Hey guys! Im baaaack! Sorry about the long wait…. I have been a little busy with school and stuff and my schoolwork isn't hard or anything, it's just hella annoying cause there's a lot of it. But now I'm back with a brand new chapter, containing action like I'd promised! Hope you guys enjoy!

Also forewarning: I changed a few things that happened in the book, since some of these scenes are actually in the book Neverseen themselves. Also, I pretty much paraphrased every single conversation in here thats also in the book, so bear with me now, okay? Great.

ON WITH THE STORY!

For such a large accomplishment, Dex was expecting a little bit more of a reaction than just utter silence. Perhaps some grins, or possibly some cheers would suffice. A "congratulations Dex!" A couple of "I knew you could do it's", maybe even a "you're a genius!" Would have been nice: but nope—silence was his show of gratitude instead. Dex thought that maybe they were so shocked that they were "shocked silent". That they were so awestruck of his fantastic work, they didn't even know what to say—yeah, he'll go with that.

Luckily for him, Sophie spoke up, a wide grin on her face. "Dex, that's amazing!" She cried out happily, making Dex beam at her praise. To please her even more, Dex promptly added, "and guess what? I tweaked it so that not only we'll be able to find out info on that Neverseen guy, but Fitz as well!" At that, Biana jumped into his arms, almost tackling him in a hug as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "Oh Dex, that's brilliant!" She exclaimed, giving him a grateful smile. Dex tried his very hardest not to blush as he hugged Biana back and thanked her. Sophie was so ecstatic, she was pacing. "Yes! We can use it to find Fitz right now!" She exclaimed, unable to control her excitement. Thanks to Dex, they would finally be able to see Fitz again!

Or maybe not.

"No," a firm voice came from behind them, halting their excitement. Sophie recognized it instantly and whipped her head around so fast, Dex was surprised it didn't snap right there and then. "What?" She snapped harshly at them, causing both Biana and Dex to take one big step back from what they'd like to call "the angry Sophie zone"—aka, a very dangerous, sporadic, not to be trifled with Sophie. Even some of the Black Swan shivered at her tone. But not Mr. Forkle. "Mr. Dizznee, you were only supposed to make that device for one purpose—figuring out that Neverseen agent," he scolded Dex sternly. Dex only gave him an unbelieving look. "... Are you kidding? Please tell me your joking," he said hopefully. When all he received was a deadpan look, Dex sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, I guess your not," he said sheepishly. "But haven't you seen how this is affecting everybody? Biana's been crying every night, Sophie's distraught and obviously worried and Keefe—" he cut himself off there, closing his eyes and sighing deeply. Then he opened them up to slits, directing his glare right at the adults. "I suggest we find him before one of your assets becomes broken," he said calmly.

Both Sophie and Biana gasped at that, and murmurs were heard upon the collective. "Dex..." Sophie uttered out, not believing what she was hearing, "is he really...?" Dex looked at her with sullen eyes. "I think he might be getting close," he admitted reluctantly. "Each day he just becomes more and more—gone." Sophie took in a shaky breath before glaring at the Black Swan herself. "We need. To find. Fitz," she said, her voice deep from trying to control her anger. "NOW."

Mr. Forkle sighed. "It's not that simple, Soph—" he started to say until the doors suddenly burst Ed open, revealing a panting, wide-eyed Keefe. Sophie nearly gaped at his appearance. His clothes were messy and obviously not cared about how they were presented, his hair was disheveled (that was one of the biggest shocks), and his face— Sophie felt her heart drop to her stomach when she saw his face. Despite his newfound distraught expression (his first expression in a couple of weeks), she'd never seen a person's face appear so hollow:

Except when they were broken.

The sight filled fear into her body. She was scared—no, horrified—at what may happen to him if they didn't find Fitz soon. Keefe didn't seem to acknowledge the fact that all eyes were on him—his eyes were on Mr. Forkle and Mr. Forkle only. A single word escaped from his quivering lips:

"Please."

