Hellllo everyone!
Short introduction: I'm not sure how many people will actually even read this chapter, since I didn't update in a looooong, long time. Most of you probably forgot what this story even was about and don't want to go through the pain of reading it all over again. I don't blame you, I forgot most of it myself, and I didn't really have the nerve to re-read any it.
So to deal with this, here's a little recap of some stuff that might be important for this chapter. If you don't need it, just skip to the actual beginning.
Previously, on THE SECRET OF FIVE (Imagine a deep, epic voice reading this for extra effect):
After the battle against Setrákus Ra, our heroes get caught in a Mogadorian trap, where Nine and Six get captured and Ella gets shot. John, Marina, Eight and Sarah escape and end up in Canada, where they run into yet another Mogadorian trap on a train. With the train driving at full speed and an entire army of Mogs about to attack them, they have nowhere left to run, and it looks like the Loric might have to make their final stand, when suddenly two strange Mogs - a mysterious girl and a big muscular guy - blast a hole through the back of the train. Eight immediately jumps out to follow the two of them, while it takes a while for the rest of the group to follow him. John sends Marina after Eight while he convinces Sarah to make the jump. After quite some time of running in the pouring rain without any sign of Eight, Marina is completely exhausted and frustrated, fearing she will never see Eight again. She doesn't pay attention to where she's running and suddenly finds herself lost in a forest. She's about to give up hope when she suddenly sees Eight and the two Mogs from the train. She hides behind the bush and watches with growing rage as the three of them just casually walk by - Eight doesn't even seem to notice the rest of the group was worried sick about him. That's when Marina decides she's finally had enough of him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: STILL WATERS AND THE BREACHING DAM
7
Three surprised yelps echo through the forest.
One is the pitched, panicking scream of a girl, the kind you'll find in every halfway decent horror film, the kind that still rings in your ears even minutes after it actually ended. The second one is more of a grunt really, sounds a bit like a wild boar. A wild, massive and angry boar. Not something you'd want to mess with.
I take quick, small breaths while my heart pumps rage into my veins.
And then there is the third scream, the most satisfying of all three, if you ask me. A short, hick-up like noise of a voice I know all too well, like air being quickly let out of a balloon.
Yes, very satisfying indeed. But not enough.
Not enough…
If some lonely wanderer were to come strolling through the forest at this exact moment, he'd probably think he's hallucinating. He'd rub his eyes or tweak his arm to make sure that this is not a dream. Then he'd wonder what the hell his wife had put in the coffee this morning, because what he just witnessed sure as hell couldn't have actually happened. The three people that had been strolling through the trees just a second ago couldn't have just vanished from one moment to the next. Things like this don't happen.
But no lonely wanderer comes around to see the strange phenomenon happen, there's no one here to hear the cries ringing through the trees, no one but me.
My lips fiercely pressed together until they form a thin line, I slowly step forward, out of the bush I was hiding in, my hands raised high up in the air, pointing towards the three shadowy figures dangling twenty feet above me. Of course they didn't just vanish, making people disappear at will is not within my power. What I can do, though, is yank them from their feet and lift them so high up into the air that the fall would break more than one of their bones, which will have to do for now.
I have never tried using telekinesis on actual living beings before, and it sure as hell isn't easy, especially not on more than one person at a time, but I couldn't care less right now. The uncontrollable anger burning through my limbs numbs every sense of exhaustion I've felt before.
Like fish caught in a net, my victims wriggle around in the air, unable to break free of my telekinetic grip. Big, splashing raindrops keep pouring down on my face as I look up at them, blurring my vision, but I can still make out the three silhouettes in the darkness.
There's the Mog-girl, screaming and cursing incomprehensibly while aimlessly shaking her head back and forth, trying to find out why she no longer has the wet mud of the forest but rather a whole lot of thin air below her feet.
To the left, Eight screams even louder than her. Sweet tones of satisfaction! Every cry just further ignites the fire of anger that seems to burn me from the inside.
And then there's the big bulky Mog hovering a few feet below them. I can't get him as far up as the others, which might have to do with the fact that he probably weighs twice as much as the rest of them combined. His face is a silent mask of disbelief. Disbelief, that's all. Not fear, just mild confusion, as if the fact that he seems stuck at a height of twenty feet does not impress him at all.
I take a deep breath, then step into their field of view. Immediately three heads turn my way.
If I wasn't so damn pissed, I'd maybe even enjoy their baffled expressions as they slowly realize I'm the one behind all this.
But I am pissed. So I just tighten my telekinetic grip around them a little bit more, producing silent moans of pain.
Good. I think I got their attention.
"You have exactly ten seconds to explain," I shout up at Eight in a threatening tone.
"Marina? Marina, is that you?" he yells back through the rain.
Five seconds.
"Marina? How is she even… Listen, Marina let us down, and we can talk this out," he yells, but his time is up and I still got no explanation.
"I want an answer Eight. What the hell are you doing here, taking a walk with two Mogs through the forest like it's a completely normal thing to do while an entire army of these things just fucking tried to murder us?" I scream, my lips trembling at the intensity of my voice.
"Listen, this is not what it looks like…" he shouts through the howling wind.
Excuses.
Again.
"It never is, right? Yeah, things are never as they seem with you. You're always off on your little adventures, teleporting here, shapeshifting there, running off on your own. Oh look, Eight turned into an elephant. Oh look, Eight turned into a bedside lamp. Oh look, Eight turned into a stupid, irresponsible idiot. No wait, he was one all along.
Hell, I don't even know what you actually look like. Maybe this shape is just another one of your stupid little disguises. Maybe you actually aren't a hyperactive boy who can't sit still for two seconds deep down. Or maybe you don't even have your own identity. Maybe you're just a sad lonely guy who has to slip into different roles every five minutes to compensate his crushing superficiality and carelessness!" I scream.
