First Flight

[redtailedsaffa]

Well, every superhero has their flaws, Underseen.
 
Sorry for the lack of chapter last night... my parents came home very late from a work party and so I didn't get any online time. (I still live at home - these events therefore influence my RAFing.) Anyway, I'll try and stick two chapters in today to make up.

Chapter Twenty

The first thing that Saffa saw as she entered the dining hall on the day of the English Board exam was a miniature Yeerk pool. No, wait… it was a bain-marie full of grey, rather diluted and purely-puke-inducing oatmeal. Good Lord, now they’ve hit a new low! Saffa felt infinitely grateful for the spiced shortbread stashed in her locker.

The second thing she saw, though, brought a lot more cheer. Austin stood at the back of the hall, in conversation with Mrs. Agarwal, probably about the Chemistry practical. When he finished speaking, he walked past his usual table where Saffa and his friends were sitting, gave them a curt nod, and strode out of the hall.

Everyone around the table stared at each other, half hurt and half in disbelief. “What the hell was that for?!” Abhay began.

“Shh, quiet, bro. Don’t make a scene,” Jason said softly. “I have no idea. Either he just wants to skip breakfast – “

“And I don’t blame him,” Saffa interjected.

“ – yeah, or he just wants to be alone,” Jason finished. “I think we should talk to him,” he said in his usual blunt way.

“Uh – I think I better do that. This sort of thing needs a woman’s touch,” Saffa interjected, receiving coughs from her fellow mates.

The exam was easy (what else do you expect when you’re the boss of Indian English papers) and Saffa finished it with nearly an hour to go, so she asked the invigilator for permission to leave the room and found Austin waiting outside the next hall, stuffing things into his bag. She came up to him.

“Easy paper, huh?”

“Rubbish,” Austin agreed, before slinging his bag carelessly over his shoulder and giving her a sad smile. “Sorry about all that in the morning… would you apologize to the guys too? I wasn’t particularly friendly this morning. Had a lot on my mind, so…”

“I understand.” She raised an eyebrow. “You are okay, right?”

“Getting there,” Austin replied. He sat down on a step in the nearby staircase. “Mom was hysterical, those three days. I mean, she’s always prepared for something like this happening, what with being in the Army and all, but yet on the day, I dunno… something just sorta snapped in her.” Saffa nodded. “She was always a strong woman, I looked up to her that way. Kinda like you, I guess.” He grinned.

“Uh-huh. I won’t take the butter, thanks. Go on.”

“Anyway, it all kinda calmed down a little towards the end, after the funeral and all. Though it’s rather annoying when everyone in the neighbourhood looks at me and goes ‘oh, look, that’s Lieutenant-Colonel Connor’s beta. You know, the one who died?’ I guess they would talk about me like that. My dad was pretty darn decorated.”

“That’s an amazing dad to have.”

“I know.” Austin’s eyes shone with a radiance Saffa was seeing for the first time that day. “I’m gonna take over from where he left off. Finish school and then go on to defend the country – because from what we’re seeing in the papers these days, we’re looking at war pretty soon.”

“And things will get ugly if someone doesn’t step in soon,” Saffa said grimly. She beamed at Austin. “I know you’ll make a fine soldier.”

“Hey, I’m already having a bit of training, thanks to you.”

“What do you…? Oh. That. I – “ Saffa began, but was interrupted by a steady stream of students walking out of the two rooms, followed by the invigilator of one room. “Gotta run,” she said, and joined Sonal in the corridor.

Later, at lunchtime, Austin approached her, saying, “This is getting annoying… The whispers are following me here, too. I’m the specimen, the Army beta. I need to escape somehow. Get right on outta here.”

Saffa thought for a while, then said, “Meet me at revision hour in the woods. I know a good site.”

At revision hour, Austin made an excuse to study his Computer Science in his dorm where it was ‘quieter’, and made off to the woods where he found Saffa waiting with a laptop and a broadband USB dongle. “I did say ‘a good site’,” she said, grinning.

“Oh. Wow. Are you – are you actually taking me in?” Austin said nervously.

Saffa said nothing, just smiled as she typed in the address of a cookery website in the address bar. “Hold on tight,” she said, taking Austin’s hand. “And do not, I repeat do not freak out, or you’ll bring everyone within a ten-metre radius over here.”

Austin closed his eyes, for good measure. Saffa hit Alt+L. And the shrubbery and forest around them dissolved in an explosion of pixels and white light.

[redtailedsaffa]

Second chapter! Very long one, sorry. And with this, I shall retreat to the X-Files.

Chapter Twenty-one

When the light subsided and Austin opened his eyes, he was no longer in the woods, but in a large room with cream-coloured walls and pale blue curtains. The décor was nice, but what was even more inviting were several long banquet tables filled with food! Each table had about thirty samples of a given dish in different sections, with its recipe on a big plaque behind the section. And the smells! Chicken, risotto, shrimp, chocolate, apple pie, various aromatic spices… they were everywhere. If Ax were here, he would’ve gone completely, totally insane.

Austin just stared open-mouthed. “Oh my word… Can you actually eat any of this?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Saffa encouraged him. “That’s why I came here in the first place, because I skipped breakfast and had a measly lunch. You go on ahead. I’m gonna check out the seafood.”

The two ate like they had never seen a morsel of food in all their years at school (which was partially true). From the standard Indian, Italian and Chinese to the more exotic Lebanese and Vietnamese, they sampled everything, including dessert, till they were too stuffed for words.

“I don’t think I’ll need dinner after this,” Austin said. “Man – you live in an awesome world. Where to next?”