Sophie decided that if Mr. Forkle refused to that, he really was a heartless old man. The way Keefe had said the word was filled with so much– so much—pain. And though his tone was quiet and as hollow as his face, you could easily detect the pure agony that was laced around it. Sophie wasn't a empath, but it was almost like he was purposely radiating his feelings on to everyone else—she could tell that they were feeling what's he was feeling—what he was feeling. Keefe was hurt: he looked broken; sounded broken, probably felt broken; but beneath that, beneath all the pain, the emptiness, the heartache, even the tiny piece of washed up hope, there was sorrow—pure, unbridled, gut-wrenching sorrow—and determination. The empath used his sorrow to feed into his determination to find his best friend. Keefe wasn't ready to give up. He may have a terrible father and a mother he lost to the Neverseen, but he was, by no means, going to lose Fitz to them too. He was going to fight—for the both of them:

And he was gonna put up one heck of a fight indeed.

This is what Mr. Forkle saw when he heard the one word Keefe had spoken in over a week—and it was this (and the fact that the children were more stubborn than verminions) that finally made him realize this was what they had to do:

On one condition.

••••••

With the help of the twiggler and the evader, the gang were able to find a couple of psionpaths that be attended Exillium. Sophie and the rest agreed to prioritize the Neverseen member first, but as soon as they were done funding info about him, Sophie would go straight to the twiggler to see if the council his any information about Fitz. She knew that he wanted to know more than anything who he was. She'd felt that before. And though he was currently ignoring her transmissions, Sophie knew that if she found info to share with him, it could prompt Fitz to come back. "One of them is named Ruy. That sort of looks like him," Biana said, pointing to the menacing looking guy who had a loooooot of reasons for being sent to Exillium. Sophie agreed. No wonder they almost forbade the ability of psionpathy. This dude was definitely bad news. "Perhaps you can all ask about him when you go," a voice came from behind them and they turned to see Granite holding their Exillium outfits. Sophie sighed. Form what she'd heard, Exillium was definitely not sunshine and rainbows and she wants too excited on going there. But the faster they got Exillium over with, the faster they could move on to finding Fitz. The thought have Sophie more confidence and motivation about this new school.

Biana offered to be the first to try the uniform on and when she came back, she was nearly unrecognizable (A/N: I altered some of the necessities and design of the uniform so bear with me because that's just how I offing ally imagined it. It was the whole "half mask" thing that threw me off). She was wearing black pants and a long sleeved black shirt under a light grey vest that had a couple of chains hooked on to each side. The vest had a good at the back which Biana had upon her head and was not only sporting steel-toed boots but was also wearing a black mask that only covered one eye. It had slight silver streaks designed on it and even though it was only covering one eye, it had a intimidating perk to it that made Biana almost unrecognizable even without the hood up.

Sophie couldn't believe she was thinking this, but she might actually miss the gowns and dresses.

The first one to comment was Keefe. "Nuh-uh. No freaking way am I wearing that," he said, pointing at the outfit. Sophie sighed. She supposed it wasn't too bad—and if she had to wear it than so did her. "Keefe it's their uniform. You have to wear it," she told him with a roll of her eyes. Keefe looked at her strangely. "Huh? Oh no, I'm not talking about the entire uniform; I'm talking about the hood," he said, pointing at it. "How are people supposed to bask in the awesomeness of my hair gene that ugly thing is covering it up?" Sophie shook her head but she had to suppress a smile. It was a relief that Keefe was turning back into his old self. Dex just observed it and shrugged. "I don't think it's too bad. Kinda cool, actually," he said simply. Biana pulled down her good, quickly fumbling to doc her hair. "That's because you're not wearing it," she told Dex. "It's pretty hot—and the boots are heavy too." The brunette sighed and turned to Granite. "Please tell me the hoods aren't actually necessary to wear," she pleaded with him.

Granite shrugged. "The masks are, but the hoods aren't," he said, much to the relief of everyone, especially Keefe. "But most of the Waywards keep them on for anonymous purposes. Though the masks do affect your appearance, most of them don't think it's enough. They usually find those who don't wear the hoods to be weaklings," he told them. Keefe snorted. "Cool. I'm still lot wearing that hood," he said with his arms crossed. "Actually, I think when we're doing the lessons we should keep our hoods up—you know, just to blend in," Dex suggested. "Then we can put them down when there's leisure time." "If there's leisure time," Granite mumbled under his breath but only Sophie and Keefe heard him. Keefe crossed his arms, still not happy with the idea, but when everyone else agreed he groaned. "Fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "But the minute I feel a singe hair move out of place, I'm ripping this thing off."

