Owen sat in the Duxian office, feeling uncomfortable in the chair Raidah normally sat in. Why am I the one sitting here? He thought, frustrated. It never should have been me. I can't do this. They've been gone less than 48 hours and already things are getting out of control.

Three sharp knocks hit the door.

"Come in!"

Tyler entered the room, anxiously wringing his hands.

"What is it now, Ty?"

"Travis, you know the air guy, pilot? Broke his wrist in a nasty fall, he's in the hospital now."

Owen ran his hands through his hair and drew in a sharp breath. "Broken bones, we've had plenty of those before. Is there something immensely important about this Travis?"

"No, but we have to report all injuries to the top commander, and as of now that would be you," Tyler explained.

"Very well. Alright, is that it?"

"For now. I'd expect you'll be getting a lot more injury reports in the near future."

Owen groaned and his head flopped down onto the desk. "This is was we're preparing for! We won't have time to bother with injury reports in battle. Why bother now?"

"Take it up with the Council," Tyler said. "How're you holdin' up here?"

"Terribly," Owen responded. "How does Raidah handle this? And for the rest of her life? No wonder some of them have gone crazy."

"You're the first person I've known to have complained about the prospect of being Duxian," Tyler said with a chortle.

"Ty, you know I was never meant for this."

Tyler's face cleared of laughter, and his glance focused for a moment on the harsh white scar running across Owen's face. "Yeah," he said. "But you'll do just fine. She picked you for a reason."

"She picked me as a backup. The second option."

"Seconds pretty good."

"Is it? Is it good knowing you were just the default second pick, that there was one person better, and maybe if you had just worked a little harder, pushed a little more... that maybe you would be in first, and second? Second is when it seems like there's no one else to blame, second's your fault." Owen spat out the words as if they were a bitter liquid.

"Hey," Tyler said, placing a hand on Owen's shoulder. "It's not your fault."

"But it is, Ty. It's all my fault."

~~~

Taya flopped down on her bed, sinking into the soft brown comforter. She began to cry. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she reflected on the past day.

In only one day, she thought, how could I have gotten into such a mess?

She didn't know what she had been thinking. Lead an army? Destroy an entire world of people with only a couple hundred people? Insanity, all of it. They should just wait for Kallan to come back, and she would help them-

No. A small part of her interrupted, the two sides battling in her mind. Why should Kallan be the one we rely on for everything? After all, the rest of us are just as good. We don't even know what her power is, we should be ready for anything. We can't just really on Kallan to save us all. We have to do something.

But what to do? Their numbers were few, and though they had been training all their lives, they were no match for the humans, who had weapons of mass destruction they used in their own wars. And that was against themselves. Who knew what they would when an inhuman species attacked them? They had to use something the humans could stop, something they had no way of overpowering.

Taya began twirling her wrist in circles, and as she did so the leaves on a potted plant in the corner began to spiral, snaking across walls. Roots crept out of the dirt and slithered along the floor. The numerous other plants she kept in her room began doing the same thing. It was a habit, when she was bored or deep in thought. The second, in this case. Her floor was frequently covered in leaves and dirt, which is why carpet had been replaced with hardwood several years ago. The messiness was a constant source of annoyance to her Guardians, but who would they be to discourage practicing your estre?

Just then Taya heard the sound of a storm, just outside her window. Peeking out her window, Taya saw her guardian, Kalida and her husband Eric (and by those terms, Taya's second Guardian) laughing in the backyard as they combined there two estre, Kalida's air and Eric's water, to create a small hurricane floating in place above the grass. This was a popular Primum pastime, and a fun way to practice using your estre. The hurricane danced across the lawn, skipping and tumbling as Kalida chased it with gales of wind.

That could do a lot of damage if they let it to close to the house, Taya thought. If human's could do that, who knows what they would do to each other? Suddenly she sat bolt upright, and wiped the last of her tears from her face. No more crying now. Glancing around the room, she saw that one plant root had found its way to the ceiling and formed a small crack. She had let them spread longer than she usually did. Gently urging it back down, a smile spread across her face. She knew exactly what needed to be done. And it was so simple. Why hadn't she thought of it before?

~~~

"Because, Taya, I know Raidah and I know she wouldn't want us to do that. We've already made enough changes. Do you want her to come back and be angry?" Owen had shut down Taya's idea within seconds of hearing it, and was currently trying to explain exactly why she couldn't have her way.

"But Raidah won't be angry," Taya protested. "She'll love it. She'll be happy that we're taking action and doing something, instead of sitting around waiting for her and Kallan to do everything. We all knew we would have to get an army going at some point. The sooner, the better, yes?"

"Okay Taya, but this, this is an entirely different matter. Do you know just how dangerous it would be?"

"But it wouldn't be dangerous at all! You see, it would be so much safer. No putting Primum lives at risk to fight battles against humans, no bother fiddling with dangerous, life-taking weapons. Just a flick of the wrist and whole cities taken care of!"

"I said no, and that's final."

"But I-"

"No!" Owen slammed a fist down onto is desk, sending pens and sparks flying. The book he had been writing in before Taya entered caught flame.

"This Duxian business is going to your head. You've never yelled," Taya said softly. She stood perfectly still, and the pages continued to smolder.

