The Senior techie homeroom, or 6-3 to the general populace of the school, was a five-class walk away from the library. Empty rooms had their desks numbered and arranged for the upcoming unit-tests.

Emilio halted outside the room and switched over to a poker face. Inside, chalk screeched and hammered against a blackboard. Puffs of white dust emerged from the duster being hit against the wall nearby. Emilio pushed the door open. The prefect looked up mid-thrash, his other hand sporting a stub pressed on a square bracket on the board.

He answered to the name of Sean Fitzgerald. Kritika exhaled sharply.

So this was the face that sailed a thousand ships.

Just your teacher's daughter, huh, Kritika?

"Oh, hey Elmo. Where's the teach?" Sean asked. A trick question; a signal prompting the answerer to feed the others sweet lies and prevent mutiny.

"At a meeting," he spouted with practiced ease. "She will be back after lunch."

"Who's this?"

"K. Tamang. Art batch prefect. Wanted to ask you something. Are you busy?"

"Not really. We just have a unit-test tomorrow, and the teach' was supposed to take the last bit of that calculus chapter today. And unlike some geniuses in this class, my class and I need notes to study. So yes," he finished with a tap on the blackboard.

"I'm very busy."

The class went dead silent when the hammering resumed. Fourteen pairs of eyes stared at them; some watery with sleep and others bright and scrutinizing. Kritika gave Emilio an odd look when he lifted his hands in surrender and walked out.

"I'll be outside if you need anything."

She turned on her heels to face the boy.

"Oh-kay. Could you spare me a few minutes of your time?"

"No."

"Could you tell me where Hera is?"

He ran a hand through his caramel brown hair, eyes still on the numerals and their exponents.

"I don't know."

"Oh, I'm sorry, but how did she leave the class without the class prefect and her boyfriend knowing where she went?"

"I don't know and I don't care. Now leave."

She decided to bribe the class while she whisper-narrated the library incident to him. Sean thankfully paid more attention to her voice than he did to her agitated hands.

She signed.

Cooperate. Mint with a hole.

She carefully flashed a green roll of Polo mints from her skirt pocket when she reached for her handkerchief. She wiped the chalk off her face and stole a glance at the class. Sean was still glaring at the square bracket.

A backbencher signed back as discretely as possible.

Ground. Catfight.

Oh, so it's that little tussle.

Kritika nodded. She dropped the roll of mints on her shoe and kicked it under a front-bencher's desk. The rest was a top-secret mission undertaken by a plant tendril with high precision. The backbencher shot her a thumbs-up as the vine resurfaced with the Polo in its coils.

"I'll keep an eye on the library. I wish I knew where Hera is, I'm sorry. I hope you can get an adult up here in the meantime."

"Thanks anyway, Sean. Just be careful around that thing."

She mouthed a thanks to the backbencher and walked out. Even Sean's hideous chalk-screeching couldn't hide the tiny scoff that emerged from his mouth.

Emilio popped the mint he was offered into his mouth and asked her about the girl.

"Anaikos versus Hamada, the royal rumble! The queens battle it out for the crown of Camur Academy! School ground as usual."

"Of all the times to fight each other. How did you get the guy to tell you this?"

⑅ ♾️ ⑅

The Irushin trees had orbs made of blue sap stuck on their white bark. A mature, navy blue Irushin orb rested in the girl's palm, as she meditated on a stone bench. Her eyes were closed to block out visual stimuli.

The orb turned the trickle of solar energy she was used to soaking up into a surge.

The flow relaxed her tired muscles; it alternated pleasantly with the cool sea breeze. She felt the tall honey-grasses around the bench tickle her calf. She inhaled the garden air, carrying the aroma of exotic herbs. The Gardening Club had a natural tryst with the Medical room.

If she had resorted to simple sunbathing as Emilio had, she wouldn't even have hit one hundred with twelve hours of exposure.

Pyrokinects and electrokinects had certain unfair perks that way.

Emilio had finished in a flash and was whistling a tune. Further away, she could hear the cheers, shouts, and screams from an ongoing football match.

You don't even know her element now, huh?

Some of us don't want to be associated with her or her family again.

Some of us have worked hard to regain our parents' trust.

She wouldn't have been caught if you had been a better friend.

She wouldn't have dragged me down that path if she had been a better friend.

Wonder if that idiot has informed Lamai that he was keeping an eye on the Happy. Does he think defending Hera would make her fall in love with him?

I hope he gets hugged.

She opened her eyes to the two hundredth count. The orb vaporised in her palm into blue gas and seeped into the atmosphere, smelling like maple syrup. Her energy pool was full.

Emilio whistled as someone scored a goal, and the crowd erupted into celebration.

"There are twelve different sections on the ground right now. Hurry up already, Kay!"

"I'm right here," she spoke from his right.

"Gah!"

"Sorry. What's the score?"

"Two to three. Rizal's gonna lose it when he sees this. We have all six sections of second-year here, and three of the fifth-years, I think. Did the prefects not understand what he had meant by supervision?"

"Who versus who?"

"Uh, 5-2 versus 5-3. The battle of the junior sciences."

The football was scissor-kicked into the abdomen of a defender. The crowd booed. The referee, a ninth-grader blew the whistle and whipped out a red card.

"Come on, let's find her," he said, with a tug on her jacket sleeve.

The striker socked the referee in the jaw in a flash. Even if the referee had seen it coming there was no window for evasion. He stumbled back, clutching his mandible and bleeding at the mouth.

"Ooh!" went the crowd. The sixth-years winced and moved to the referee's aid. A wall of children blocked them, refusing to move when Kritika tried to elbow through.

The referee staggered to the sidelines but was manhandled back in by the striker. Judging from the smiles she saw on their faces, she noticed that most of the spectators were here exclusively for the fistfight.

This little terrorist has upped his games to the next tier, huh? Impressive. Very impressive.

The striker threw him on the ground, lifted his arms, and swiveled. The crowd jumped back, as blades of ice burst through the ground, demarcating a circumference for the arena.

"Duel, duel, duel!"

Some of the boys they had wrestled behind them were trying to regain their posts. The referee struggled to get back up. The striker summoned a spiked knuckle-ring made of ice on his fist. The punch struck the referee across his cheek, the spikes raking across the flesh.

"Emilio, we need to get in th–"

"This is not our fight. We have a job to do, and we're doing that. Come on already."

Kritika started, her nostrils flaring, "Hey!"

"There's a goddamn umbrocrafted locked up in the library, remember? For all we know, just one of them was enough to do all this. What would happen if there were a bunch of those guys?"

⑅ ♾️ ⑅