11/21/15

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans or anything else I may mention

Cursed

Chapter 6: Preparations

That night Jade and I rush through our worksheets, but not for our normal reason (wanting time to play). We go to bed super early, and set the alarm for 2 hours before we normally do. We don't even have our nightly tradition of telling stories until we fall asleep. We just go right to bed.

When we wake up early today, it doesn't bother us as much as it normally would have. Quiet as mice, we go through a sped-up version of our normal morning routine (luckily without my bed breaking, this time) and run out the door and into the janitors closet down the hall where Roy is waiting for us.

"Plan worked like a charm," Roy says, turning on the light switch. "Baran didn't even hear me."

I smirk. "Neither did Jade, at first."

"Hey!" Jade snaps. "I did too hear you! How else would I be standing here?"

We laugh as she crosses her arms. "Calm down, it's just a joke."

"Sure, fine. But do you wanna hear a better joke?" she asks. We nod our heads. "Okay, here it goes. Why did the little boy drop his ice cream? Because he was hit by a bus!"

I don't know how to respond to that, so I just nod my head. "Okaaay then. Roy, did you ask one of the older students how long we have 'til Headmistress wakes up?"

Roy nods his head. "If Baran and Selinda are right, we've got 30 minutes. But if Fang is right we've got at least an hour."

"Okay, let's be on the safe side and trust the siblings. We don't know Fang that well- he might be trying to get us in trouble." I say.

Jade opens the door. "If we've only got half an hour, shouldn't we hurry up?"

"Right. Now, does everyone remember the plan?"

"Get in, find the address to Darkway Prep, and get out. Piece of cake," Roy says. "Lead the way. You're pretty good at this leadership stuff."

"What can I say? I have a little sister. It's only natural that I'm so bossy," I shrug. Jade holds open the door as we walk through it. "So, are we leaving now or tonight?"

Jade frowns. "Why are we deciding? You're the leader."

"I'm just seeing if you guys are ready. If not, we can wait," I explain.

Jade seems to think it over before saying, "I'm ready if Roy is."

"You stole my answer," Roy grumbles. "I guess this means we're leaving now, huh?"

"Sounds like a plan," I say as we turn the corner.

We finally make it to the Headmistress's office. Jade picks the lock (apparently her mysteriously shady friend Lian taught her how) and we sneak in. I start looking in desk drawers while Jade starts searching through the file cabinets. Roy sits down at the desk and turns on the computer. Finally, Jade whispers a quiet, "I found it!"

She grabs the file as Roy starts shutting off the computer. I hear footsteps from down the hall and jump behind Jade, hoping that her powers can shield me somehow. Luckily, they don't open the door. Jade disappears, only to reappear a few seconds later.

"Angela," she whispers. "She must've noticed we weren't in our room when she went to booby trap it or something. Good thing we took our backpacks with us again."

I take a deep breath and ask, "Can I see that file now?"

Jade nods and hands it to me. Her and Roy look over my shoulder as I review the location. Roy is apparently pretty good at reading a map, and there happens to be one in the kitchen, so reaching Darkway shouldn't be too hard. We can also grab food from the kitchen while we're getting the map. In other words, we're good to go. We should be able to leave immediately.

We run down the hall, careful to avoid Angela. When we reach the kitchen, Jade tears down the map as I start raiding the cabinets. I completely forget about Roy until I hear him ask, "Hey, why does the light on the stove say "do not touch" if it isn't on?"

"I don't know, that thing takes a while to shut off," I shrug. I've been in here before because I was incredibly bored one day and I wanted to help the chefs out. They put me in charge of stirring the mac and cheese until the cheese melted, so I know enough about the stove to know that it can take quite a few hours to shut off. I guess this means someone was in here earlier. Or someone's using the kitchen, and they just left for a minute. We'll just have to be careful on the way out.

"Do not touch, huh? I'll show them! I'm gonna touch it."

"Jade no!"