.

After Sophie, Keefe and Dex got dressed into their uniforms, Mr. Forkle handed them each a black leaping crystal, telling them that's the way they're going to get to Exillium. "Are you four ready to do this?" He asked them, giving each of the kids a serious look. Keefe was the first to nod. "Let's do this thing," he said confidently, followed by murmurs of agreement from Dex, Biana, and Sophie. Sharing a look with the collective, Mr. Forkle sighed and ordered them to put the crystals around their necks. "Stay safe," he said before stepping back a ways away from them. Sophie, Dex, Biana, and Keefe all pointed their crystals towards the light and in a flash they were gone.

OOOH, CLIFFY! So how'd you guys like this chapter? It was good I hope! Again, I apologize for the long wait, I'll try and be more hasty next time! Ugh, grade 10's a killer… the work man, I just can't though.

But anyways yeah, please post your comments, because I absolutely love your feedback and I'll try and update soon!

…..

HA! Just kidding! XD It ain't over yet ;)

The four landed in some sort of dark forest. Keefe scoffed as he looked around the sight. "This is exillium?" He commented, furrowing his eyebrows unimpressedly. He then looked over to Sophie and smirked. "Budget cuts much?" Sophie rolled her eyes but she could've sworn she heard very soft chuckling in the distance. It was low and barely audible but audible enough in the dead silence of the forest. It also stopped immediately as if the person thought they were going to get in trouble if they did laugh. That's when Sophie realized. "They're here," she whispered, causing everyone to look her way.

"Indeed we are." Sophie screamed as she suddenly found herself flipped upside down, dangling in the air with a rope tied around her one foot. She looked around and saw her friends also struggling in the same position as well. They were all hanging from a metal arch. "Welcome to the trials: this here will determine which group you shall be placed into," a voice said from behind her—or at Leary she thought was behind her. Sophie wrenched her head over as best she could towards where the voice was coming and saw three tall figures, all with their hoods down of different colours. One had red, another purple, and the last one blue. Behind them were a bunch of smaller figures, who also had their hoods down. Sophie assumed these people must be the coaches and the Waywards. Huffing out an annoyed breath at their weird methods of placement (along with having all the other waywards to surely watch her fail), Sophie wrenched her body around, trying to get ahold of the knot on her foot. "Anyone else having a little bit of trouble with this?" She called out, hopefully not being the only one. "This knot is like impossible to break." "Almost got it," Keefe announced, expertly untying the knot with his fingers. How, Sophie didn't know, as this knot was extra tangled, but Keefe managed to do it anyways. Loosening the last loop with plenty of mumbled 'ow's' along the way, Keefe shouted, "YOU THINK YOU CAN HOLD M—" unfortunately, a loud RRRIIIIP! cut him off and the boy went tumbling to the ground, spewing out many words that would surely get him months of detention in foxfire, before hitting the ground with a CRUNCH! She turned her head to see if he was okay, only to find him grumbling in pain on the ground. "...Graceful," one of the coaches commented snarkily and Sophie would've scowled at them if she knew which one had said it. "You okay Keefe?" she called down to him. Keefe rubbed his head in pain. "I've been better," he admitted gruffly. "Guess I forgot to brace myself for the landing." "He also forgot his pants too," the blue cloaked figure stated dryly, much to the amusement of the other waywards. Sophie glanced over to his top and saw that Keefe had indeed left his now ripped black pants behind—she had no idea how he even managed to do that.

"Looks like he left his dignity behind with it too," one of the waywards commented. The rest of the waywards started to laugh, each taking turns poking and making fun of Keefe; except one. Sophie noticed that there was one wayward who took a step forward, as if they were about to help Keefe, but went back when one of the coaches hissed something at them. Sophie wondered why they would even want to help in the first place. According to the Black Swan, people were very rough around here. They weren't the types to be trusting or thoughtful to one another. In fact, resentment was basically hanging in the air—and yet this wayward, despite not knowing Keefe, still tried to help—why?

