Cool, now scat!" When we just began to walk away, he yelled, "No, run! Run through forest Forrest!"
I think Casey rolled her eyes with me as jogged back to the house on the path. Once we reached the end of the trees though, we both stopped.
"Screw Frank, I'm not running all around the yard for ten minutes," Casey said, catching her breath. "Hopefully we won't happen upon any 'run for your life' situations on our little road trip. Otherwise I'll be the first to go, maybe after Julie."
"Yeah, I'll be right there with you. We can trip up Charlie though, that might give us a few more seconds." She laughed at we walked towards the dock. "So where's a good place to hide around here?"
"Well there's Julie and I's super-secret hang out spot," she contemplated. "But if I take you or lead the guys there, it won't be super-secret anymore. Hmm… If you can climb trees we can try one by the garage."
That's what we ended up doing. By the time we reached a spot to sit though, the lack of sleep was starting to get to me, and there wasn't much conversation to be had. The guy found us within a few minutes though, and we climbed back down. Frank had also Changed into a gray wolf that was larger than both Derek and James. (See first picture on the wolves Google search)
"Go sit somewhere and don't look at where we're going," Casey said. "Five minutes then come after us." They all sort of nodded, which was just sort of funny looking, and then we walked off around the other side of the house. Once out of ear shot, she said, "You want to really mess with them?"
"As long as it doesn't involve running, sure."
"We can teleport onto the second floor balcony. I'm not going to kill us," she said, seeing my freaked out look. "Seriously, I did that for like an hour yesterday. I got Julie up there with me too, so you wouldn't be a guinea pig."
"Fine, but we have to go over to the lake first, see if we can convince them we went through the water."
"Oooh, I like the way you think. We better walk pretty quickly though."
We got to the lake with a minute to spare, then Casey grabbed my arm, turned around, and we were on the balcony. It was weird, there had been no really sensation of traveling, we were just there all of a sudden.
"Cool huh?" she said, sitting on a chair.
"Very." I sat down on one next to her. "Now just don't move or talk."
"Won't this be an exciting ten minutes."
They didn't find us, unsurprisingly. We could see the patio from our stop, and teleported back down when we saw them heading that way.
"We're not telling you where we went," I said, trying not to laugh at the expression that could only be described as frustration on Derek's face. "So back to the clearing?" Frank sort of nodded and we followed him back down the path. Frank went into the woods to Change back, then Derek tried another forced Change, which did go better than last time. We were dismissed to go back inside, since James would have to wait for the Change to come again before he could be human again.
"So could you understand each other like in some sort of wolf language, or just by putting commands to actions?" I asked.
"It was really weird. I wouldn't call it a language, but I just sort of knew what they meant whenever they barked or something. And I do realize how stupid that sounded."
"Yeah, it was. But at least now we have the Change out of the way for now, and you got in a run."
"Where did you guys go that second time?" he asked, sounding really intrigued.
"I told you, I'm not telling."
"Come on, Chloe."
"Nope, you have to get used to not knowing everything Derek."
"Yeah, but what does this have to knowing everything. I just happen to be really curious at the moment. Come on, please?"
I just rolled my eyes, smiled, and kept walking.
Very boring, not worth the wait at all, but it's another filler chapter. The next one might be sort of boring as well, but once they get on the road, I promise things will get more interesting. And I honestly don't remember most of this chapter, so I'm going to leave it like that. Review please or PM me with any questions, about the story or just random crap, I don't care. I'll hopefully update soon, but who knows. Again, review please, and bye.