Rising Shards

I had a few run ins before with Ema Kari, the skater with the half buzzcut that had “EMA” crudely shaved in there, and Snake Riley, the fennec fox Kanibari that had a shirt that said “STABYOU” on it that I hoped was just a band shirt. One ended with me getting chased by them through a garden on campus, another they helped us get Feral Flu to get out of a presentation.

“What should we do?” Oka asked.

“We paid them for Feral Flu bites, maybe they have it again,” Kalei said. “Pay them and they leave. I do wanna get out of class. But…the hairballs.”

“I’d like a method that doesn’t involve us parting with our money.” Lillia said. “Or getting Feral Flu.”

“I would be curious to see what you’d look like with Feral Flu though,” Oka said. “And…cat Zeta again…”

“I—I can handle this,” I said. “I’ve talked to them the most.”

“Go Zeta!” Oka said. “Show them who’s boss!”

On wobbly feet motivated by a supportive girlfriend, I approached Ema and Snake, who were eyeing the star projector controls.

“Heyyyy,” I said, leaning on the desk with an elbow. “Ema and Snake. What’s…going on?”

“Oh. Hey.” Ema said, clearly having no memory of me at all.

“We were just thinking of burning some stuff,” Snake said. “And then we were thinking like.”

“There’s a lot of paper in libraries.” Ema said.

“Uh huh,” Snake said. “And paper burns real good. You feel me?”

I had to make an immediate, stern, and commanding impact to solve this situation if I was going to on my own. I had to say something that was dumb enough for them to understand, but something that could also get them to leave without trying to beat me up.

“Ema, you should leave.” I said. “Snake, you too. There’s…better stuff to burn outside?”

I wasn’t sure if they were immediately gonna start chasing me again, but instead they just laughed.

“Uh. No.” Snake said. “Where else are we gonna get a ton of paper?”

This wasn’t good. I probably should have just ran for help from a teacher as I’d just heard the two threaten to do some casual arson, but instead my jelly legs brought me back from the table.

“I uh, couldn’t get them to uh,” I said, sitting down in my failure. “Leave…”

“Wow Zeta, now that’s the kind of boss I’d really want to follow, a true leader.” Kalei said.

“Shut up!” I hissed. “We have to get them to leave. They said they wanna light stuff on fire.”

Lillia rose, brushing her hair before striding over to the chuckling duo. The strides became a more determined march as she got closer.

“Oh boy,” Oka said. “I’ve only seen her do that walk a few times before.”

“Is that a bad walk?” I asked.

“For us? No. For them?” Oka said. Her eyes narrowed. "Actually, it's great for me, because I just remembered they're on my revenge list..."

"Y-your revenge list?" I asked.

"Oh! Did I say that out loud?" Oka asked. "Remember the tail stomp they did to you?"

I could instantly remember the exact pain of them stomping on my tail at Rain's command. That pain memory was replaced with pride that Oka not only remembered, but wanted justice for it. "Yes, unfortunately. Aww, you wanna get revenge for me?"

"Of course! That's like my whole revenge list!" Oka said.

"If you guys would stop talking about Oka's weird revenge list, you'd actually see Lillia enact your revenge or whatever." Kalei said.

"Oh! Right!" Oka said.

Lillia stood about a foot away from the two. She wasn’t taller than either of them but carried herself like she was.

“If you’re interested in fire, allow me to oblige,” Lillia suddenly let out a burst of fire breath that got inches away from Ema and Snake. “Please vacate the premises or I’ll burn you until the ashes of the ashes left of you are such scattered dust that no one will be any the wiser you ever were here.”

Snake and Ema blinked.

“Did you hear me, or do I have to repeat myself?” Lillia asked.

“Right…we’re gonna…” Snake said, grabbing a stunned Ema and heading back for the entrance.

Lillia returned to the table like she didn’t just do that.

“Holy crap, did Lillia just like threaten to literally kill Ema Kari and Snake Riley?” Kalei asked.

“I wasn’t actually going to, obviously,” Lillia said. “From my tests, my flame breath can only severely burn someone. But adding flavorful verbiage to enhance something is a skill of any actor.”

“Um…” I said, not sure how Lillia’s tests showed her that she could ‘only’ severely burn someone. “Thank you. I didn’t know what to do there at all.”

“Of course,” Lillia said. She did a faux strike towards Oka, seemingly to put an exclamation point on her power. “Hup. Kill shot.”

Oka sighed. “Five points.”

“Now that all that’s taken care of, shall we get back to these pens?” Lillia asked.

We got back to our pen testing, gradually gamifying the proceedings, giving ourselves points that we weren’t really tracking for each pen we successfully dropped in the bin.

“Wait, wait!” Kalei said. “Did we all just get duds?”

“I think so?” Oka asked.

“Let’s throw them all at once!” Kalei said. “First to make it gets fifteen points, last in has to…something. I dunno.”

“Buy a book!” Oka said. “For the winner!”

“A book?” Kalei said. “Use money for a book?”

“Don’t question it,” Lillia said. “There’s a book I want that one of you will buy for me. Let’s do this. On three.”

“Wait, I’m not ready!” I said, fumbling my pen around.

“Three…” Lillia said. “Two…”

We all prepared our throws the best we could at the garbage can.

“One!”

All four pens were thrown at once. I expected Kalei’s to make it first, but they all arced together, colliding over the top of the bin.

“Aw, I couldn’t tell what—” Kalei started before something bizarre cut her off.

The pens continued to hang in midair, jumbling around for a bit without falling, which shouldn’t have been possible. Then, in a flash, they ricocheted around the bin’s rim and shot across the room, landing somewhere with a slight tink. We all exchanged confused looks.

“What…what happened?” I asked.

I got up immediately, my legs once again gelatinous and weak as I traced the path of the pens. I gasped when I found where they had ended up.

The pens had flung across the entire library…directly landing in the glass of the old bookcase. They had shot directly through the glass, leaving four holes that looked like the side of a die with four on it had fired four laser beams.

“What the hell?” Kalei asked.

I cautiously opened the case, hoping it wasn’t locked or an alarm would go off. Fortunately, neither were the case, but I had to scan the books to ensure the damage wasn’t worse.

“The books seem alright…I think, but…oh no.” I said, my voice trembling. I pulled a book that was on display, facing forward, that was now impaled with four pens, ink oozing down from its wounds.