“Well, South Africa’s playing Pakistan today, so I want to check the score,” Saffa said. “Okay, now take my hand. I’m going to glitch, and you don’t wanna get left behind.”

Saffa shut her eyes, and saw the address bar glowing in the nothingness. She focused as hard as she could on the URL, watched it type out, and then felt the sucking sensation and the blinding light resume.

Saffa opened her eyes – to find herself standing in vast, open grassland, very wild, very African, with a fence bordering a circular area of about a twenty-metre radius from where they stood. At the edge of the fence, straight ahead, was a log cabin of sorts, somewhat like a forest ranger’s bunker. The large sign next to it said Phalaborwa Wildlife Reserve – Guided Tours Available in twelve different languages, of which Saffa could recognize only English and Afrikaans.

“What the – this isn’t where I wanted to go!” Saffa said, utterly baffled. “How come I goofed up? It’s never happened before – is that an elephant?!”

“Either that or it’s Rachel,” Austin said, with an equally baffled stare at the huge African elephant walking the periphery of the bunker. “Oookay. I don’t think you can check the score here.”

“It’s certainly a South African website, though. Phalaborwa is famous for its savannahs and wildlife,” Saffa explained. “Maybe I wasn’t concentrating hard enough. But… hey. I feel… stronger, somehow.”

“Maybe the elephant is intimidating you?” Austin suggested.

“No. That’s not it. I dunno, it’s like I… Like this place is giving me energy. Like it’s feeding my powers,” Saffa said as a diamond popped up from the earth below her. Austin stared at it in wonder. “Either way, we’ve gotta leave. Take my hand,” and this time, Saffa shut her eyes and made sure every letter of the URL was firmly in place: ‘www.cricket.co.za.’

This time, she found herself in a large, airy office-type room with green-and-gold wall hangings and matching curtains. The large panelled desk near one of the walls had an iPad of some sort placed upright, which one swiped to see news articles on South African cricket. Behind the desk were team photographs of great South African series wins across the years – no World Cup wins, of course – flanked by portraits of the current captains. There were signboards pointing to various areas of the site – ‘Player Profiles’, ‘Fan Zone’, ‘Women’s Cricket’, etc. Facing the newsreel desk was a huge LCD screen, about half the size of the wall, showing the Pakistan game live. Or, at least, what was supposed to be the Pakistan game live.

“What the… it’s raining and they haven’t played a ball!” Saffa groaned, turning her attention to the big screen. “How long is this gonna last… wonder if I can watch some highlights…”

But Austin merely stared at Saffa like she had suddenly grown an extra pair of arms. Saffa felt the stare, and whipped around. “What? Whaddaya staring at?”

“Uh, Saffa? You’re kinda glowing. Are you glitching or something?”

Saffa looked herself up and down before replying, “No, I’m certainly not. But this… is weird… hey, remember that thing I mentioned earlier at the Phalaborwa website? About me feeling stronger?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, now I’m feeling positively pumped. Like there’s diamonds or charcoal or something just waiting to explode from my hands.”

Austin took a few steps backward. “Don’t do anything to me, okay?”

“I’m not going to hurt you. What makes you think that? But this energy, it’s like this is the source of my powers or something. Wait a minute… yes! That’s it!” Saffa banged the newsreel desk with her fist.

“What did you figure out?”

“CSA! Adrian Price had mentioned Miller meeting me again at one CSA in his email. It’s here – see?” she pointed at the giant banner above the desk, “Cricket South Africa. This is where I chased him to – after the Phalaborwa website. It makes sense. He was a sports fanatic. And he didn’t really like it when South Africa toppled England off the number one spot. That was in the email too. And what better country to screw up than South Africa, which already has a history of apartheid and injustice? And is pretty much still hurting? He is psycho, after all…”

“You mentioned that dream…”

“Yeah. I’ve been getting it often now, sometimes a lot clearer. He said the exact same thing in it, about the ‘infamous country’. I fought him here – in my hawk form. That,” she pointed at the portrait of captain AB de Villiers, “that was on the floor, smashed. I saw it.” She paused. “It was a pretty good fight, but I figure I lost in the end. What more can a bird do, anyway?”

“But that doesn’t explain how you ended up in your profile thread,” Austin pointed out.

“That’s the thing. See, he made a deal with the Drode,” Saffa began. “And I know the Drode can create alternate timelines. This must’ve been one. That’s why the Ellimist is involved. He got rid of the timeline and made it out to be like nothing ever happened, and I’m safe and sound. And I got my powers from here – somehow. Which is why I feel so strong. That’s my theory.”

“It’s a damn plausible one, though.”

Saffa grinned. “I know, right? But all this still doesn’t explain one thing. And that is why I had no memory of all this happening in the first place. You got any brilliant ideas?” Austin shook his head.

“Okay, then, hold on. We’re going somewhere where I might get answers,” Saffa said, taking Austin’s hand again. She closed her eyes, and made sure every letter of the address ‘www.animorphsforum.com’ was in the right place. They left the green-and-gold room in an explosion of light.

When they opened their eyes, they found themselves facing the blue-and-white buildings and open grounds, a scene that had now become etched into Saffa’s brain.

“Where on earth are we?” Austin wondered out loud.

Saffa smiled. It sounded totally cliché, but this was the big introduction moment she had been waiting for. “Welcome to RAF.”

[Underseen]

I can't wait to see Austin meet everyone and be amazed.

[theyoungphoenix]

Ya! He's (hopefully) gonna like us.

[redtailedsaffa]

Now who wouldn't? 

