Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 20th May 2022
Tom Lawrence adjusted his cap. Looked at his clipboard. Looked at his students.
This was ordinarily when he'd bark out orders, tell everyone what the sport or exercise of the day was, and get them hopping.
At the moment, though, he was feeling caught a little flat-footed. Because what he'd seen yesterday was throwing him for an absolute loop/. Jim Lake wielding a sword almost as big as he was? Toby Domzalski, of all people, swinging a huge hammer like it weighed nothing? And the Nuñez girl, who'd also been wearing armor and doing something freaky with magic.
Then there were the Tarrons...! Who were apparently not even human? He'd listened to Steve go on dreamily about Aja for what seemed like hours last night, and while Thomas liked her gumption, as well as the fact that even with only two arms she was the fastest rope-climber he'd ever seen, what did he even know about teaching gym to aliens?
"Right. Dodge ball!" he decided. Which had not been on his lesson plan for the day, but was an easy quick solution. "Team leaders Steven Palchuk, and... uh." He scanned the class even as Steve punched the air, whooping. Tom's gaze caught on one figure, standing calmly, arms crossed, stance balanced. Waiting.
He'd been the one calling the shots at the planetarium. And like Domzalski, he was in the running for most improved in physical education this year.
All right, the kid wanted to be a team leader? He could be a team leader.
"Jim Lake!" Tom said, before he could double-guess himself. "You're up."
That broke Lake's calm expression. "What?" the boy asked, clearly surprised, even as Domzalski patted him on the back.
"Tough to be the leader, Jimbo," the fat kid said. And, all right, so maybe Tom hadn't ever picked him as a team leader before. But there'd been nothing, last year or this one, that had ever indicated he'd be good at it.
Well, Tom thought. Let's see what he's made of.
"Thanks, Tobes." Jim pushed forward and went to stand by Steve so they could each choose their teammates.
Steve grinned broadly. "Alright! I get to go first. I pick... Aja!"
The girl grinned to match him, jogging over to stand by Steve.
"Toby," Jim chose.
"Uh... Krel," Steve picked next.
Tom blew his whistle. "Nope! No twins on the same team," he objected.
"What?" Steve demanded.
"School policy," he told his stepson-to-be. "Rightfully, these two shouldn't even be in the same class, but..." He scratched his cap and shrugged.
Krel shrugged too and walked over to stand by Toby. "Since I am apparently on your team."
"We are not twins," protested Aja.
"Doesn't matter," Tom said. "Siblings are to be separated to keep them from getting up to trouble."
"Has he met us?" Krel muttered.
"Wait, you guys aren't twins?" Domzalski asked him. "Is this one of those nine-months-difference things?"
"No." Krel crossed his arms. "Aja and I are the same age."
"Then...?"
"We have a brother."
"Wait, you guys are triplets?" Steve demanded.
Aja shrugged. "Our older brother ran away from home many keltons ago. It is part of why Mama and Papa always kept Krel and I on a 'short leash'."
"Aja and I still get coded messages from him once in a while," Krel added. "He is in an apprenticeship to become a space pirate."
"Whaaaa..." Domzalski stared at him.
"You know, every time I think you guys can't get weirder, you take it up a level," said Lake. "Steve, it's still your turn to pick."
"Um." Steve scanned the class.
Aja put her hand on his arm. "Let me."
"Uh, okay." He relinquished choice to her.
Aja's eyes narrowed. "Claire."
Grinning, Nuñez blew a kiss to Lake as she walked. He looked offended by Aja stealing out his girlfriend out from under him.
"And I think it is our turn again, so... Darci."
"Yes!" The girl jogged over to the others.
"Oh, you're on, Aja." Lake's eyes narrowed. "Eli."
"Yes!" Pepperjack fist-pumped. "I'm not last!"
Steve gaped. "You can't steal my Creepslaying partner from me!" he complained.
"Should've picked him first, then," Lake advised with a smirk. "Aja, your turn."
Despite Archie's count at breakfast, Hisirdoux really hadn't been expecting any of Arcadia's other wizards to be on his side, much less come to his rescue. He wondered for an instant if he'd cracked his head too hard against the pavement. Raising a hand to his helmet, he found a deep gouge along one side and winced. Not the best evidence for not having a concussion, but on the other hand, he'd never been so deeply grateful to Barbara Lake for being right about safety gear. He'd be in considerably more trouble if it had been his skull getting that banged up.
