“What…. What was that?” Axel thought as he walked down his schools hallway. He was slowly making his way towards the gym locker room, holding one hand on his head, dazed from the flashes of his daydream.
“Gille... Darius... I know those names, but who exactly were all those other people?” he contemplated as he continued walking down the hall.
Axel was an anomaly in the school, and not just because he fell asleep in all of his classes. Other than the fact that he was abysmally weaker than all the other students that attended, he was also an outsider of the schools district. S.C.S or “Shifter Community School”, lay to the mid-east in a town called Lakewood. Lakewood was just a few miles away from the badlands separated from the area by a large forest known as Nautica Valley. It was a small private school erected from a resilient group of parents that wanted their kids to get into the S.P.A. Many of the schools in other districts either did not prepare one for the S.P.A exam, or were so hell torn they became pits of chaos that only produced more criminals to pillage the war torn badlands.
Axel himself was from that lawless area on the other side of the forest in a town called Earl. He had made it into this school due to a scholarship called the Lost scholarship that went towards children without parents. Every year they picked one child to come to the school and within time they dropped out due to weak grades, bullying, or peer pressure.
One student in particular had made it very hard for students from the western deserts to assimilate to campus life, and had forced countless of them to drop out or disappear altogether. This student, feared by the majority of students in the school, wasn’t particularly fond of Axel either, and had at every attempt, tried to out Axel from his adolescent kingdom.
“I wonder…” pondered Axel, “do any of those people actually exist?” Axel cracked open the door to the locker room to find, much to his dismay, that it was fully populated. He could see multiple students changing around his locker, laughing and being entertained by Regis’s enthusiastic hand gestures. Through the crack of the door, his eyes briefly met with Lance again, receiving that same look of antipathy he had experienced earlier. Seeing the populated locker room he shut the door letting out a sigh.
“Damnit” Axel thought apprehensively, “I got here too late, I should have been changed already!”
He decided to head towards the cafeteria until things had quieted down.
“Did you see that fag pass out!?” A voice laughed.
Thud!
Axel grabbed his chest as his heart began to beat louder and louder. He raised his hands to eye level finding himself unable to control their sporadic shaking. A gut wrenching anxiety slowly took him over as he heard a malevolent voice echoing from around the corner.
“I know right I shot like 4 spitballs at his forehead I thought I gave em a concussion or something!” Laughed another.
Axel stood around the corner paralyzed as the two voices approached. Like a Manichean placed in the center of a mall he stood petrified in the hallway amid the flow of passing students.
“Man why does that punk still even go here?”(Voice 1)
“I don’t know but he has detention right?” “Let’s catch him outside after school! He won’t be able to get away this time!” (Voice 2)
Axel’s face began to soak in sweat as the thought of being captured by the two silhouettes became vivid in his imagination.
“No”, thought Axel, “That direction is definitely not a good idea”.
As the large shadow of his predators creeped in, he hastily made for the door. Barging into the locker room, he jumped out of his clothes and began shuffling through his locker in a frenzy.
“Woah Ax you good bro?” asked Reggie as Axel knocked over his gym bag scattering his clothes across the floor.
Axel ignored Reggie as he frantically grabbed the last of his possessions. As he finished changing into his gym clothes Axel hastily spun around towards his stalkers anticipating doom. To his surprise, he found only the awkward stares and puzzled expressions of his classmates. Letting out a sigh of relief he made his way to the exit that led outside.
“You coulda at least acted like you gave a damn!” Yelled Reggie as Axel opened the door to the practice field.
“Man, and people say I’m insensitive!” Reggie said to his surrounding classmates.
WHAM!
Axel opened the door to find himself pinned up against the wall behind the bleachers. Looking up at him were the heinous owners of the two belligerent voices.
The first was a muscular teenager with a rotten expression... His huge rugged hands wrapped around the collar of Axel’s gym sweatshirt as he pinned him against the wall. It seemed he had predicted Axel’s reaction and had ran around to the other side of the locker room to anticipate him.
The boy’s rotten expression was warped into a coy smile as he pinned Axel against the concrete wall.
“Long time no see, buddy” he said sadistically.
Axel had always gotten changed and left the locker room long before anyone else entered, purposely avoiding situations like this. His day dream from earlier had clouded his mind, and he now found himself in the worse of possible scenarios. PB, Peter Brown, the unwakeable nightmare had captured him once again.