Now, this thread will be on hiatus for three or four days, since I'll be out of town for a very good cause - to get my college seat finalized - so I'll put out as many chapters as I can today to make up. Length still being an issue, of course...

Chapter Twenty-two

“This is amazing,” Austin said for probably the fourteenth time as the two of them toured the arcade-like Bored Board, having played a few counting games and more to kill time, after Saffa had hitched a ride on the glass ship of the Roleplaying Board to show Austin around.

“Come on, I’ll show you my profile thread,” Saffa said, leading him towards the Social Board. “It’s like my own little RAF-apartment.”

On the way there, they spotted Blaze returning from the General Board. “Hey, Saffa!” he called out. “Killed any monsters lately?”

“Nope, it’s an off day for me,” Saffa replied, grinning.

Blaze noticed Austin coming up behind her. “What the hell? Who is that? Never seen him around here…”

“Oh, jeez. Blaze, this is my friend Austin. He had the misfortune to be around when that kitty monster attacked,” Saffa explained, “so I figured he had a right to know everything. I trust him.”

“Well, seeing as you don’t trust too many people, I’ll take your word on that.”

“Why don’t you do me a favour and show him around? I needed to see Richard about something.”

“Yeah, that would be cool,” Austin agreed.

Blaze raised an eyebrow. “Funny you should want to see him. He himself wanted to see you,” he said. “Didn’t you get his PM?”

“Er, no,” Saffa admitted. “I glitched here from another site.”

“Ah, well, you can go see him now. He’s in the Media Area. You do that, and meanwhile,” Blaze said, looking at Austin and grinning wickedly, “I’ll give your friend a tour of the place.”

Blaze led Austin off towards the Animorphs Board, while Saffa made her way to the Media Area. The huge, amphitheatre-like hall was mostly empty, except for one of the sections of chairs which was occupied by a single person. A tall man with vaguely Caribbean features, who apparently seemed to be very interested in the ceiling. When he looked down and noticed Saffa, he beckoned her over.

Saffa immediately began to feel rather small and unimportant. I mean, come on. This is Richard. THE Richard, the Father of RAF. And she had been around for… how long had it been? A few months? Hardly half a year? And what was she supposed to say to him, anyway? “Good evening, Sir?”

Fortunately, Richard was not one to waste time with small talk. “Didn’t you get my PM?” he began, sounding somewhat surprised.

“Actually, no. I didn’t directly log in, I glitched from another site,” Saffa said for the second time that day.

“Well, anyway, now that you’re here, I’ve been meaning to ask you – how far is Adrian Price from you? From what you’ve said he’s rather near. And he has been on the Net recently. We even reported signatures leaving here close to your school.”

“He might be logging in through a computer in or around the school. Though how he managed to smuggle out a whole CPU and implant the teleporting device inside it, and then replace it, is beyond me,” Saffa said awkwardly.

“Never mind that. But that being said, you need to find that CPU, so that one of us can fly down there and destroy the teleporting device, before it falls into the wrong hands,” Richard said.

“I’ll tell Rose. Oh, and there’s something else as well…”

She related her theory of the Lewis Miller epic to Richard, and also her possible assumptions. “But it still doesn’t explain why I can’t remember a thing,” she finished.
Richard thought for a while. “Hm. You did say it was a pretty bad battle, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“If your theory of the alternate timeline being erased, albeit it being a relatively short one, is true – which I think it is – then there’s only one possibility that makes any sort of sense.”

“And that being?”

“You might not like the answer,” Richard said grimly. “You died a little while before the timeline was erased.”

Saffa felt like she had just been plunged into a bathtub of ice-cold water. “Yeah, that makes sense,” she said shakily. “It’s not like the Sario Rip, like in #11: The Forgotten. There Jake’s death cancelled it out.”

“But the timeline actually happened, while it was in existence, which is why the rest of us remember what happened all the way up to Lewis Miller’s arrest,” Richard finished. “Speaking of Lewis Miller, there’s one more very important thing.”

“Go on.”

“When the Drode visited you… did he mention Adrian Price at all?”

Saffa thought for a while, before saying, “Um, no, actually. He only talked about his deal with Miller and his plans for me. Miller’s, I mean.”

Richard frowned. “Could this mean Adrian Price has no connection with our incident?”

“He could be acting independently in some aspects. Heck, the whole taking-over-the-Internet idea was purely his, he mentioned.”

“Well, that may or may not be the case,” Richard said in a frosty tone. “Anyway, that’s all we know for now. But we definitely need more.”

“I’ll get on it. Thanks, Richard,” she said, getting up to leave.

When she went outside she found Aquilai hanging around the Social Board, and caught hold of him immediately. “Aquilai! Do me and the whole world a favour. Did up everything you can on Adrian Price, will you?”

“But… but then…” Aquilai stammered, taken completely by surprise.

“No buts. You’re the one who said no complacency, aren’t you? So go look him up. I don’t want any surprises from him.”

“What’ll surprise you now? He’s pretty well established.”

“From this angle, yes,” Saffa said darkly. “But there may be many more that we can’t see.”

[redtailedsaffa]

Second chapter of the day! Senti chapter (we Indians are very fond of shortening that word )... which is why I will definitely try and get a third in.

Chapter Twenty-three

Austin sat in an easy chair as he watched Saffa as she fired round after round of diamonds into the target-practice sheets, this time with most of them actually hitting the centre, the chest. She had rolled up the long sleeves of her school-uniform shirt, loosened her collar and stuffed her tie into her skirt pocket. She then moved on from the sheets to a pull-up bar fixed to the ceiling. As he watched her pull herself up, muscles flexing, he couldn’t help thinking she reminded him of an Amazon warrior – beautiful and dangerous.