"Jackson Overland. It's been a while," Archie murmured to the winter mage as Douxie unbuckled his helmet and shed it.
Jack flashed the dragon a grin. "Sorry. Our social circles don't overlap much."
Archie shuddered. "You hang around with too many screaming children," he said. Then, hearing a renewed rustle behind them, he whipped around in mid-air and spat fire at the wizard who had, once again, climbed out of the rosebushes. A shriek was the gratifying response, as the man's trousers caught fire and he fought against it fruitlessly, trying and failing to beat the flames out with his hands. "Sneak attack my familiar, will you?" Archie demanded.
"Now, now, don't kill him, Arch," Douxie said. "We need them on our side."
"There is no point in keeping fools alive," Archie informed him primly, but conceded the point and nodded to Jack.
Jack waved the hand holding his staff and summoned a load of magic snow, one of the few things guaranteed to effortlessly put out magic fire, atop the screaming wizard. Its weight knocked him to the ground. Between the magic flames and California's ambient heat, the snow melted to a puddle almost instantly. But it had done its work. The man, his blackened garments now doing precious little to keep him modest, and burn marks already blistering his exposed legs, looked up at Archibald, eyes wide in fear. "You'll stay there, if you know what's good for you," Archie informed him. Slowly, the man nodded.
Caleb and his two cronies, meanwhile, had power dripping off them; Douxie could see it better than probably anyone save Merlin would be able to, but the display was clearly visible in the standard spectrum as well, given how Jack was raising eyebrows at it.
It was probably meant to be impressive.
But with Archie at his back, Douxie had fought specterghasts, nyarlagroths, and zombie dire wolves. Not to mention the Arcane Order. Three wizards, none of them over a century old... He shook his head. "Children," Douxie said, and drew deep into his own power, letting his magic well up and bubble to the surface. He felt his tattoos come to life, glowing bright blue with his magic. His vambrace lit up, the runes spinning untouched.
Jack, wary, leaned away from him.
Douxie smirked, drawing three quick spells into being by memory alone. He juggled them in his right hand, the pattern of motion effortless. He might not yet be a master, but he'd been studying magic across the world for a very long time. Breadth and depth. Versatility of knowledge. "Do you really want to challenge me?" he asked. "I survived Arthur. I survived the witch hunts. I survived nine hundred years of this world doing its best to get rid of me. You're, what, thirty-five, Caleb?"
"Forty," the man bristled. He didn't appear a day over twenty-five, and probably never would.
The other two wizards, however, were beginning to look nervous. They couldn't be much older than Caleb. But while it wasn't necessarily a universal truth that the older a wizard was, the more powerful they were, it was damned near one. The longer you practiced anything, the better you got at it.
Douxie was over nine hundred. Jack was over three hundred. And Archie was older than the both of them put together.
Before the three wizards could make a move, Douxie flung his runic circles at them. "Radicatus."
It was a variant on lignum aeternum. The moment the spells hit-and they did, all three; none of them dodged fast enough-the ground flared bright blue under the wizards, and they suddenly couldn't move their feet. The girl tried, and ended up flailing before falling on her ass. Which also adhered to the ground. She put her hands to the asphalt, to try to push herself up, and... "Big mistake," Douxie told her. Her eyes widened as she took his meaning. Her hands were now trapped too. She was about as helpless as a wizard could get.
Next to him, Jack gave a low whistle. "Nice."
"Jack of all forms, master of none," Douxie said with a self-deprecating shrug.
Jack, who was rather Douxie's opposite in that he was a complete master of winter magic but unable to bend his power to any other forms of magic, rolled his eyes. "I do know the rest of that saying, you know."
"The second half is a modern appendation," Archie informed him.
"Regardless," Douxie interrupted, returning their attention to the situation at hand. "I'm curious, Caleb," he said, since Caleb did seem to be the ringleader of sorts. "What did you think you'd manage, doing this?"
"I can still fry you," Caleb threatened.
"Ooh, big words from a man who's got his boots glued to the floor," jeered Jack.
Caleb glared at him.