[https://i.imgur.com/H6stLHB.jpg]
Pb was notorious for bullying, cheating on tests and basically anything that would get you thrown out of school without ever being thrown out. There were few in the school who conversed with him, aside from the occasional fake laugh at his deranged sense of humor. The only person who could be believed to actually find him humorous was his best friend Jeff, who although not as vile was certainly as dangerous as PB himself. Due to their insistence of sticking together they were known as PB and J to the kids of SCS. Unofficially of course, the last kid caught muttering the words had found himself dismissed to 3 days of solitary confinement, trapped in a locker over the school's long weekend.
“Told yeh he was listening.” smirked PB’s long haired friend standing behind him.
Jeff was always behind him, always making things worse for Axel. He was a thin teenage boy that seemed like the type to always be listening to punk rock. His long hair dropped out of the beanie in a down to his back.
Aside from his allegiance with Pb, Jeff didn’t seem all that much of an intimidating figure. That being said Jeff was the one person Peter listened to and confided in. He used this relationship to instigate situations with those he didn’t like, and had also deterred PB from getting aggressive at times as well. He was the man who could make or break you when it came to PB, and that allegiance alone was reason enough to be weary of him.
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“Hey look everyone it’s the dreamer Axel!” Peter proclaimed loudly. Laughter erupted from students looking outside.
“So where are you hurrying off too huh buddy? Are you going to blow our minds again with your spittle again?”
“Spitting up a lugy? What are you a retard?” Jerry mockingly said.
PB laughed. “Hey Axel what do retards sound like?” mocked Pb tightening his grip on Axels sweatshirt.
Axel looked around the dugout hopelessly searching for help, finding the only students not participating in his ridicule, off minding their own business. From the corner of his eye he saw his teacher Mr. Johnson out on the practice field. Maybe if he let out a yell...
“Hey” PB said as he grabbed Axel by the neck and slammed him into the wall again. “I said make retard sounds!” he said firmly. With those words little dots began to pop up on the surface of Pb’s face. They quickly began to multiply in succession, slowly turning his skin pigment into a greyish tint of black.
Pb referred to his ability as “lead armor.” He was able to turn his skin into a lead alloy causing his body to significantly increase in weight and strength. The transformation was one’s last chance to submit before things got ugly. No one in the school had ever seen his full transformation, usually just the sight of those dark spots was enough for one to give in or flee.
“P…..B” Axel groaned as he started to lose breath
Axel’s eyes dilated and suddenly the room started spinning. The voices of his jeering peers began to slowly fade until their voices came to a mute, and soon their images began to fade as well. Axel found himself alone in some other strange dimension.
He was no longer in the alleyway dugout leading to his schools track and field. He instead found himself in a room in his house pinned to the wall by some invisible force.
As Axel heard footsteps approaching, a single ember began to appear at his feet. The small ember slowly spread out around the floor into several brightly setting his room ablaze. It wasn't long before these small embers had expanded into a large hellfire enveloping his home.
As Axel fought and struggled to free himself from the invisible impedance, the fire began to warp and transform itself revealing the outline of a man. From the depths of the flames a man dressed in rags proceeded through the fire wholly unscathed. His body was wretchedly wrapped in some kind of paper from the bottom of his toes to the bridge of his hair that poured out of it like confetti. This dreadlocked sarcophagus, slowly crept toward Axel, swinging his arms side by side as he approached.
“NO” Axel Screamed in terror “NOT AGAIN!”
It was too late, the man appearing from the fire grabbed Axels arms scorching them with flames.
He began a wicked chant as Axel screamed in pain
[https://i.imgur.com/v7q6CJL.png]
Axel returned to his senses looking down at PB and the crowd of tormentors. “So” PB said “how does a retard sound?” he said violently
“AURAUARURAU” said Axel as he fought for air. “AAURRU”. Everyone in the area ached with laughter.
“Alright Boys! Stop fooling around!” came a voice from the center of the field.
“Get your asses out here before I have you running laps!”
PB let go of Axel and exchanged smirks with Jerry.
”See you after school, buddy” he said cruelly patting Axel on the shoulder as he turned away.
Axel slid his hood over his head as he walked back to the locker room examining his arm. His head was lowered in defeat but his eyes were wide open, like he had been struck by lightning.
“That memory” he said depressingly as he firmly grasped his arm. “I truly wish that was a dream”.
He lifted up his sleeves revealing long stretches of scorch marks of previously burnt skin, proof that the memory was in fact no dream.
“Dreams….. Memories…. Reality… It’s becoming harder and harder to find the difference” Axel thought as he grabbed his arms.
“Yo Ax” Reggie said emerging from the locker room.
Axel quickly dropped his sleeves down as he intercepted Reggie.
Reggie approached with a clench fist, holding something in his hand.