“Been a while since I worked out here, what with all these damn exams,” Saffa said, dropping down and wiping the sweat off her arms with a towel. Her eyes shone with a mad, warrior-like glint which slightly scared Austin. “Though it always gets me pumped. And I’ll need it if I have to take down that rat Lewis Miller again.”

“I don’t think he’ll stand much of a chance. I mean, look at you. You’re like one of those beautiful female assassins from a movie. Though maybe a little on the shorter side,” Austin said.

Saffa laughed and threw the towel in a chair. “Very funny, but thank you. And thanks for your support, although I certainly can’t do this on my own. RAF is always at its strongest,” she said with a hint of pride, “when it’s united.”

A brief silence. Then Austin said, “I told my mum.”

“Told your mum about what?”

“About you. Your world, your fight, everything. See, I’m in this as much as you are – and I know how dangerous it is. So if it doesn’t quite end well…” He let it hang.

Saffa felt like lead weights had just been tied to her feet, slowing her steps to dull trudges. She had wished it wouldn’t come to this. It had never been fair, putting Austin in danger unnecessarily like this with the potential to cause a nice woman unwanted grief… She sat down in a chair, sighed, and cradled her head in her hands. “I’m sorry.”

Austin said nothing. That made it even harder. Saffa choked down a lump in her throat. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I went all Knight and Day on you, just selfishly putting you in all of this, not even thinking…”

She felt Austin’s warm hand on her shoulder. She didn’t look up.

“I mean, I never even asked you if you wanted to be part of this,” she said, standing up, her head bowed. “Your mum’s already lost her husband. She doesn’t need to lose her only son, too. You can leave, Austin. All you have to do is close your eyes and think the words ‘Log off’. Go on, write your Boards, join the Army, make your mum proud, live your life. I’ll live mine. I’ll fight Miller. I’ll die, the Drode will guarantee that. You don’t have to suffer.”

She looked up to see Austin still standing there in front of her. “Well? What are you waiting for? Go! Leave me here!” she half-yelled. “I’m giving you the permission, to walk away from all of this, pretend you don’t know any of this. At least that way you’ll live.”

Silence.

“You already told the Drode it can’t predict anything,” Austin finally said after what felt like one whole minute.

Saffa looked up. “What?”

“I’ve read the books. And the Drode’s only job, apparently, is to provoke you. Make you believe that unless you take his lead the world follows a certain course of events. His course of events. And he’s bloody good at that,” Austin went on.

Saffa smiled weakly. “You do better English interpretation than Patil.”

“The point is, you already told the Drode it’s wrong. And why is it wrong? Because that little git doesn’t know love, he doesn’t know friendship… just power.”

“That’s Voldemort.”

“Okay, greed, then. It’s all relative. But you’re not alone in this. You’ve got me. You’ve got Rose. And we’ve got you. The Drode can’t break us; it’s as simple as that. And that’s why I’m staying. I ain’t going anywhere, Saffa – neither is Rose. You need us far too much.”

Saffa was standing up now. “I only wish it was that simple.”

“I told my mum because she wanted to know you, she liked you. Better than the girls at my old school, she said.” He grinned, and gave her a hug. “Come on. We need to leave.”
Saffa wasn’t really the hugging type, but she took it anyway. “Thanks,” she said. She closed her eyes and saw the address bar floating in empty space.

“For what? You had the belief already. I just brought it to the surface. Keep it close, Saffa. It’ll keep us alive.”

<Log off.>

[redtailedsaffa]

Okay, third and final chapter of the day. It's sad that my Galaxy Tab doesn't come with a USB slot, since I have the outlines of the chapters in a Word document on my pen drive and take it from there... but anyway, all I'll have will be my phone, and hopefully these three will make up.

Chapter Twenty-four

Rose sat at the computer at the very back of the Computer lab, waiting for the damn thing to boot up. It was good that there was no one else around; for one thing, she could work at her French in peace – that cranky old man thought nothing of giving them the most complicated assignments right before the Board finals – and on the other hand, she could think in peace. She could reflect a bit, on the conversation she had with Saffa at lunch earlier that day.

Aside from the fact that her Computer Science exam was so easy it made English look hard, Saffa had mentioned details of her visit to the Cricket South Africa website and her conversation with Richard on the origin of her strange, yet highly effective, abilities, and her selective amnesia. That was when Rose had decided to put her bit in.

“You know, I logged off right after the seniors chased him to Google,” Rose had said.

“Smart move. We need an offline monitor, too,” Saffa had replied, “but did you actually see anything?”

“Yes, I did,” Rose had said, causing Saffa to abruptly put down her spoon. “I was at your laptop, looking at Google Chrome, when background tabs started to open. I figured that was happening as a result of people moving around on the Net, at least on a RAFian’s system.”

“Makes sense. So which tabs opened?”

“Well, there was Google, of course. And Lewis Miller’s Facebook profile, for some strange reason – “

“That would’ve been Aquilai. He had to get there for Miller’s details, so they could track him down. And eventually arrest him.” She paused. “But that wasn’t all, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Rose had admitted. “First it was an Indian business blog called Capital Mind. That was on for a while, then a website for a wildlife reserve in, uh, in, uh – “

“Phalaborwa.”

“Yeah. I can never get it right. Anyway, he was there for nearly a couple of minutes before Cricket South Africa popped up. And, like, stayed there.”

“Would’ve been on for a good while. We were tearing up the place.”

“Yeah, well, I figured that you had gotten over there, too, since you’re pretty much the only person there who knows the site. So I tried to get it, I hit Alt+L, but I couldn’t get through.”