"Do you really think your piddly sparks could get through my shields?" Douxie asked, indicating with a wave the glowing tattoos that peeked out from his collar, from the rolled-up cuffs of his sleeves, even through the new rips and tears in his clothing.
"You're not taking us down with you!" the girl sat on the ground snapped.
"I'm not taking you anywhere," he told her. "You're the one trying to murder a fellow wizard in plain sight." Douxie gestured impatiently to all the suburban houses around them. "Really smart."
Her face reddened.
Douxie sighed, suddenly more irritated than anything. "Children," he muttered again.
Aja and Lake rapidly picked teammates, one after another, until everyone was chosen. The two teams separated, going to either side of the half-court and arming themselves with the standard school-supplied red balls. "All right," Tom said, eyeing both sets of teenagers. "I want a nice clean game." Stepping back, he blew his whistle, signaling for the game to begin.
Balls flew through the air like missiles, some smacking into their targets right away ("Aw, knuckles!" Longhannon complained, making her way over to the bleachers) and others being dodged with ease.
"Suck it, Logan!" Seamus Johnson yelled, throwing his ball at his friend.
"Bite me, Seamus!" the Black boy yelled back, twisting out of the way. Normally the two of them were on the same side, teaming up with Steve to take out the weaker kids, but...
"You know, I kind of like it this way," Tom muttered to himself, nodding. Picking Lake as the other captain had resulted in much more balanced teams than usual.
That said, within five minutes, everyone who hadn't been wielding a weapon at the science fair was sitting on the bleachers. "Ugh, fine, whatever," Wang said, walking over to the bleachers. She was joined there shortly by Scott (Domzalski had taken her out with a beautiful blindside throw, calling "Sorry, Darci!" even as she took the hit), then by Pepperjack ("But Steve! What about our partnership?" "All's fair in love and dodge ball, Pepperjack!") Only Steve, Nuñez, Lake, Domzalski, and the Tarrons were left.
Now this is when it gets interesting, Tom thought. He crossed his arms and settled in to watch.
Lake locked eyes with Aja. They each held a ball. He grinned. "No holds barred?" he asked.
She grinned back, a fierce, feral thing. Tom wiped his eyes, feeling somehow proud of her. "No holds," she agreed, and launched herself into the air, turning blue and four-armed in a flash, flinging her ball at him.
Lake drew his sword out of nowhere and swatted the red ball away with the flat of the blade.
"Oh, are we doing weapons now?" Steve asked. "Wait a second, I don't have any weapons!"
"Sucks to be you." Krel went blue like his sister, lobbing his ball at Steve. Steve dodged it, only to get hit by a second, previously unseen ball wielded by Domzalski.
"Palchuk, you're out!" Tom called.
"Oh, you conspire to take out my consort?" Aja called to her brother. "I call insult, Krel Tarron!"
"I'll certainly call your consort something," he retorted, upper arms out to either side as he watched for an opening, ball held between his lower hands. "Eat this, Aja!"
She managed to flip out of the way of his throw, catch his ball, and whip around, returning it at lightning speed. "Ha!" she called as her ball hit her brother on the leg. "You eat it, Krel!"
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Fine, I am out," he groused, and walked over to join the others on the bleachers. Few of the students even gave him a second glance as he sat down, still multi-armed and blue. Only Seamus Johnson and Logan Marcus, Tom noted, seemed wary of the alien boy.
"Two on two," Domzalski said, glowing hammer in his hands. He glanced at his best friend. "We got this, Jimbo."
"I wouldn't be so sure," the other boy muttered, eyeing Aja, who now held a ball in each of her four hands, and Nuñez, who held only one in hers, but was smirking.
Nuñez reached back, winding up like a pitcher for an overhand throw, and hurled her ball with force into a small black hole that appeared out of nowhere.
The ball reappeared out of another black hole a foot in front of Domzalski's face, smacking into him and knocking him down. He fell to the ground groaning, holding his forehead.
"Sorry, Toby!" she called.
He waved a hand from the floor. "No, no, I'm good," he said.
Aja, meanwhile, had used the distraction of Nuñez's attack to launch her own, all four balls flying at once toward Lake.