“You were in such a rush you dropped this man!”
Reggie reached out and handed over to Axel a gold necklace glittering in the light.
“You shouldn’t leave something like that on the ground!”
“Your right”, Axel said, admitting as he put it around his neck.
“Is that new? I’ve never seen you with that before” Reggie curiously asked.
“No, I always wear sweatshirts so it's usually not visible, but I have been wearing it since my first day here” Axel answered.
“It’s definitely got a weird shape…. but its nice man! I dunno if you should bring it to school though, at least not when Pb’s looking” Reggie said out of concern.
“Thanks” Axel said gratefully, “It was a gift from my mother before she passed” Axel said nostalgically.
Axel lifted up the necklace bringing it to eye level. He admired its carefully crafted gold pendant, a symbol his mother had once explained that he had forgotten in time. It had been several moments before he realized how long he had left Reggie beside him in silence.
“Also thanks for the concern” Axel said shifting towards Reggie. “But PB isn’t interested in something like this he thinks it makes me look like a girl hehe” Axel laughed halfheartedly, attempting to water down the remark. He stared back nostalgically into the necklace reflecting on his mother’s legacy.
“Yaknow Ax, my father once told me something wise about people like PB” Reggie said placing his hands on his chin.
“What did he say?” asked Axel?
“Someone whose mind is made of false values, will never comprehend anything of real value” Reggie said, putting on a serious adult-like impression.
“Wow” Axel remarked “that’s very wise”
Axel thought back to the calculus class he had slept through earlier, seemingly triggered by the word value.
“Did he say anything about the Intermediate value theorem? I could use some help with that!” Axel asked curiously.
“Hahah Actually he slept through his calculus classes too. He also used to say "Why work smarter or harder when a computer can do both better!” says Reggie laughing
Axel chuckled softly as he rubbed the underside of his wrist. “Real value huh? I wonder if my values are real? “He thought.
“Well I’m gonna head up to the field good luck Ax” Reggie said smiling. “Thanks” Axel said as Reggie took off.
Axel took another look down on his chain remembering his mother’s words.
“You are never alone my son, the light of the father shines bright in you! That is your true power”.
He smiled admiring the necklace one last time before making his way to the field.
“WHAT THE!” Axel screamed
A rush of heat trickled up his spine to the back of his neck giving him the presence of something huge right behind. Sporadically spinning around, he found nothing occupying the space between him and the gym door. He continued to spin, looking up at the trees and then to the rocks surrounding the school, but inevitably found nothing there.
“What are you losing your mind now?” he laughed as he turned to continue his journey.
It wasn’t more than 2 steps before he felt the same presence again. He spun around expecting to encounter the force, but couldn’t see anything behind him that had changed. Axel anxiously whipped his head around, trying to find the source of the persistent rubbernecking to no avail. Someone, somewhere, was watching him, and whoever they were, they were watching him intently.
[https://i.imgur.com/FRAWRQD.jpg]
“619, you really shouldn’t stare at people like that” said a man in the distance.
“But…. he’s the same as me” a teenage voice answered in response.
A man and a young boy stood 80 feet in the air atop of the school's flag post far from Axels view. They were standing back to back on the small spherical finial at the end of the pole whispering to each other.
“Interesting, is that so”, the man laughed. “Then would you care to meet him? Maybe you two could foster a friendship of some sort.”
“I’d like that very much!” The boy said gleefully closing his eyes and pumping his fists.
“Remember the promise you made to me if I find you a friend.”
“I promise” the boy said sincerely. “I promise once you help me find a friend, I’ll help you find the friend that you lost…But….. You have to make sure we're really friends first!” The boy exclaimed
“And how will we know that?” ” the man asked
“I read somewhere that friends have secret handshakes, so… as soon as that happens!” The boy said eagerly.
“Good”, said the man happily, “I promise to make you friends, but you mustn't use your powers, no matter what!” The man said waving his finger
“Why not?”
“Are you forgetting 619? What happened to all your other friends at the facility? There are few who can see your power without being filled with terror.”
The boy looked down at his hands as they sparkled with blue light. After admiring them the light slowly began to fade returning them to their normal state.
“If it's what I have to do to find a friend… I’ll do it no matter the cost!” He said diligently.
“Good” said O’Brian smiling, “Now why don't we introduce ourselves to your friend?”
“Awesome!” The boy said, taking off in Axel’s direction.
“EHEM” said the man grabbing the boy mid jump.
“I will do the introductions.” The man said, taking lead.
“Let's have a little fun now, shall we?” He said with a grin “Before we show him the magnificence of this world let's first show him a little chaos”