"SILENCE!" The blue cloaked instructor commanded. "One has freed himself—can the same be said for the others?" "I can in a second!" Sophie's thoughts were interrupted by Dex's exclamation, and she watched with horror as she thought her adoptive cousin was going to fall to the ground just like Keefe had before—only to stop in mid air and slowly turn himself upright, floating calmly to the ground. 'Levitating,' Sophie realized in her head. "Why didn't I think of that..." Keefe grumbled as Dex landed gracefully beside him. He snorted. "I can think of a few reasons," he replied, causing Keefe to glare at him playfully. Sophie Dex toss a something to the ground and realized he'd made a makeshift knife out of the chains to cut the rope. One of the coaches, the red one, nods approvingly. "Very well done," he compliments. "It's a shame that you won't be in my division." He then looked up at Biana and Sophie, still dangling from the rope. "And then there were two..." he murmured, arms crossed over his chest. "TRY ONE!" Biana exclaimed. She tossed her body back and forth, causing the rope to fray until it finally snapped. She tried using levitation like Dex but her concentration only got her so far. Falling again once more, she expertly flipped her self down to the ground.

As Keefe muttered something about 'why everyone else had landed on their feet', Sophie was still having trouble. There was no way she was gonna be able to undo that knot and she wasn't resourceful enough like Dex to find a way to cut through it. She tried swinging herself back and forth like Biana, but that proved to be immensely useless and her rope just refused to fray. She suddenly found Keefe levitating beside her, going over to help her with the knot. "NO ASSISTANCE ALLOWED!" All of the coaches hollered at once. "NO HELPING! SHE MUST DO IT ON HER OWN!" "I'm not just gonna leave her dangling up here!" Keefe argued but Sophie touched his shoulder. "It's okay—I have a plan," she told him. She doubted it was a good plan—and although she knew Keefe was just trying to help, she definitely did not want to be the only one who needed help getting down. Reluctantly, Keefe floated back to the ground and Sophie took off her Black Swan pendant, remembering how well it worked for Biana. 'It's now or never,' she thought to herself, sighing out a breath of determination. She held the pendant by the Swan design, positioning the smooth gem to reflect a ray of the orange sunrise light. She aimed it at the rope that was connected to the metal arc— maybe not the best idea. All at once, the branch erupted into white hot flames and Sophie found herself wriggling around in an attempt to free herself, the flames searingly burning her leg. She did, but the pain made it impossible for her to be able to levitate. She braced herself for the fall but a sudden and gigantic wave of water threw her backwards. Distantly, she saw the large wave of water start to take the fire out but when she turned her head, her eyes widened: she was heading straight towards a tree.

Sophie yelled, bracing herself for the pain that was sure to come, only to feel herself cradled inside someone's arms. Looking up, she was surprised to see that she was in the arms of one of the waywards, who was looking back down at her intently. Sophie looked back at the dying commotion, which was barely in sight from where they were—in the tree she was about to cash into to be more specific. It was then that she realized the boy had jumped over to catch her and landed perched in the tree with her in his arms. Sophie knew that elves could jump very far—she just didn't know that they could jump this far...

A large wave of fatigue suddenly hit her and Sophie realized she must still be in shock. She barely processed the boy jumping back towards the coaches before passing out.

"Leave it to you to nearly burn Exillium down on the first day." Sophie blinked her eyes open, furrowing her eyebrows as she looked around. She seemed to be in some kind of medic room, lying on a bed. She turned her head and saw that Keefe was also sitting on a bed similar to hers. "What happened?" She asked, sitting on the side of the bed. Keefe filled her in, saying how everyone thought she might've been a pyrokinetic because of what she did. "The there was this girl—yo you should've seen her, she like summoned a huge wave and put the entire thing out!" Keefe, the weird medicine he was on having a slightly weird affect on him, started making noises and imitating the wave with his arms. Sophie cocked her head to the side. "What happened after the wave? Where did I go?" She asked him. Her memory was still a little foggy. Keefe widened his eyes when she mentioned that. "Oh yeah! The wave hit you and you went flying back—nice job giving us all another heart attack by the way—and we all started to panic at once. But before any of the coaches could even do anything, this one wayward up and jumped to you—like literally, jumped! He went soaring—I couldn't believe how he could jump so far! Obviously everyone else was surprised too because the coaches just stared at him gobsmacked—it was pretty funny," he giggled a bit to himself. "Then he came back a few seconds later with you passed out in his arms. Dex, Biana, and I tried to come and get you but the purple coach basically ripped you out of his arms and walked to the infirmary, some other dude dragging me along," he explained.