“You couldn’t get through?”

“Nope. I was like halfway in, and I could close my eyes and see the address bar, but otherwise just blank white, blinding, almost, not what I had expected. Then the Ellimist spoke, you know, with that big, booming voice he always uses. He mentioned a timeline being erased. And that I should leave immediately. So I did.”

“Guess you can control things like that in Internet limbo. But anyway, it proves me right.”

“Well, I didn’t understand what the hell he meant until you came and told me all this.”

And then Saffa had mentioned the fact that Adrian Price could be operating close by, even within the school, so she had to keep her eyes peeled. Rose didn’t quite know how this could help – she couldn’t be patrolling the Computer lab day and night. But while she was here, she might as well sniff around. So far, she hadn’t found anything suspicious.

She opened Mozilla Firefox and went to Google Translate, selected English to French as the translate option and began to type out her passage on the French Revolution in the English box. Normally, she would’ve done it the honest-learning way with a French dictionary and the book of verb conjugations, but she was just too lazy today and the deadline was tomorrow morning.

Once she’d finished typing, she looked around, double-checked that no one was around, and regarded the screen. She hit Alt+L for the hell of it. It didn’t do anything on a normal browser – so nothing would happen, right?

Wrong.

Immediately, the keyboard began to glow, and the Computer lab began fragmenting into pixels as Rose felt herself being sucked in – not what she had expected at all! “Holy crap. Oh, no, no!” she yelled to nobody.

But she was dropped through anyway, and finally, the sucking sensation ceased, and Rose opened her eyes to find herself in a library.

At least, she assumed it was a library because of the many massive shelves of thick, bulging, hard-bound books – the majority of which, Rose realized, were multilingual dictionaries! Apart from the usual English to French and English to Spanish, she found guides to Latin, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Swedish, Arabic, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, and a host of other weird languages she never knew existed. There were shelves for each language, to which a small computer-like screen was attached. Rose went over to the French one and found her passage in the computer screen – with its French translation right below it. Some of the books in the shelf were glowing, which Rose found out were volumes on the French Revolution and related events. Ah, Google.

This was all very cool, but she needed to get out of her before someone entered the Computer lab and got suspicious. <Log off,> she instructed. Instantly the sucking sensation was back, and Rose whooshed through a blast of pixels and got thrown back in her chair in the lab.

She hurriedly looked around. Had anyone noticed? No – the shutters were still down, the door still closed and no one in the auxiliary lab next door. She heaved a sigh of relief – then took it back. Her sense of rational thinking had just kicked in, and what it told her wasn’t good.

Rose had certainly learnt something from the little episode, and that was not French. She now knew that Adrian Price had infiltrated the school itself.

[theyoungphoenix]

Interesting chapters! This is getting really good.

[redtailedsaffa]

Thanks, Abby!

I'm baaaack! And, to commemorate the occasion, we shall have a new chapter.

Chapter Twenty-five

“The half-life of a radioactive substance is 100 days. If originally 100 mg of the substance was present, what will be the activity of the substance after 5 days?” Saffa groaned. This was precisely why she hated Physics problems. They’d give you two completely unrelated quantities, and expect you to use them to find a third, even more unrelated quantity. There was now only one way to solve this problem, Saffa declared, the tried and tested method: Use your imagination. Ha. That should work. It always does. Why am I looking at Physics, anyway? I have Maths tomorrow.

Saffa put the sample paper away and went over to her bag, lying on her bed in her dorm, to rummage for her Maths guide. She chucked out half a dozen random papers – when will I ever learn to file these – when she caught a movement in the corner of the room, behind the bedpost.

Saffa froze stiff. Was it the Drode? If it was, it was going to be really sorry it entered without knocking again…

A movement under the bed! Saffa swiftly moved to the end of the bed, heat pulsating from her fingers, poised and ready for an attack. She had definitely seen something: something like a dark, black shadowy string, slinking away underneath the bed.

“Get outta there!” she yelled, making her voice as threatening as possible.

Suddenly, the shadow flung itself from under the bed, and like a mechanical arm, caught hold of Saffa’s right ankle, sending her flat down to the floor and taking her completely by surprise. Saffa hit her head and shoulder while landing – but not before catching a glimpse of the thing that had grabbed her. It was under the bed and seemed to be composed of nothing but a black, shadowy substance, with two cold, grey slits for eyes and no other defining feature. Saffa kicked at the arm holding her – with surprising strength for a shadow – and tried to wriggle free.

Bad move. The shadow-thing now had her other ankle as well – and Saffa was now wriggling on the floor like a worm in the rain.

“Aaaargh! Get off me!” Saffa yelled.

She made a swing, a desperate dive, with her arms for the bedpost – and got a handhold, and tried to pull herself free. But the creature held on even tighter, and this manoeuvre only caused her sides to burn with pain – so she let go of a hand and fired a largish piece of charcoal at the thing, symbolic of the perennial South African love for outdoor barbecue parties or braais, and quite handy in a fight.

Nothing! The piece of hot carbon passed right through the shadow like it had absorbed it. Instead, it only infuriated it, and it jerked Saffa’s leg even harder, causing her to lose her grip and fall down to the floor. “Oh, no… what do I do now?”

Saffa had to think of an answer fast, because the creature was dragging her underneath the bed, and now a shadowy tentacle grabbed her right arm. She struggled, kicked and strained, but to no avail.

