Author’s note- I don’t know when this will be posted, but it was done on monday. I’ll try to have another chapter for you tuesday as well, but we’ll have to see what happens.

Edit- Yeah I have a chapter for you on tuesday now. I just have no way to post it…

Edit 2- Lol! Site update! Hah, I guess no early morning chapters for you guys!

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Cleaning up

My eyes opened, and the first thing I tried to do was to get up.

A dull ache came from my ribs, but the heat was still burning in that area, allowing me to continue moving. So holding my stomach, I staggered over to the stage.

When I got there, I checked my phone. Since I left the club room, 15 minutes had passed. I almost couldn't believe that those 15 minutes had almost been my last.

Cloe had sent me a worried text message asking if I was alright. And a moment passed, as I thought of a million lies I could have texted through my phone. But I wouldn’t tell any of them.

Instead, I told her there had been a big fight, and I had survived. Reinforcements were currently on their way, and I was at the theater room. But I also told her to stay at the club room, as there might be more coming.

So, I waited. And in about a minute or two later, the doors to the theater opened.

They burst in with weapons in hand, and behind them were people dressed in black. Definitely reinforcements.

Me- “I’m from C.H.I.B.I. I already took care of the people h-”

Breaking into a coughing fit, black blood went flying out of my mouth.

Me- “the people here.”

A person dressed in black came forward, and he held out his hand for a handshake. However, I kept my hand back.

Me- “It’s nice to meet you again, Daydream.”

He flipped back his hood, and Daydream came out smiling.

Daydream- “Well, it seems you’ve learned your lesson... But what happened here?”

Me- “Three soldiers and two ability users attacked me. The soldiers were sent first to test my abilities on camera, and the ability users were sent in for the kill.”

I showed them the locations of each death in chronological order, starting from the sniper. But when we got to the ability users’ bodies, I caught several questioning glances from the other members. However, I wasn’t in the mood to care about them. I was interested in trying to hold my stomach in, and the only reason I succeeded was because my stomach was already mostly empty.

Only Daydream didn’t seem surprised, as he noted down their locations and appearance.

Daydream- “How did they die?”

Me- “I used my ability on the sniper's gun, and the backfire killed him. The others in the room died because I trapped them in there and burned them all to death. The winged man flew up to combat me at the skyline, but in the end we both fell off. I landed on top. And as for the woman, she died by my ability.”

The glances the troops gave me subtly changed, now not looking at a human but at a monster. But the ability users weren’t fazed.

Daydream- “Anything else?”

Me- “Yes, there was one of my classmates on the skyline before the soldiers came in.” I remarked coldly, “But on my way up, I destroyed the only way down, the ladder panel. I will require your assistance in getting her down.”

Daydream nodded, but then asked,

Daydream- “Did she see?”

Me- “I had her hide in the crates up there for her own safety. I doubt she had the courage to get out of one, much less watch the battle.”

Daydream patted me on the shoulder.

Daydream- “You did well. Now we need to erase the traces.”

He signaled over to the troops, and they nodded and took the bodies and guns out of the area. Then a female in black clothing came forward and removed her hood, revealing the woman in black.

Daydream- “Song, why don’t you finish this up.”

Song- “Restore!”

A blackness went out from her, and it soon enveloped everything contained within the theater.

Daydream- “You must of really messed this place up. It’s taking so long even for the words of power to return the area to the way it was before. Ah yes, and the girl. Lead me to her.”

I nodded, and I gathered a flame point above my palm. The darkness retreated from a radius of about 3 feet away from me. Then I led the way.

Daydream- “It amazed me when I first saw this in the illusionary world. How you could counter the words of power.”

Me- “Words of power?”

Daydream- “Yes. It’s the name of her ability, and it’s one of the most strongest and most versatile I’ve ever seen. But it always seems to be of no effect when it comes into contact with your power, making it effectively useless.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Me- “And you’re named Daydream because of the illusionary world you can create?”

