Rising Shards

Kalei cooled off a bit the longer we went. Outside of P.D., none of the other Wildfire Hearts students had approached us yet. A few others had been eliminated, sitting in scattered spots near Zeta on the stands. I kept checking on her every few minutes, making sure she wasn’t too devastated about her performance.

“You doing alright?” I asked.

“I guess,” Kalei said. “No way I’m going to lose now.”

“I know now is probably the worst time to say this, but if I don’t now I think it’ll get brushed under the rug,” I said. “I really don’t want you to talk like that. Even if you’re mad, don’t take it out on us, because we just want to help you.”

Kalei sighed. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’ll make it up to Zates.”

“You better.” I said. “With that said, do you wanna talk about that whole P.D. thing?”

“Can we just shut up about all this?” Kalei asked. “Enough drama, this is skewing a bit too Teensly Street.”

“What do you want to talk about instead?” I asked.

“How many times do you think we’ve said ‘energy ball’ today?” Aira asked. “I’m going to guess at least fifty.”

“I think at least a hundred,” I said.

“They really should have another name for these things,” Kalei said.

“Maybe power spheres, that’s kinda cool,” Aira said. “Aw, or E.B.’s, then we don’t have to say balls so much!”

“Aira, sometimes it’s fine if you don’t say things out loud,” Lillia said.

“Wow,” Aira said.

“I’m trying to be polite,” Lillia said, grunting as she hit her power sphere/E.B. up in the air. “I know I’ve been rude to you in the past, and I’d like to change that behavior.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean!” Aira said. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

I expected some more annoyances like Kitty activating some kind of super jungle gym that would knock us off our feet, but it was mostly disparate groups of us keeping glowing volleyballs up in the air. The practice wasn’t the most thrilling thing, but it had a lot more oomph than this so far.

Nothing much of note happened until another strange sound caught our attention. It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it until I saw its source. Bicycle wheels. Three students in leather jackets riding towards us.

“I thought everyone at Wildfire Hearts had to wear the robes,” I said.

“More importantly, is Laenie among them?” Lillia asked.

Not all of them could be from the rival school, as Kyre Krista was there, and she went to Rising Shards. So did Ema Kari and Snake Riley. I didn’t see Laenie, though.

“Don’t you, uh, have something better to do?” I said, wincing halfway through as my one liner fell apart on itself.

“Yeah, we got eliminated like right away,” Kyre said. “It’s really hard to keep those buggers in the air!”

“Did you…want something?” Aira asked, probably relieved it was just them and not Laenie.

“Uh, yeah,” Snake said, stopping her bike and nearly falling off of it, apparently not as well versed on bike riding as she was at skateboarding. “We wanna talk to you.”

“Are there signs on our backs or something?” Kalei asked. “Are all our enemies gonna come up and say how much they hate us, all lined up nicely in a row?”

Snake blinked. “I dunno what you’re talking about.” She took off her jacket, and for some reason she had another jacket on under it. She tossed the first one at Aira’s feet. “The boss says you’re welcome anytime.”

“Huh?” Aira asked.

“Welcome to join the biker gang,” Ema said. “You can join us whenever.”

“That’s all!” Kyre said, ringing a bell on her bike, which was white with purple dots all over it. “Toodles!”

Aira stared in disbelief at the jacket.

“If anyone else from that damn school shows up to announce anything to us, I’m just gonna scream at them until they go away,” Kalei said.

“All good there, Aira?” I asked. Things probably weren’t good and this was probably dumb to ask. Aira let her energy ball drop to the ground as she picked up the jacket.

“I…I’m not joining, obviously, but…” Aira trailed off. “I need to think for a bit.”

“Yeah, that’d be good, probably,” I said.

Thankfully, Kalei didn’t grill Aira about getting eliminated from the game.

“Heh, I’m surprised you’re still holding on,”

“Oh come on,” Kalei said as Chickadee from Wildfire Hearts approached. “I’m gonna start screaming.”

“Gimme one second,” Chickadee winked, then missed hitting her energy ball. “Oops. Well, now I can explain my scheme to throw you all off your game.”

“Or you could just go to the bleachers since you were eliminated,” I said. “Wait, no, then Zeta might have to sit by you…”

Chickadee scratched her nose. “Anyways, I learned some gossip from my secret intel sources and used that to my advantage! Hee hee…”

“And what, told them to bother us?” I asked. “That’s not the best plan.”

“It’s better than the Kris Krag one!” Chickadee said.

“Is it?” I asked.

“Yeah! I had to talk to those bikers, it was scary, I was all like ‘if you go now, it’ll really throw them off their game,’” Chickadee said. “And it worked!”

“Well, you did piss me off, but I already thought you sucked, but I’m still in this.” Kalei said.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, looking around. “Are we the last ones?”

Most of our class was headed toward the bleachers. There were still other classes going, but they were sectioned off away from us. It was a bit exciting to make it this far, but I had a feeling Chickadee’s schemes for us weren’t done yet.