Morph! she thought. But what morph? Hawk talons and tiger claws wouldn’t be of much help to something that seemed to be made out of, well, nothing. And going fly might mean she risked being lost in the thing. That meant she only had one morph left. It seemed a rather ridiculous choice, given the circumstances, but it was better that the alternative. Heck, it could serve better as a mode of escape, rather than one of attack.

Suddenly, the thing lashed out at her! A dark tentacle whipped at her head and wrapped itself around it. “Oww! Leggo!” she screamed as it pulled at her hair. Saffa punched at it, a large diamond in hand – but it did nothing to improve her situation. In fact, it only worsened it – she felt her previously free hand get stuck in the shadow. Right in the thing!

The grey slits were positively glowing now, perhaps with glee. Saffa watched in horror as one tentacle holding her right leg began to seep into her skin. What in hell – was it trying to absorb her or something?

She kicked and screamed, even though she knew no one could possibly hear her. “Rose! ROSE!” She was just a floor below; maybe there was a chance she could hear…

In her struggle, she hit the roof of her bed, nearly passing out. This is nice... no need to kick... no need to scream... It’s all over. I’ll sleep now. No need to morph...

The word ‘morph’ suddenly jolted Saffa back to reality. Though groggy, she somehow remembered her morphing power. A totally ridiculous alternative... but it’s all I’ve got now.

Saffa began to focus... and the shadowy creature reared its huge, black head, its cold, slit-like eyes staring menacingly at her.

[redtailedsaffa]

How 'bout another one, then? Short one.

Chapter Twenty-six

Saffa began to focus, trying hard to ignore the wall of blackness looming all around her. She pictured the neighbour’s Lab, Jackie, the dog that seemed to take pleasure in driving her nuts – from running off with the ball while she played cricket to howling in the middle of the night when she desperately needed sleep. Hopefully the creature’s absorbing abilities had no effect on the morphing...

To her utter relief, fur began to sprout in various places on her body. Her face bulged outwards till it formed a snout, her ears popping up on the top of her rapidly changing head. She felt her backbone stretch and elongate as a tail began to curl out from her back.

The shadow was slowly losing grip on her hand and legs as they shrank – and she wriggled free, all the while shrinking, no longer feeling the shadow’s seeping effect on her skin. Finally, the morph was complete, and a Labrador now crouched under the bed, blinking at the shadow in front of it, free of its iron grip. <Yes!>

The perennially happy dog mind kicked in all of a sudden. The dog was happy to be free – but it did not like being trapped under a bed, and with some effort, Saffa wriggled out from under it, and backed straight into the study table. Saffa’s water bottle, lying open on the table, wobbled at the sudden impact, and crashed to the floor.

Water fell everywhere – on Saffa, on the bed, on the floor, and on the shadow, which was slowly moving out from under the bed and coming for the dog. The creature suddenly recoiled as the droplets hit its shadowy form, and Saffa noticed that parts of it were actually dissolving as the water hit them.

Like how it was dissolving into her skin a few minutes earlier – only this time, it was dissolving into nothingness. And this fact was clearly not amusing it.

<What the – it’s lyophobic!> she realised with immense relief. At least something could stop this creature! <All right then – one good dose of liquid coming right up!>

Saffa demorphed with shocking speed, and, fully human and a complete mess, grabbed her empty bottle and aimed it at the retreating shadow.

“Y’know, I’d have never in my life thought this wine thing would actually be this useful, and certainly not in a fight,” she said to herself as she focused on her hands.

Out of the bottle came a blast of white wine, hitting the creature right in the middle, which flailed and writhed madly – then, like a balloon losing its air (and farting around the room), it twisted, withered, and finally disappeared in a whiff of black smoke, which caught the breeze and escaped through the open window of the dorm.

Saffa collapsed on the ground by the study table, utterly bushed. She looked around her. The whole floor, not to overlook her bedspread, was covered in wine – she’d have to tell Rose to smuggle a mop from the store-cupboard now, unless she wanted to invent a bestselling piece of fiction for any teacher who noticed. But where in the world did that thing come from?

“The unknown signature…” Saffa said slowly, like she had just received enlightenment from the heavens. “Oh, man. That was what it was. And seeing how it got away through that window... I don’t think this is the end of it.”

A knock on the door sent her jumping up nearly a foot into the air. She slowly walked over to the door and opened it just a crack – and heaved a sigh of relief that it was only Rose.

“Oh, thank heaven, it’s only you. Get in quickly before anyone sees this mess.”

“What mess – oh, crap. D’you want me to get a mop for you?” Rose asked, eyes nearly popping out as she noticed the floor.

“That would be lovely. But why are you here?”

“The Computer lab has been bugged,” Rose said dramatically. “By an insect named Adrian Price.”

Saffa listened as Rose related how she found the guilty computer in the lab. “So now what? Do we check on it tonight?”

“No, not tonight,” Saffa said. “I need to sleep, I have Maths to write tomorrow. You know what? We’ll wait till our exams get over, since we’re going to be at school for a week in the holidays anyway. And so is Austin, so I’ll let him know. There’s just Physics and Maths left. Let that pass, and then we take him down.”

“But what do we do till then?”

“Till then? We get prepared,” Saffa said, looking at the mess around her. “We get prepared for whatever else he wants to throw at us.”

[Underseen]

No computer lab makes Alt+L'ing harder.

[redtailedsaffa]

Well, my life experience tells me it's a convenient world, Underseen.

Sorry for the lack of chapter today - RAFparty will do that to me! The posting is getting so intense I can't even look at my Facebook and Twitter feeds, let alone type a whole chapter. Anyway. I'll probably type it out offline in Word tomorrow morning, they copy+paste it in the evening. It will come. Don't worry.