Daydream- “Yes. But I’m wondering what we should name your power. It seems to be a type of telekinesis, with the way your subconscious manipulated it precisely to create these ‘lucky’ situations. And when you manipulate it consciously, your control is bad, so it exists over a defined area and not an object. Therefore, by gathering air in the defined area you can create a flame. And it would have the side effect of making the surrounding area colder, just like it does now. But that doesn’t explain how you can take a golden aura out of others through touch. I guess finding out what that golden aura exactly is would be the key to finding out your power.”

Me- “Huh. I never thought of it that way.”

We arrived at the door shortly afterwards, and I pushed it open. And as we came into the room, all the scrapwood within the 3 foot radius of my flame suddenly fell to the ground. They didn’t have any trace of being burned.

Me- “I know I set this room on fire. Why is it that I don’t see ashes or the like?”

Daydream- “It seems you don’t understand Song’s power. What she says will become absolute unless resisted by something living. And even then, the effect will only be reduced depending on how much they resist. When she said restore, her ability followed her intentions to restore the whole theater to the state it was before you came into it.”

I nodded, and when we reached the buttons, I pressed it for the ladder to come down. The ladder descended slowly, and Daydream asked,

Daydream- “This ladder, was it retracted before you came in, or was it already down?”

Me- “Retracted.”

Daydream- “Then leave a flame here to light up the ladder. We don’t want our only way down to be cut off by her ability.”

I gathered another flame point and left it by the ladder. Then we both ascended the staircase. I noticed the vomit was already gone.

I went into another coughing fit after we made it up the stairs, and even more black blood came out. The hot feeling dissipated after this, and I didn’t feel pain anymore.

Daydream’s sharp eyes seemed to take note of this, but he elected not to say anything. And in the next moment, I opened the steel door.

Walking forward with Daydream, we heard a whimpering from the crates. I pointed to the source of the sound.

Me- “She’s in there.”

The whimpering stopped, and a voice could be heard.

Helen- “Nathaniel? Is that you?”

She opened the crate and came walking out. I had hidden the flame behind my back, and I had out the flashlight instead.

Helen- “They’re gone?”

Daydream came forward smiling.

Daydream- “Nope.”

His smile became vicious. And the next moment, her face paled, and she asked pitifully,

Helen- “Nathaniel? What’s going on!”

Before I could say anything, Daydream grabbed her wrist, and she fell to the floor, unconscious.

Daydream- “And with that, she had a nightmare. She will wake up in one of the seats of the auditorium, and believe all of this was a bad dream… Come on. Help me bring her down.”

*****************

We brought her down the steps and the ladder with some difficulty, but we managed. And a minute after we got down, the blackness started to disappear.

Me- “Well, I’ll see you guys later. I have to get back to club.”

The ability users froze for a second, but then seemed to become normal again. Daydream explained,

Daydream- “You seemed so calm looking and talking about when you killed them. It’s hard not to forget that you’re just a highschooler.”

A cold frown appeared on my face. The world of the organization was like a wolf pack; if you showed a sign of weakness, then you were going to be attacked. The cold front was a form of protection from both them and my enemies.

Me- “I couldn’t be just a weak high schooler, when killing is your only way to survive.”

Daydream- “True. Well, high schooler or not, you did just kill two of the organization’s enemies, and they had quite a bounty on their heads. Together, they add up to about 12000, and that is quite a lot of money.”

Me- “I don’t have a bank account yet.”

Daydream- “You did the moment you put that chip in your phone. This won’t connect to any sort of card, but these accounts don’t have any kinds of limits set up for ATMs or banks. You can empty their reserves if you have enough in your account.”

Me- “Thanks for letting me know.”

Daydream- “I’m your introducer, so it’s my job. No problem.”

I nodded my head, and walked past him, out of the theater. And then I walked back to the club. Chloe was waiting outside the door.

Chloe- “What happened?”

Me- “Mercenaries and ability users, those with secrets like mine came after me to kill. Remember how I received that text message during the movie? That was the organization letting me know that I was being hunted. I moved to a better place, so they couldn’t hurt you or anyone else but me.”

Chloe- “Why? Why are they doing this?”

Me- “Bloodthirsty murderers. They thought I was an easy target…”

Chloe- “...Let’s just go back to the club. You are going to tell me later, right? When dad drives us home, I’ll just have him take us to my house. We can talk then.”

