Rrriiiinnnnggg! I shook my head, pulling myself back into reality. Every day I drift off into wildly imaginative universes. No matter how hard I concentrated on something else, it always happened. Every. Single. Day. The educators were constantly on my case about it, and I tried to explain to them that I couldn't control where my mind decided to wander. Especially since it always felt so right. They couldn't care less. It just resulted in extra home works and being the eternal "excuse queen". I sighed and walked wearily to Mr. Castello's desk to try to give my futile excuses once more.

      "Mr. Castello, I-"

     "Hush." He blocked me off mid-sentence. "I've had enough. You can't seem to focus, even after we try everything you suggest to help you. Clearly we need to do something new." He paused to let that sink in. I'm not self-absorbed, but I definitely don't fancy it when somebody points out all my flaws. "Fortunately, you'll have plenty of time to figure that out in the following week. I've been talking with your other teachers-"

     "Educators." I quickly corrected. Our school preferred to keep things professional. And I didn't want a certain someone (aka the headmaster) to think I'm not trying to commit to our school values.

     "I don't care for formalities currently, Ivene." He responded coarsely, clenching his teeth. I ducked my head. "What I was saying," he took a moment to breathe. "Is that we have decided to suspend you. Five days. One school week. Starting at two-fifty sharp today." BAM. A bullet straight to the chest. I took a step back to steady myself. My eyes were glued to the ground. How could I let this get so out of hand? I mentally slapped myself. "Are we clear?"

     "Yes, sir." I mumbled.

     "Pardon?"

     "Yes, sir!" I practically yelled in his ears. He scowled. I smirked. In my mind, it's okay to get a little snarky, as long as I'm not bruising the person I'm conversing with. Crossing his arms, he said with a single breath:

     "I suggest you get to lunch in the next thirty seconds- unless you're looking for an extension to your suspension." Trying not to smile at his habit of rhyming when he got angry, I jogged out of the room to go on my way to my favorite class of the day: lunch.

                                                                                                ***

     The cafeteria food wasn't necessarily awful, just really, really unappetizing. So I pack my lunch. Another delicious and nutritious meal of PB&J and juice. Yay. Thoughts continued to run freely through my head, not caring what other thoughts they forced out, despite their claims of civil rights to be present. They were ignored. I was once again lost in loo-loo land, chewing aimlessly until I heard a familiar voice.

     "Ivy!" I looked up to see what seemed to be the only friendly face in the whole school. Derek Kenneker, a sweet guy with mocha skin, curly black hair, and the deepest amber eyes. He was the same age as me, fourteen. He headed over to me, with a tray of disgusting (Sorry, unappetizing) cafeteria food. He sat down, somehow not noticing the sour way people were looking at him for sitting next to me.

     "So, Ivy. I have some ideas on what we could do for our project in Language Arts." My eyes lit up. I completely forgot about it! We had a very strange LA teacher. A wanting-us-to-learn-an-animal's language kind of strange. I have no idea how she expected us to do it, but she said if we could learn four phrases in animal speak (I also have no idea how she'd know if they were valid sentences or not) we'd get a B minus. I don't know about how anyone else here feels, but that's kind of hard to do.

     Taking a deep breath, I asked: "What do you have in mind?" I peeked over Derek's shoulder to scan through his thoughts, which he always planned out quite articulately.

     "Well, see here" he pointed his index finger on the upper right circle of his notebook. "I thought we could do a bat." It was obvious that he considered this idea, as there were large letters at the top of the circle, (BAT) a quick sketch, (a bat) and a description of a certain animal's heart rate when it was in different moods.

     "Um, yeah. I do see that, believe it or not." I responded, blinking. Derek just chuckled.

     "No need to be sassy. But what I was thinking was that we could attach this-" he pulled out a small gadget with several wires, about fourteen buttons, and a teensy weatherproof harness . "-to a bat's back. It's a lot like a heart-rate monitor, because it tells me the BPM, but it also shows the emotion the bat beholds at the moment it's heart is beating. Of course, it also has a microphone to record the sounds."

     "And you think we can use it to figure out what the chirps they let out mean, depending on the time, emotion, and whereabouts of the bat! Derek, that's ingenious!" I could have sworn I saw him blushing. But then I realized his furrowed brows and frown. He seemed to be looking at an unidentifiable location. "Did I say something?" I asked, genuinely concerned. I didn't think what I said was offensive.

     "It's back." Derek's scowl deepened. I looked behind me, and crawling on the wall was a serpent-arachnid-pigeon thing.

     "What the-" I mumbled, eager to go closer but weary that it would possibly strike me with the scorpion stinger latched to it's rear end.

     The creature was horrid. It had the body of a snake, the head of an alligator, the wings of a pigeon, and a scorpion stinger. The critter seemed to be a five-inch long deformed wyrm from Norse Mythology.