[theyoungphoenix]

have fun with that. Hehe.

[redtailedsaffa]

Well now, it looks like no one else is at the Bored Board for now, and I've posted in practically everything - so looks like we have a chapter coming!

Chapter Twenty-seven

Maths was, as predicted, tough. Tough enough to make everyone including Saffa break into nervous sweats with half an hour to go before paper submission, even to the extent of a few girls bursting into tears. Everyone was genuinely relieved when they left the exam halls – at least now all they had to do left was think up more Nobel Prize-worthy (not!) theories to explain every twisted Physics question those ungrateful wretches at the CBSE could think up.

After a few forced spoonfuls of lunch (mind-blowing cauliflower casserole), Saffa went down to the office to confirm that she and Rose would be staying at school for four days into the holidays – thanks to their parents’ commitments with some unknown-yet-apparently-very-close relative’s wedding in Kochi – when she noticed a woman standing in the visitors’ lounge next to the office. She was shorter than Saffa, at roughly five feet, and very pretty, despite her rather pale visage and dark, firm eyes. She had long hair, of the same soft texture as Austin’s – and with a start Saffa realised this must be his mother.

The lady started as soon as she saw Saffa. “You must be Saffa,” Mrs. Connor said. “I’m Austin’s mother. He’s told me a lot about you.”

“Good things, I hope, Aunty,” Saffa said with a nervous laugh.

“Oh, there's not really anything bad, is there?,” Mrs. Connor said, laughing. “I just met him after the Maths exam – just to check on him. Of course the poor boy was embarrassed as anything. But he seemed well, apart from the exam being hard.” She smiled at Saffa. “Do stick with him, will you? You’re doing him a world of good, especially after, you know…”

“Uh, that’s the thing, Aunty,” Saffa began. “See… what I’m doing is rather dangerous. And while I can defend myself to some extent, that’s not the same case with Austin. And… if anything happens, then…”

“It will not be your fault,” Mrs. Connor said, laying a hand on Saffa’s shoulder. “I will understand, beta. He was doing his duty.”

Saffa said nothing, just smiled sadly.

“It is like that in the Army as well,” Mrs. Connor went on. “I felt nothing towards the soldiers who were on duty with my husband when he got shot, because it wasn’t their fault. He was doing his duty, and these things happen in this line of work. There was even the case where…”

But Saffa was only half listening to what Mrs. Connor was saying, because behind her, some distance away amid the potted plants that framed the entrance to the school and office, she had caught sight of a movement – a movement of something black.

“What is it, beta?” Mrs. Connor said, noticing her. “Did you see something?”

“No, no, nothing, Aunty. I thought I did,” Saffa said hastily. “Oh… well… I’ll need to be getting back to class now.”

“Go ahead, then. Maybe I’ll see you when you come back to town,” Mrs. Connor said, waving her off.

Saffa did not head upstairs to her classroom; instead, she went out through the entrance, and past the potted plants. Nothing there.

“OI!” she yelled. No reply of any sort. But then, she didn’t expect one. After all, it hadn’t had a mouth, had it? Not very intelligent, that…

She looked ahead down the road that led to the dormitory blocks and sports grounds. There was not a soul around, and not a movement in sight, not even the slightest blade of grass.

At least, not that human eyes can see. Saffa threw her back to the wall, made sure absolutely no one was around, and began the morph. The feather patterns were just drawing themselves when –

“Who is out here?” Saffa froze in mid-morph. A teacher! She shouldn’t have yelled!

She looked down at herself frantically. It didn’t look too bad; she was slightly shorter and there were feathers on her arms, covered by her long shirt sleeves – but there were some feather patterns running up her neck, and a tickle up her nose that made her want to –

“Ah-ah-ah-CHOOO!”

Damnit.

“Come out from there immediately!” the teacher shouted. Saffa had no choice but to obey. She didn’t recognize the lady – it was probably some unimportant middle-school teacher; and in any case, the teacher didn’t look like she recognized her.

“Which class are you in? 11? 12? Why are you out of class?” The teacher narrowed her eyes and squinted at Saffa. “What – what is wrong with your face? Aha – I knew it. You seniors are down here doing drugs! I’ll tell the principal, see if I don’t! Now give me your name!”

Saffa thought hard – and came up with a distraction. She took a step forward, and feinted a tripping and falling to the ground. Out of Nosey Parker’s view, she pressed her hand firmly to the ground and concentrated.

“Oh! Look at that!” she screamed, pointing to the teacher’s right, who snapped her head in the direction. Her eyes widened as she laid them on a diamond the size of a quail egg (which, incidentally, is a quarter of the size of a hen’s).

“My God! That wasn’t here earlier… I must’ve knocked it over…”

While Nosey Parker was preoccupied with digging the ground below the diamond (which would eventually disappear in a few seconds), Saffa ran as fast as her legs could carry her, turned the corner, rapidly morphed to hawk, and soared into the air, scanning the grounds from a thousand feet up for the slightest movement. The wind was cold, winter air, and she had to work hard to get altitude.

Nothing useful at all – just big, clunky humans. Then – she spotted it! A black tentacle scaling the wall of the boys’ block.

Saffa immediately angled her wings, changed direction, and flapped hard towards the building. If it was going after Austin… well, there was no telling what she’d do with the block’s entire water supply.

There it was – going down the stairs? Saffa tore after it. She was almost at the building now, at the open-air corridors of the second floor, housing the top two grades. She shot into the corridor and past a rather stunned Jason, who was just opening his door.

“What the – a bird!” Jason exclaimed, jaw dropping. He hammered on the door next to his. “Hey – Austin – you’ll want to see this. There’s some mad bird in here!”