Me- “Alright.”

We walked back inside the club, and I took my seat next to Chloe. Currently, the main character was playing with the dimensional door. Far more light hearted than reality, I suppose…

And when the movie had finished, we still had about 50 minutes of free time prior to the start of the play. So this time was kind of ‘do whatever you want as long as you don’t leave the room’ time.

Chloe and I were talking about Sword Arts Online. I had personally watched up to gunfale online, until I got irritated with the amount of girls surrounding Kirato. But Chloe was different.

Chloe- “But he finally got the Excalibur!”

Me- “Couldn’t he of got it at any time from the admin code? From the creator of the first virtual reality?”

Chloe- “Well yeah… But that’s not nearly as satisfying as obtaining it legitimately…”

Our topics shifted from various anime, but never to what happened in the theater. It was clearly agitating Chloe, but she chose to respect my wishes. And thankfully, we hadn’t run out of things to talk about before it was about 15 minutes before the play.

Me- “Chloe, do you want to go to the theater class now? He will probably be handing out the test when we get there.”

Chloe- “Sure. What do you think the questions will be like? Hard?”

Me- “Honestly I think they will be pretty simple because the test is just there to make up for the lack of summatives, while the daily grades are our formatives.”

Chloe nodded her head.

Chloe- “That makes sense.”

When we arrived at the classroom, the director was waiting for us. Handing each of us a sheet of paper and a pen he said,

Director- “You can turn this into me at the end of the play or on Monday. But all things aside, enjoy the play!”

He waved us off, and we entered the theater. I chose a couple of spots near the middle, and we both sat down, waiting for it to start.

I was bored, so I continued reading ‘A Beginning to Your Ability’ where I left off.

‘This brings to question, if all abilities are powered by the same source, then can all train and activate their abilities in the same way? The answer to this question is yes.

Thus, we have this book, A beginning to your Ability. And this theory can be shown in five basic applications.

The first is a defensive barrier against ability related attacks. Surrounding yourself with a manifestation of your ability can block other ability related attacks. This works because the power source can only power one ability at a time in the same space. So your abilities will repulse each other, and thus you cannot be attacked by another ability user with just their ability. This has its exceptions, but we will be skipping over them here because this is book is limited to-’

I put down the book temporarily, pondering over what was said. I guessed this was the reason I couldn’t attack the winged man with my flame. But my golden aura could ignore this, meaning that I was one of the rare exceptions. This raised questions, but this edition of book wouldn’t explain it.

I picked up the book again and continued to read.

‘The second application is power. All abilities are activated and controlled through first thoughts and then sometimes a simple action. So if the thought/action is done with emphasis, this can lead to a more powerful ability. Training your will power is essential for this, because in theory, a thought can become infinitely more powerful. Thus, your ability has a near infinite potential for growth.

The third application is-’

Chloe tapped my shoulder.

Chloe- “The play is starting.”

I gave a thankful smile to Chloe, knowing that I pretty much can block out the entire outside world when reading. And in the next moment, the lights dimmed, and the curtains opened. They were starting.

I used my phone as lighting for the paper and did a last minute review of the questions.

‘1. What was the object Jews had to wear to distinguish themselves?’

‘2. In what special occasion did Anne Frank get her diary?’

‘3. Who was Anne Frank’s crush?’

‘4. When did Anne Frank and her family get discovered by the Nazis?’

‘5. Who was the only survivor of the Anne Frank family?’

Those were all the questions on the front, but when I looked at the back there weren’t any other questions. Other than a cryptic phrase…

‘By the light of a wisp, you shall see the the path. And the start of your path, is our sole meeting place.’

C.H.I.B.I. obviously had a hand in this. But it could wait until after the play.

But just out of curiousity, I asked Chloe,

Me- “What’s on the back of your sheet?”

Chloe- “An essay question about the effects of her diary on the world. Why?”

Me- “Just curious.”

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Author’s note 2- I’m ending here. Not quite on a cliff, but it’s good enough. Plus, I’m getting close to my newly self-imposed limit of 2600 words, so I’m ending it here. Oh yeah, the next chapter is coming out soon. Just waiting for the chapter title :P