"I…" he begins, but I cut him off.
"You know what, I don't even care," I yell, my voice cracking. "We're Loric. We don't have to get along with each other, we don't have to have great personalities, we just have to survive. We just have to accomplish our mission, no matter how high the cost may be. Need to leave your own friends behind? Sure, no problem. As long as you get out alive."
"Are you talking about Ella…"
"OF COURSE I'M TALKING ABOUT ELLA!" I scream out of breath. "She was more than just a friend to me, to all of us!" I wave my hand around as if the others were here. "She was like a little sister. But you wouldn't know would you? You just got to stay in your own little adventure world where nothing but you really matters. Friend, does that word even mean anything to you? Ring a bell? Friend? No? Here, let me give you an example. A friend is the kind of person you wouldn't leave behind on a train full of bloodthirsty monsters, just so that when this very friend comes looking for you, she finds you strolling around with these very monsters later on. This might make your friend angry – very, very angry. What do you have to say to that?"
"Marina, please, just let me down, I can explain everything…"
"Well explain it now! What do you want with these two?"
"Help," he shouts desperately, a bit of frustration in his voice. "I want help from them."
I stare at him in disbelief. A moment of silence passes.
"You're expecting help… from a Mog?" I laugh, and it sounds way more hysterical than I intended.
"Yeah, sounds kind of strange, right? Hey, umm… Marina, why don't we talk about this, like, on even ground?"
"You want these… these things to help us?" I say, ignoring his pleading.
"That's the idea, yeah…" he stammers, and his uncertainty just pushes me further. I already feel the next rant building up, but I force myself to stay calm.
"These are the same Mogs from the train?" I ask, even though I already know the answer. Of course they are. It's not hard to tell. This here is the only Mog-girl I've ever seen in my life, I don't even know if there even are any others. And the guy looks really big and muscular even for a Mog. Not hard to recognize.
"Yes, that's them," Eight shouts down.
"The same ones that almost killed us with that bomb?" I shout and Eight frowns.
"Yeah… that's them."
"Actually," a pitched voice yells down at me, and it takes me a few seconds to realize it's the Mog-girl speaking. "Actually, we only used the bomb to blast our way out of the train. And to help you escape," she adds with a strange accent that makes me feel really uncomfortable.
Wow. So she… it can talk.
I throw the Mog a quick disdaining glance, then turn back to Eight.
"You actually believe this?" I shout up. "What else did they tell you? That they are going to bring back Lorien? That the whole invasion thing was just some joke, or that they killed all those people by accident?"
"No. No, of course not," Eight says. "But they're not like the other Mogs, you see. They're different."
"Different!" I spit out with an intensity that even surprises me myself. I never thought I could be this bitter. The last days have dried my sense of patience, and I said more curse words in these couple of minutes than I have in the past 3 years. Maybe I'm being a bit too hard on Eight.
I stare up at the sky, letting the rain wash over my face. The initial adrenaline rush I'd got when seeing the three of them walking between the trees has worn off, and with it the quick surge of energy my anger brought has left me. The crushing exhaustion I'd felt before has now replaced the anger, and my arms are trembling at the effort it takes to hold all three of them up at once. I can feel every single muscle in my body burning as if I were on fire, and there's a disturbing metallic taste in my mouth again.
"Marina…" Eight says carefully. "Please, let us down. We'll work it out, there's no reason for this."
I want to disagree, but if I don't drop them right now I feel like my arms will fall off. With a shaking cough, I lower them, slowly at first, then faster and faster as my exhaustion quickly gets the better of me, until I end up dropping them the last couple of feet.
They land heavily on their backs, the Mog guy making a loud whacking sound and leaving a big mark in the mud.
I distrustfully watch them as they get to their feet, then I suddenly feel dizzy and my vision blurs. Eight rushes over and wants to help me sit down, but I push him away.
"So, here you are," I say hoarsely, struggling to stay on my feet. "Back down on the ground. Now, explain!"
Hello everyone!
Guess who's back? That's right, it's the bad-grammar-guy whose characters are even less consistent than the bullshit he writes after each chapter. Back with even more pointless outbursts, more melodrama and more hypocrisy. Yaay!
It's been a while - pretty much half a year - since I last updated this piece of crap. I guess I stopped 'cause I found other things to waste my time with (like actual people o.O) but after a while you really start missing writing. It's like an addiction. I know many people think of writing as a way of expressing themselves, where they can finally be themselves, but why would you want to be yourself when you can be so much more?
Anyways, enough of that bullshit, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I hope you didn't notice that it had pretty much no content at all, and that it was just a waste of 5 or 6 minutes of your lifetime. Yeah, I really hope no one noticed.
Aaaaaanyways, enough of that bullshit. I have no idea if or when I'll write another chapter. The plot I built up so far kind of makes me want to puke everytime I just as much as think of it, and I don't know how much more I can take. So, no promises, folks, not this time.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrreview-answering time!
ArcticBlue & I-wish-I-could-be-Number-Five: Thanks, I'll try to keep stronger female characters in the future.
destinybroughtme: NO.
ZazzyZ: Sorry to have kept you waiting. And sorry to keep you waiting in the future.
lodpujan: I'm sure you can find time in between school and work, even if it's just 10 minutes a day :) And I actually like the idea of having non-ability people, or 'dead weights', as you call them. It makes room for alternative conflicts and interesting characters.
Guest: No, I'm not. I honestly think it's an overdone thing and this story already has too many obvious twists.
Calaena Sardothien: Ich hatte an die verrückte Katzenlady aus den Simpsons gedacht, aber Umbridge triffts wahrscheinlich eher.
Alright, see you when I see you, have a good time until next chapter and thanks to everyone who reads this story