Before I can react, Jade has already yelled "TOUCH!" and slammed her entire hand on the burner. A loud scream splits through the air. I drop the bananas I was holding and run to her, but Roy reaches her first. Why does she always do this to us?

"Turn on cold water! Hurry!" Roy snaps.

I nod my head and turn on the tap. Holding my hand under the water, I wait until it's plenty cold before telling him it's ready. Jade sobs as she runs the cold water over her hand, whimpering about how bad of an idea that was and how sorry she is. Roy grabs a first aid kit while I finish packing up the food. Over the past few months, I've learned that Jade and Roy can pretty much be counted on to do something stupid like this every week. Okay, fine, I do stupid stuff too. Although it bothered me at first, I've learned to deal with it. We'll put a Band-Aid on that thing when we put some distance between us and the HIVE.

I listen for a moment before hearing footsteps from down the hall. Drat, Jade's scream must've got someone's attention. I zip up my backpack as fast as I can and gently shock Roy in the leg to get his attention. He turns off the water, thus making Jade a little mad, but she understands when he points to the emergency exit. I grab our three backpacks and the file, Jade gets some wet paper towels to wrap her hand in, and Roy scoops her up in his arms. We run out the door as fast as we can while still being quiet. Hopefully they didn't see us. Otherwise, we'll be in an insane amount of trouble if this plan fails.

After running for a while, Roy finally complains, "Can we stop now? I'm getting tired. Jade needs to cut down on the cupcakes."

"Never!" Jade announces. "Plus I'm actually right at the average weight for my age, so ha! And anyways, you're the one who chose to carry me. My hand is hurt, not my legs."

Roy rolls his eyes and sets her on the ground. "Gee, I was just giving you time to get your hand wrapped up. That's what I get for being nice, huh?"

Jade grins. "Well, it was sweet of you, but we have other things to worry about right now. Mallory, do you know where we're going?"

I look around the city streets and hand Roy his backpack. "It looks like we're on Main Street in Split City. Roy, can you tell us where we need to go next?"

Roy unzips his backpack and pulls out the map. I hand him the file and he looks both of them over before announcing, "If the map's right, we're only a couple hours away."

"Good, then we'll be back soon, right?"

Roy frowns. "We should be, but... what if we get caught?"

I copy his frown. I hadn't thought of that.

"Well, we'll just have to hope I'm lucky for once."

…

Hi again! Ugh, I'm so, so, so sorry that it took so long to get this posted. Honestly I'm just so lazy and I have the worst Tumblr addiction. I've been meaning to start only going on there on certain days or under certain circumstances, but I keep saying I will and never committing to it. My NaNoWriMo word count is suffering for it, too. If I can get 25,000 words I'll consider it good at this point.

[EDIT: This chapter is dedicated to my cat, Silkie, who died the day I originally posted it. The original epitaph I wrote for him has been removed, since it was very raw and personal as it was written during a time of grief. He was very loved and I still miss him to this day, but my words at the time were a bit too emotionally vulnerable if that makes any sense. I did keep a copy for my personal reference, though.]

Anyways, again I'm sorry for being so angsty. Thank you everyone who's reading for putting up with my not-updating crap, and for all of those who have followed, reviewed, and added this story to your favorites. You guys are awesome!

If you've got any questions about the story, feel free to ask! If they're too spoiler-ish, I might not answer them, but you never know. It'll probably depend on how chatty I'm feeling come time to post the next chapter (which I'm hoping to do next Saturday, along with updating the next chapter of my Johanna centric Hunger Games story- speaking of The Hunger Games, the new movie is fantastic!).

Quote of the day! (even though I'm sure Cheshire's twisted joke at the beginning of the chapter could've counted as one if I wanted it to)

"Pull the lever Kronk! ….WRONG LEVER! Why do we even have that lever?!" –The Emperor's New Groove, Yzma

Evil beware: we have waffles,

-Spectrobes Princess