Sword in hand, he leapt over one. Barrel-rolled away from another. Managed to bat away the third with his free hand. With the flat of his sword, he hit the last one back-
-And it slammed right into Aja's stomach. "Oof," she said as she rocked from the force of the blow, one hand coming to cover the point of contact. "That was quite a hit." She looked up, her eyes meeting Lake's. Her mouth quirked up in a smile. "This victory is yours, Lake hunting boy. Next time, it will be mine."
"Sure, Aja," he said with an easy smile as she and Domzalski walked off toward the bleachers, each of them taking a seat next to their significant others.
Leaving Lake facing his significant other.
"Not going to go easy on you, Claire," he warned.
She leaned forward, adjusting her stance. "You think I want you to?" she asked, and flung her ball through another portal.
Lake braced for it to come at him from in front, like it had for Domzalski.
Only for her black hole to open behind him. The red ball shot out, slamming into his shoulder.
"What?" Lake asked brilliantly, looking up from where he'd been knocked to the ground.
Nuñez laughed against their classmates' cheering as she walked over and helped pull him to his feet. His sword vanished. "Gotcha, hero."
"Remind me to never fight against you," he told her, taking her hands in his. "You're sneaky."
She pressed a kiss to his cheek. "You'll never have to," she promised.
"All right, break it up!" Tom said, walking into the middle of the gym. "Good dodge ball, everyone. And now that you're all warmed up, it's time to, uh, run some laps." His pronouncement was met with a collective groan from his students. "All right, get to it, everyone! Yes, including you, Pepperjack."
"But I have an inhaler," the boy protested.
"Then keep it with you, and get walking."
Douxie turned his attention back to Caleb. "Have you even asked why I'm doing what I'm doing? Or have you just decided I'm going senile and suicidal?"
"Does it matter?" Caleb snapped.
"Oh, it matters very much." Douxie stalked forward, walking around Caleb, circling him. It clearly made the younger wizard nervous not to be able to see him, which was very much the point; Caleb kept twisting side-to-side, trying to keep eyes on Douxie. His shifting motion made him have to fight to keep his balance lest he fall and, like his fellow hedgewizard, get more of him stuck to the ground. "You see, while you're being petty and plotting daylight murders, I'm trying to find a way to keep the Arcane Order, who are pissed at humanity, from slaughtering us all by causing the end of the world."
"I thought the Arcane Order was a myth." Jack leaned forward, supporting his weight on his staff. He seemed the picture of careless curiosity. It was a veneer; Douxie was well acquainted with the type of posturing that redirected your audience, made them look anywhere but at the prize. Jack wanted to look harmless compared to Hisirdoux.
Good cop, bad cop, Douxie thought, biting back a smirk. He wasn't unfamiliar with the game; he just usually played the other side of it, with Archie being the oppressor.
"Oh, I'm afraid they're very much real," Archie corrected him.
"The Order," Douxie continued, for the edification of his captive audience, "feels that the balance between man and magic has become irrevocably lost. So they want to wipe the whole planet clean and start anew."
"What, like global warming?" the other man, Caleb's crony, asked.
Douxie snorted. "Nothing so glacial. No, we're talking the sudden, very horrifying, very painful end of all life on this planet. Seas boiling, sky falling, all that that lovely biblical stuff."
"Oh, Judgement Day!" Jack chirped. "Got it."
Archie sniffed. "The only judgement that will be coming will be that of two biased gods."
"So, anyway!" Douxie interrupted them. "Seeing as the only way to fight against ticked off deities is to give them what they want, I've got the lovely task of trying to restore that balance. And you gents are really not helping."
Caleb snorted. "That says we should even believe you."
Douxie stopped circling and leaned in close. "Mate, I've seen stuff that would give you nightmares. I don't care if you believe me or not." His eyes narrowed. "Either help me save the planet, or stay out of my way." He stepped back. "Consider this fair warning. Interfere with me and mine at your own risk. Try me again, and I'll seal your magic."
Caleb paled. "That's impossible."
"Is it?" Douxie quirked a smile at him. "You'd know if you'd studied." He turned and sauntered away.
Voltage splashed off his back, but he hadn't lied; his shields, engraved into his very flesh with blood and needle and magic, outclassed Caleb's repeated magic attacks. Interestingly, there were no attacks from the other wizard; just from Caleb.
Picking up his broom, Douxie dusted it off and tsked at the chips and splinters. "Well, this'll need some duct tape," he said, testing a crack with his hands. The shaft flexed, but didn't break. Yet.