As soon as he heard the words “mad bird”, Austin dropped his Physics guide. “What kind of bird?” he yelled through the window.

“Some sort of eagle or hawk, I dunno. But it was pretty big,” Jason replied.

That was all he needed to know. Austin threw his book onto his bed, pulled on his jacket, tucked his shredder under it, and ran out the door and down the stairs.

“Hey, hey, dude, where are you going?” Jason was yelling. “You won’t catch up with it at this rate…”

[redtailedsaffa]

Okay then. Another one!

Things are heatin' up here.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Meanwhile, Saffa had come to rest on the railing of the ground-floor staircase, scanning the floor intently. The warden was out – what a relief. No need to have him bringing the place down about escaped birds.

<Oh!>

Was that it? In the vegetable garden outside the seventh-grade common dorm? Saffa hopped off the railing and hauled wing towards the garden. <Either this thing is really out there, or I’m just going crazy.>

She found nothing there – except, in the distance, the distinct shape of someone running away. Saffa could only make out the outline, since he had his back turned – assuming it was a he – and he looked too tall to be a student. She flared her wings, swelled them up and got ready to fly when –

“Leave it, Saffa. He’d have gotten too far off by now,” a soft voice behind her said.

She turned around, flapped and landed on Austin’s outstretched arm. <Who the hell do you think that was?>

“Why do you bother asking? You know what I’ll say. It’ll be the same answer you’re thinking of.”

The man has a point. <I was actually chasing after that black shadow thing.>

Austin looked positively baffled. “What black shadow thing?”

<I didn’t tell you? Oh, wait, I told Rose. Sorry. Anyway, I got attacked by this weird black thing in my dorm the day before the Maths exam…> and she went on to describe the entire episode.

“How’d you manage to get away?”

<Oh, it gets destroyed by any kind of liquid. Discovered that after my bottle fell on it. I didn’t have enough water, so I used my wine instead.>

Austin laughed. “More importantly, then, how’d you clean your dorm after that?”

<Oh, Rose and I smuggled a few mops and stayed up taking care of that. The bedsheet was totally destroyed. I had to go to some upholstery website and get a new one – yes, you can do that,> she said smugly. <But the point is, it’s not totally dead, which is kinda annoying, and – >

“Yo, Austin!” Jason yelled, coming running down the stairs. “I have a doubt – what the – holy – ! That – bird – “

“Relax, man. I know this hawk,” Austin said with a laugh. “What happened? Who set their dorm on fire?”

“Uh, no, I – erm – just had this doubt. Semiconductors,” Jason said, waving his Physics textbook about. He looked nervously from Saffa’s talons, to her wicked, curved beak, and back at her talons, and shuddered. “That is one freaky bird you’ve got there, dude. Awesome, yeah. But definitely freaky.”

Austin laughed. “You’ve got that right.”

<I’ll keep my eyes peeled, then,> Saffa said in private thought-speak as she lifted herself into the air. <You might want to do the same.>

Austin gave her the slightest of nods as he watched her fly off and turned to Jason babbling something about a feedback oscillator, while Saffa, once out of earshot, let out a huge groan.

*                     *                    *

Austin stood at the library window that overlooked the entrance and gates, watching some six hundred students run wild and break loose after the end of another school year. He could hear Peter lugging his Quasimodo-sized trunk on the gravel all the way up from the second floor. In the corner he could see Saffa exchanging addresses and phone numbers with Sonal. He smiled. It was good that Saffa had managed to make at least one firm girl friend, if not in her last year of school. Oh well. Better late than never.

He waited till the librarian verified all the reference books he was finally returning – thanks to them he had some chance of passing Physics – and walked downstairs. On his way to the entrance, he ran into Rose.

“Ah, good. Just wanted to check – are we going ahead with the plan?” he asked her discreetly.

“Yep, we are. We’re taking him tonight. Of course, sneaking outta the boys’ block is your headache, since we have it easier. But apart from that, we’ve got it all planned. Well, sorta.”

“How are we going about this again?”

“We get to the Computer lab, log into RAF and Aquilai will tell us his exact location from the school,” Saffa said, coming up to them, realizing what they were on about. “Then Rose will teleport to RAF and sound the alert, and we go off in search of Price, to trick him to coming over to RAF. Hopefully we take him by surprise. Hopefully.”

“I don’t like the sound of your hopefully,” Rose said darkly.

“How will Aquilai know exactly where he is, though?” Austin asked.

Saffa looked at him skeptically. “Uh, duh. Google Earth.”

“Oh. Duh.”

“To answer your doubt, Rose,” Saffa continued, “it’s not a foolproof plan, I agree. But at the moment, it’s all we got.”

Night fell soon enough, and the girls prepared themselves for their encounter. Saffa and Rose were sharing a room while they were staying for the holidays, and right then, they were both standing in the corridor outside Saffa’s dorm, in pitch darkness. Saffa was in her hawk form.

<You ready?>

“Yeah. Ready.” Rose took a deep breath. She clutched her shredder tightly. “You? How’re you feeling?”

<You wanna know exactly how I’m feeling? Angry, scared, nervous, among other things. But yeah. I’m ready.>

Rose looked at the big bird of prey silhouetted against the moonlight. “You know, you scare me sometimes, Saffa.”

<You’re not the only one. I scare me, too.>

Rose laughed. “That there made me think of you and Austin. You’re like Rachel and Tobias, only you switched bodies somewhat.”

<Maybe. But you do realize, Rachel ended up dead,> Saffa said, in a grim tone.