Rising Shards

Ovie hummed to herself as she got ready to make whatever a place called ’Wildfire Grills’ should make. The setup kind of reminded her of her school news club, something she did miss when she went to Wildfire Hearts.

The teacher assigned to them, Miss Lara, was an incredibly lazy teacher that usually let her classes handle group projects as she read spicy fanfics and watched romance fantasy book reviews on her phone, and as usual she gave the most barren of instructions before sitting in the corner and scrolling.

”I’m declaring myself the manager of this whole operation,” Chickadee said.

”No, you’re not,” Ovie said. ”If anyone has the leadership skills needed for this, it’s me.”

”I have great leadership skills!” Chickadee said. ”I am second in command of my pod. If the boss was here, I’d say she could be the leader, but unfortunately she’s busy.”

”I don’t care about your pod,” Ovie said. ”I’ve led multiple cliques and clubs, and actual missions into the void might I add, that were supervised by very important figures.”

”I vote Ovie!” Mikeila-Keila said.

”Me too!” Chellsi said. ”She’s a truly epic visionary for leading things!”

09 simply nodded.

”That’s three votes for me, and how many for you?” Ovie asked.

”Uhhhh,” Chickadee looked at potential students who she could gain the votes of. She winced at Chumbler and Z.O.K., started to try to say something about the pop singer Osiris to Elisa Burwell, trailing off before checking with Nikki and P.D., who didn’t look like they noticed her until she directly spoke to them.

”Hey, redhead and chrome...head...” Chickadee said. ”We’re cool, so...vote for me?”

Nikki shrugged. ”Can we just forget about the manager thing and get on with this, maybe?”

”Fine,” Chickadee said. ”But that means nobody is manager! Ha!”

Maybe just let this one go.

Ovie sighed, still not entirely used to the extra voice in her head. She locked eyes with 09.

Whatever. I’ll just lead the group and they’ll fall in line. She thought.

That would probably work! 09’s voice beamed back.

”Hey, um...I noticed since you’ve been back,” Chellsi said. ”You and 09 do that thing...”

”Yeah! Where you two, like...” Mikeila-Keila said. ”Like, you stare.”

”It’s nothing,” Ovie said.

It would be too hard to explain to those two what we can do now, Ovie thought. Ever since they’d used the Sharai Daggers on each other and ended up as wolfish beasts, the two found out they shared a mental link that carried over when they turned back to normal.

I think we could explain it to them in a way they’d get. 09 thought back.

As far as they could tell, it only worked when they were thinking direct words. Abstract concepts, images, and such were not involved in this connection, though 09 did keep chiming in when Ovie had a change in mood, so feelings maybe were exempt from the abstract part. Overall, it was infuriating, and made Ovie feel like she couldn’t get a moment to herself.

Like Ovie predicted, she was able to command the group around with relative ease even if they hadn’t settled upon an official manager. Chickadee talked a big game, but she still backed down when confronted with Ovie’s strong will. Chumbler and Z.O.K. had a lot of chaotic energy in them, but Ovie had beaten Chumbler in a fight easily, so Chumbler got very small in Ovie’s presence. And Nikki and P.D. kept to themselves, which was fine to Ovie.

In spite of the fake restaurant’s name being ’Wildfire Grills,’ the students weren’t trusted to make burgers or anything that actually involved a grill. Instead, they were given four relatively small waffle makers.

”Dang, I was hoping I could show off my cooking prowess,” 09 said.

”I’m guessing you pull recipes from the internet with your clybrid enhancements or what not?” Ovie said. ”Seems like that would be cheating.”

”I’m genuinely good at cooking!” 09 said. ”I practiced! I mainly use my search features for gossip intel gathering.”

Ovie almost smirked at that, but caught herself almost reacting positively to 09 and scrunched her face mid-motion to block any remote smiling from occurring.

I can tell you liked that one. 09 thought.

Shut up, Ovie thought. I most definitely did not.