Sophie started to remember the boy and the strange way he'd looked at her. Who was he? Even with the one-eye mask, he still seemed unrecognizable—and despite the lengthy jump he'd made at an incredible speed, his hood still maintained on his head. Sophie knew she shouldn't be, but she was now extra curious about finding out who this person was. "Both of those waywards should've been expelled," a new voice commented as Sophie turned around to see the medic in the boobrie mask that Keefe had mentioned earlier. Speaking of her friend, his face lit up when he saw the man approach the two. "Hey, boobrie dude!" Keefe acknowledged him with the nickname he'd made for the man, who refused to share his name. The man sighed. "Did you bring me anymore of that awesome sauce?" He asked, bouncing on the bed giddily. Sophie really hoped the man would say no.

Fortunately for her, 'boobrie dude' just shook his head and tsk'd at Keefe before ordering the two of them to get up. "What do you mean they should've been expelled?" Sophie asked curiously. Boobrie dude gave her a serious look. "Waywards here aren't supposed to help each other—or use their abilities. The hydrokinetic would've gotten ejected for that if it wasn't for the fact that she basically saved the whole campus from your mistake," he paused before adding, "that and the shade." Sophie arched an eyebrow, choosing to ignore his emphasis on the word 'your'. "The shade?" She inquired. "What's a shade?" Keefe snorted from behind her. "Only the creepiest people ever," he remarked. Although the masked man said nothing, he seemed to agree with Keefe as he shuddered a bit. "The shade," he said, speaking the word as if it's a curse itself. "One of the worst Waywards here—he's extremely power and extremely protective of the hydrokinetic. If you want to stay out of trouble here, you'll stay away from him. He probably won't take too kindly to you almost having his sister ejected from the school," he told her. Sophie tried not to gulp in nervousness before asking, "what about the other one?"

At the boobrie dude's confused look, she was quick to add, "the boy who caught me." Though decked out in a very elaborate mask, Sophie could still see the man's eyes widen. He was shuddering as if he'd remembered a very bad memory. "You mean the telepath," he said quietly after a while. Sophie's eyebrows rose slightly. He was a telepath? As if he'd read her mind, the boobrie dude continued to say, "that's not his only ability." At Sophie intent and curious look, he sighed. "Don't expect more out of me, because I can't tell you. We don't know what it is." Sophie furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "How could you not know?" She asked. The man shrugged. "He wouldn't tell us. And even though he tried to just show us it, we'd never really seen anything like it—we don't know what to call it, so we didn't call it anything," he explained. Wracking her memory, Sophie looked at the ability pins (which everyone apparently had to wear) on the vest of the mystery boy, and saw that the man was right: beside the telepath pin, there was a metal question mark.

"He doesn't talk to anyone here—in fact, he barely talks, period. He's also also just about as dangerous as the shade—possibly more," the boobrie dude drew in a deep breath before letting it out. "Whatever you do, DON'T. APPROACH HIM." With that, the man led them out of the room, Sophie and Keefe sharing a glance. Whoever these Waywards were, they were NOT to be messed with.

Unfortunately for herself, Sophie had a bad little habit of trifling into other people's business.