     "Do not take another step."I heard Derek mutter, although addressed to me or to the beast I wasn't sure. He turned to me. "Ivene. That is a Zairzyx. I don't even know how to defeat it. This may look like next to nothing, but it's fatal if it strikes the right place."

     "Then how do you expect to get it away from all these people?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

     "I... don't know." He said, a grim look on his face. I looked around a everybody, but people weren't paying any attention to us in any way, nor the Zairzyx. This was a small critter, but usually the girly girls notice things like this immediately, then start shrieking. But this time, all we could hear was usual lunch-time conversation.

     "Do you think they can't see it?" I questioned, it seemed a reasonable explanation.

     "Maybe." Derek looked puzzled. "But even if they can't see the Zairxyx, they can see us and anything we do to try to get rid of it."

     I breathed out slowly in thought. "Okay... Do you think that people can still get hurt even though they can't see it?" I asked, maybe we could just move to another table and avoid the situation all together.

     "Yes." Ahhh. The sound of my hopes dying.

     Still trying to figure out a solution, I didn't realize the Zairzyx edging closer to me. Derek has his hands on my shoulders.

     "Ivene, back away slowly." Kids were starting to look at us weird, as if they thought it was strange to be frightened of a wall.

     One foot at a time, we went around the table backwards, never peeling our eyes off the wall. Suddenly, the creature lurched towards us. I let out a yelp and leaped onto the table. School security was shouting at me to get down, and Derek was making a strange light forcefield thing somehow.

     I was dumbfounded. There was no way I was hallucinating, the Zairzyx hadn't stung me or anything. Seeing him do this, I felt a surge of energy pulsing through my gut. Trusting my instincts, I forced it out through my fingertips, and outshot out a ray of blue sorcery-like light. I was amazed. Unlike most people, I was thrilled to have a newfound power. It made so much sense, though because that was always the basis of my fantasies. Unfortunately, this was my first time using magic, so my aim was far from perfect. Ricocheting off of the floor, it shot up and shattered an overhead light. Energy burst out, exploding every single carton of milk, chocolate milk, and water bottles, along with some unlucky sandwiches. My waist-length blonde hair flew into my face.

     "Oops." I muttered. I whipped back all my hair. The school security pulled out walkie-talkies and were speaking to some kind of authorities. The gates of chaos were let loose. People were scurrying around, girls complaining about their soiled shoes, guys starting splash fights. Most kids just ran out the hall or climbed on top of tables. 

     A security guard came up to me and paused for a moment, considering something. He had a busy beard, thick short hair, and was a bit overweight. I started to back away somehow intimidated by his trusted face, but before I could he gripped my wrist.

     "Let-go!" I pulled the hardest I could to get away, then remembering something I had learned in a mini self-defense class: If someone grabs you by the wrists, Look for the place that the thumb and fingers are the closest together. This is the weak spot. I forced my arm down as hard as i could against the weak spot, and he had no choice but to let go. Since the pulling took him towards the ground, I jolted my knee up. I smacked him square in the face, and in that moment I contemplated all the many laws I had to have broken. A few more violations couldn't hurt I thought.

      More security men closed in on me. One took both of my hands and locked them in place behind my back. I swiftly pushed them towards the ground, but he failed to let go. I now remained in an awkward squatting position, his hands had moved to my upper forearms. He began to hoist me up, and I jumped up slantways in his direction. With our combined momentum, I was able to shove my head into the man's stomach. He grunted and stumbled backwards, breaking the grasp on my biceps.

     Another came towards me, but I effortlessly leaped us and punched the side of his face before he could do anything. He yelled out in pain, leaning over and holding his palms against his cheek. My hand throbbed a bit. I rushed behind him and crawled onto his back hoping that would bring him down; but he wasn't as hurt as he acted. HE stood up straight and I fell to the floor. I obviously had to fall on my head. Luck was not on my side.

     Before I blacked out completely, I caught the sight of Derek. He was fighting off his own guy with the same strange forcefield thing. He saw me, and his eyes widened. The light around him faded away, and he sprinted in my direction.

"Ivy!" Before he reached me in all my soaked, chocolate milk glory, the world learned to cartwheel. My ears and eyes betrayed me.

     The universe silenced.

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(Handwritten) 

     Mistress, 

     She knows. Sequence 762 is in session.

                   -R

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Adressed to all Xenti:

     Thank you all so much for reading this! It means the world to me! Please comment, vote, share... whatever you need to do. The word Zairzyx is pronounced Zayr-shicks if that helps at all. 

     A fleshquake is those random shivers you get for no reason, the ones that only last like half a second. Just thought you should know!

     Until we meet again,

     Cailin L. L. A.