"It might be easier to buy a new one," Archie opined.
"Nah, this'll get me where I'm going," Douxie told his familiar, and levitated the broom.
"Hey!" the girl called to him. "You can't leave us stuck like this!"
He turned to look at her. "Do you really think I'm stupid enough to release all you murderous bints while I'm still here?"
She flinched, and looked almost ashamed.
"The spell will fade in a bit," Douxie told her, because he was practical but not cruel. He glanced at Rosebush Guy, whose expression was trending toward glazed. Douxie sighed and turned around. "Hey, you," he called to Caleb's still-unnamed fourth. "You might want to call 911 for your friend here."
"We're riding brooms in broad daylight?" Jack asked even as Douxie stepped up.
"We are riding a broom in broad daylight," Archie informed him, jumping onto the somewhat thinned remains of the bristles. "You may do as you choose."
"Um." Jack looked at the ground, then back up. "Can I come with you?" he asked. He sounded so much like a kid asking can I play with you that Douxie had to laugh.
"Sure," he said, and had to blink as Jack lit up, hopping onto his staff and flying a tight loop-de-loop of exuberance. Apparently his staff doubled as a broomstick. Interesting.
"So where are we going?" Jack asked.
"Come on." Douxie inclined his head, indicating for Jack to follow, and flew a fair way down the street before letting Jack catch up. "Ever been down to Trollmarket?"
Jack's eyes widened. "No." He sounded gleeful at the possibility.
"Ugh." Archie put a paw over his eyes. "Do not make trouble for the residents," he warned.
"Scout's honor," Jack promised. Followed by, "So what's with the light-up tattoos?"
Tom blew his whistle at five minutes to changing time. "All right, everyone! Back to the bleachers. I want to talk with you all. Hustle, Pepperjack, hustle!"
He went over what he wanted to say as the class gathered back on the bench seats. He knew he wasn't the smartest teacher at the school, not with Leonora in the running. He wasn't as eloquent as Walter. Heck, even Karl spoke like four languages fluently! But Tom had become a teacher because he thought that /smarts/ weren't the most important trait in a teacher, or, heck, even a student! What was important was heart.
And having a healthy body to support a healthy mind was important too.
So, he might not have been one of the school's great minds, but Tom knew there were some things that mattered more than that.
"All right, settle down," he told his students. "Now, I've got something I want to say to you all." He paused, waiting until he got silence. "I know some of you have got some shocking, uh, revelations this week. You've found out that your classmates aren't really who you thought they were," he said, looking at Lake and Domzalski. "Or what you thought they were," he said, with a glance at Nuñez, who was a witch or something. Oh, crud, he was going to have to ask her what the right word for her was, wasn't he? Because he didn't want to be offensive. And next to Nuñez sat the Tarrons, who looked human again. "And some of them come from, uh, a lot farther away than you thought. But I want you all to know that that doesn't make any difference, and anyone who says it does is full of bull, um, pucky."
Seamus Johnson frowned sullenly. Logan Marcus looked less sure.
"Look, kids," Tom said, taking his cap off. "The world's a big, scary place, and high school's here to prepare you to deal with it. Once you get out of here, there're going to be a lot of people who don't want you to succeed, no matter who you are or what you look like. So you guys got to be able to depend on each other. Even if you think you hate each other, even if you think there's no way you can be friends. Just try, okay? Because you never know whose help you might need someday."
Steve clapped and whooped. "Great talk, Coach!"
Tom put his hat back on and blew his whistle. "Okay, class dismissed. Hit the showers! See you all in health class."
Author's Note: Aja and Krel having a brother who ran away to be a space pirate is something HoneyxMonkey came up with on her Discord server and allowed me to use here. It stemmed from Aja saying, in Rise of the Titans, that Akiridion pregnancies resulted in three to five children. Obviously she and Steve had more (thus the humans being incredibly fertile thing in the last chapter), but it also set people wondering... if it's usually three to five babies, why is there only her and Krel? :) Also to note, this chapter reminded me how much I hate making OCs (Caleb and his cronies) and why in fanfiction I'd much rather port in characters like Hiccup and Jack and bend their backstories to suit the story's needs. I'm so glad to hear that you all liked me bringing Jack in as much as you liked Hiccup being added to this universe!