The two were led outside to where they were going to be placed in their divisions. Keefe ended up with the blue coach in the right hemisphere while Sophie ended up with the purple coach in the middle hemisphere: Ambi, they called it. Sophie tried to ignore the withering glares she was receiving from the rest of the Waywards in her division as she had been the reason that they were now skipping lunch. She instead focused on their pins, trying to figure out who had what power. Some of them were easy to identify. She knew a couple of them were empathy, as she recognized the same pin in Keefe's best, which was red with an open book having a small metal heart on the pages. She was pretty sure that the dark green one with a black hand with wires and circuits around it was technopathy. Others were harder to know and she had to guess. She assumed the that the tree with wind-whipped branches meant gusted and the one with a cloudy day with a body half black and half squiggly rainbow lines was a—vanisher? She couldn't know for sure. She did know one thing for sure though—that her teleportation pin was definitely her favourite. It had a starry sky background with a flying alicorn, reminding her of Silveny. The thought of the stinky yet precious animal mad Sophie feel a bit better about her whole situation. She missed the alicorn a lot. She's have to make a transmission to her soon to see how things were holding up.

As she tried to identify the other pins , her eyes caught sight of two Waywards sitting on the bench in front of her as close as they possibly could. Sophie didn't know if that meant they were dating or not, but when she caught sight of a pin with swirling waves and drops of waves on one of them, she realized this must be the hydrokinetic and the shade. Her theories were confirmed when she saw the pin on the other wayward's vest—silver with a black hand reaching from the center. If that didn't mean shade, Sophie had no idea what did. As the coaches began officially began the whole "keep yourself from being hungry" thing, Sophie began to debate whether or not she should try and thank her for saving her from the fire while the shade was with her (which, from the looks of it, seemed like that was going to be a reoccurring thing), or even approach them in general. What would the shade do? What would they hydrokinetic do? Would even talking to people get her ejected? In this school, if sure as hell seemed to be that way.

You need to leave.

Sophie gasped, startled by the sudden sound of a voice in her head—a voice she hadn't heard in her head for a long, long while. People turned their heads and looked at her questioningly but she downcasts her eyes, avoiding their looks even though it was already incredibly obvious that the sudden gasp in the pit of silence had came from her. She waited until people looked away from her before she replied:
Fitz? You're here? Where are you?!
She didn't get an answer though. Sophie tried several more transmissions but soon had to stop when the purple coach came over to here, wondering why she'd gasped so suddenly. Sophie played it off that the hunger had just hit her in an intense way. She didn't seem to believe her very much but left it alone anyways. After she'd gone a fair distance away from her tent, Sophie tried again:
Fitz? Fitz?"
Nothing.

Determined not to give up, Sophie tried to persuade Fitz to talk to her.
Fitz, you don't need to hide anymore. We're all here for you. We all miss you so bad! You need to let us help you.
When that didn't work, she tried:
Look, I know you want information; we have it, okay? Dex made a device that can hack into the Council's archives and we can find out more about you! Just tell me where you are Fitz! We need you to come home— she sighed, I need you to come home.
At first, all she received was silence. Sophie sighed, believing she wasn't going to get an answer out of Fitz, until he replied 152 seconds later—but his answer was not the one she was hoping for.
Sophie, look: you can't help me. No one can help me. So you guys need to stop trying, and LEAVE. I'm serious.
After that, she didn't get anything else from him, despite the large mass of transmissions she sent him. Sophie but her lip, trying to hold in her frustration. So this was where Fitz was hiding? Exillium? How did he even find it without a the beads? Most importantly, why did he want her to leave? Was he avoiding them, again? Sophie refused to let that happen. They've now that she knows where Fitz is, she doesn't want him to ever feel like he needed to leave again. She wanted him back—everyone wanted him back. She needed to stay.

She just hoped Fitz would stay too.

…Jesus flipping christ, this was long.

Listen, I'm reeeaaaaally sorry. I honestly didn't thin I wrote that much. Ugh. I have a serious problem that needs to be fixed (-_(\)
But anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, sorry for writing more than 5000 fucking words, excuse my language, and I hope I didn't just lose a whole lotta viewers with this crapola. But yeah, I hope you managed to enjoy at least some of it. Because lets be real: this added up all together is a piece of garbage.

But whatever. *sighs* Don/t forget to review and I swear I'll try to make less lengthy chapters!

-Someonewhodoesntcare (well she DOES TODAY!)