Archer Warrick February 29th,20XX

“Archer!”

A familiar voice broke through the buzz of student chattering and I saw a familiar lanky figure loping towards me.

“Kaja, wait!”

She had Tillo by the arm in her left hand and a tall hulk of a man in her right. For a moment I wondered if she hadn’t grabbed a teacher, but I quickly recognized the uniform and gathered that he was likely a classmate.

He was huge for a 16- to 17-year-old, but I tried my best not to judge. After all, I was pretty small for my age.

Getting called out so happily threw me off. Even though we were in the same building, I hadn’t thought the twins would invite me to eat with them.

“Hah, why didn’t you come towards us? Come on, Ember says he knows a good place to eat lunch, but it gets full too quickly. Were you going to get Eva?”

“Ah… sorry. But no, I was thinking it would be better for her to spend time with her new classmates.”

I’d been fighting my urge to get back to Eva’s class and check up on her and that brat from this morning. While I wanted to be there for Eva, I also needed her to get used to being on her own and interacting with other kids her age. Her loner brother hanging around her all the time wouldn’t make that easy.

Tillo nodded understandingly and spoke casually to me, despite Kaja not having released her death grip on his wrist. I only knew how hard it was by the discomfort that Ember sent out and the heaps of his flesh that danced between Kaja’s fingers. He wasn’t just uncomfortable because of how tight her grip on his wrist was. But that wasn’t any of my business.

“That makes sense. Lets go buy our lunches and we can stop by Eva’s room to drop it off. We don’t have to stay, but it’ll be nice to check up on her and make sure she’s doing okay.”

Tillo came up with a grand plan that solved both my problems in wanting to check up on Eva but not wanting to take up too much of her attention.

She’d been too young for school when we’d lived with our parents and our uncle and his girlfriend hadn’t let her go to school while we’d lived with them. I’d tried my best to keep her caught up with virtual lessons and explain everything she didn’t understand, but I worried she would find keeping up difficult.

“If you guys don’t mind. And Kaja you should probably let go of their wrists. It looks like Ember is uncomfortable.”

I tried to bring it up as casually as possible, but the large boy looked surprised and immediately flushed a deep red of embarrassment. Kaja quickly let go of his wrist and gave a bashful smile as an apology. She didn’t let go of Tillo’s hand, but it didn’t look like he minded.

He was nervous, and I could tell that he found comfort in their childish show of sibling closeness.

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I shook my head and tried to reel myself back. My powers were still running wild and breaching everyone’s first layer and sometimes the second if I looked at them a bit too long. While it was uncomfortable to be constantly barraged by the thoughts of so many strangers, and it was hard to concentrate, breaching the twin’s privacy would have been a worse feeling.

Ember led the way to the cafeteria and I ignored everyone’s gaze as we made our way to the food stands. My old school had a cafeteria as well, but it hadn’t been close to being so luxurious. Instead of the hard steel vats of vaguely recognizable food that were served with reckless apathy, this cafeteria had small restaurants and stands that littered the walls of the large room.

I wondered how I could pay for the food I wanted when Kaja and Tillo pulled out white cards with blue stripes at the top. They made their way to a stand that showcased a glittering tub of fries but stopped in their tracks when they realized I wasn’t following them.

“Archer?”

Tillo picked up on the problem first and reached out toward me with a kind smile. He took me by the hand, similar to how Kaja had grabbed him and pulled me in between him and his twin sister.

“We got these from the student rep that took us around.”

He gave a quick explanation and ushered me to choose what I wanted.

“I’ll take a medium bucket of fries, plain, and he’ll have the same thing but with black pepper all over them. Can we get a large soda as well?”

Kaja casually placed her order like a regular customer of the stand and barely double-checked with Tillo before placing an order for him. Tillo didn’t look like he minded, but I picked up a small amount of discontent from him. It looked like the two still had some things to work through.

“I’ll have the sa-“

“That’ll be all! We’ll look around a bit and come back when our orders are done!”

I looked at Kaja with a confused expression, unsure why she hadn’t let me order. Before I could ask, she put up an exasperated expression and lightly pushed me towards another stand.

“I can’t read minds, but I’m not too bad at reading faces. You don’t have to order the something you don’t want just because we got our equipment before you did. Go wild and lets bring Eva something she’ll actually enjoy.”

She brought up Eva before I could argue that I wouldn’t have minded having fries for lunch and effectively silenced me.

The way her eyes sparkled and how smug she looked made it clear that she was willing to argue with me until I picked something else.

“Ah… Thanks.”

I walked over to a stand close by and ordered two identical sets of food. They were noodle-based, which Eva wasn’t the biggest fan of, but they had a lot of vegetables and came with a small slice of cake for a dessert. It was the fullest but cheapest meal that I could see available.

Before I placed the order, I did a quick scan of their minds to make sure nothing unsavoury had happened to the food and gave as wide of a smile as I could to the servers.

I could be as cold as I wanted to the other students, but it wouldn’t do to leave a poor impression on the teachers and staff.

They packed the two set lunches into a bag which I thanked them for again as I took it off the counter that was a bit too high for me to comfortably reach.

It wasn’t like I was that short, so the counter must have been higher than average.

It was as we exited the cafeteria and walked towards Eva’s classroom that I felt it.

A sense of toxic malice, so thick that it made me sick, rolled over me. I stopped in my tracks and scanned the crowd in the hallway, wanting to identify its source, but before I could find it, I felt it come to a decision.

“Kaja! Tillo! Ember! Don’t ask questions and follow me!”

The twins looked confused, as did Ember, who had been leading us to the elementary classroom.

“What?”

I didn’t have time to explain, and even if I’d had the time, I lacked the words to do so in front of Ember.

I hoisted the bag of food onto my shoulder and grabbed them by the hands, then pulled them into the closest bathroom.

“Wha-”

“Wait this is the ladies-”

“Arc!”

No sooner had I gotten the last of them into the room did a flash and a bang explode from the hallway we had just left.