"Yeah, well, I've never really had a reason to," Owen said. He batted at the flames with his hands until they were just a few glowing spots. Those he put out with a small finger pinch. The pages of the book were still readable, though curled at the edges at slightly blackened with a few holes.

"We have specially units like Group D," said Taya.

"They're training to use their air estre for purposes such as piloting fighter planes and never crashing. What you what to do is very different. Natural disasters? Do you know how terrible that would be? Yes, we would kill humans, but we would be destroying the very land we are trying to gain in the process. Hurricanes? Earthquakes? Destroy the people, I don't have a problem with that but destroy the land? We just can't Taya."

"Fine then!" Taya yelled, throwing her hands up into the air, her face red. "If you don't want to go with a much easier strategy, a lot safer for us, then fine! Listen to whatever stupidity inside your head is telling you not to. But when people are out there getting killed, you better stay the jurat away from me! Don't come crawling back once you realize you had it wrong, because you will! Okay? Got that?" She slammed her palms down on the desk with a resounding thud. The resulting shock spread across the room, shaking wall hangings.

"Well, the whole army was your idea."

"That's because I thought we had no other choice! But now, I found a better option and you just won't listen to me!" Face red, and breathing heavily from screaming so loudly, Taya grabbed the rock paperweight off of Owen's desk and threw it, smashing the glass of a picture frame sitting on the other end of Owen's desk.

Owen's jaw dropped as he stared at the broken picture frame. For a second, his fingertips began to flame, but then they went out and his eyes began to water. He tried to choke out a few words. "Look, Taya, it'll all turn out just fine. When Kallan finds her estre-"

"Kallan! Kallan, Kallan, Kallan. You all think she's just going to do everything. Well she's not. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she's not so special? That maybe the rest of us have to actually think? We can't just sit here, lazing around waiting for her to do everything for us. Because really, she's not that special."

"Okay, I get that you're mad, but if you would just listen to me I can explain why I don't want to go that way."

Just forget about it, okay! I should've known you were never going to listen to me anyways!" Taya spun on her heel and stomped out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. The door shuddered and scattered glass pieces jumped.

Shoulders shaking, Owen got up from his chair and pick up the picture, carefully avoiding glass bits. The image turned blurry as his eyes clouded over with tears, but he didn't have to see to know every last detail of the picture. He had looked at it so many times, the image seared into his mind. Dressed in kirya, special outfits for a special occasion, he and girl stood, arms around each other's waists. Strangely similar tattoos, red flames and golden sunrays. The necklace the girl was wearing and the bracelets on her wrist glowed with a strange light. The picture had been taken just after they had graduated. He was seventeen years old at the time, the girl sixteen. Raidah, who had graduated two years earlier, had taken the picture. She had graduated two years earlier and that year was her first graduation as Duxian, where she handed diplomas to each graduate. The girl's hair was long, reaching down to her waist, and her bangs brushed her eyes.

I loved that long hair, Owen thought. I wish she hadn't cut it. Short hair just didn't fit her. Blinking away tears, he put the picture back on his desk and went to go look for a broom.

After slamming the door shut, Taya ran down the stairs two at a time. Her footsteps made a loud clunk, clunk, clunk, matching the fast beat of her heart. Reaching the bottom, she ran through the lobby and out the door, ignoring calls of "what's wrong?" from the office secretary. But as soon as she threw open the large double doors, she stopped. The lawn of The Tower, kept short and neat by gardeners, had somehow grown to a height stretching over her head, in a span of only roughly ten minutes. Backing up into the lobby, she asked the secretary:

"Do you know what happened out here?"

Shuffling papers, the secretary looked up and shrugged. "No idea. Just suddenly took up and started growing like there was a race to the sky. People outside were gathering, but it's been dismissed as a stupid prank. Probably some Earth kid." The secretary snorted and looked back down at her work.

"Okay, thanks."

Exiting the building once again, Taya carefully coaxed the grass to part, forming a sort of path from the door to the street. Once she reached the edge of the lawn she turned around and made a huge cutting motion with her arms, and the grass fell in one smooth sheet.

"Thanks for doing that darling," said a woman passing by.

"Not a problem," Taya said. "Do you know what happened here?"

"Not sure really," the woman said with a shrug. "I heard some yelling and loud crashes an' things going on before the grass started shooting up, but I don't see how it could be related. Like they're saying, it's probably just a foolish prank."

"Thank you."

"No dear, thank you for getting rid of all that!"

As the woman walked off, and Taya in the opposite direction, she thought it over. Could the argument and the grass be connected? She couldn't see how. Stopping on the sidewalk, Taya craned her neck to look all the way up at the forty-ninth floor, at the small window of the Duxian's office. Light from the office glowed through the curtains, a small speck against the darkening sky.

Fourty-nine floors above, the light flickered in Owen's palm. He stared at the picture, something he had avoided doing for a long time.

"I won't mess up this time," he whispered to the girl. "I promise."

A/N I'm sorry for taking so long to update! I've just been behind on everything. Probably one of my longest chapters so far though.  Okay guys, thanks so much for reading!

What do you think was up with the grass? 

Who do you side with, Taya or Owen? 

Predictions? Comments? Wonderings?

And when thing I'm wondering: Do you think this story is cliche? 

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Q and A still going on, any questions for me leave in the comments!

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