Rising Shards

When I pictured how having Wildfire Hearts students on the Rising Shards campus would go, I pictured an old movie Stella would watch whenever it came on TV. It had two rival gangs that ended up in the same school and they’d have a lot of knife fights between big musical numbers about which gang was better. I didn’t think the Wildfire Hearts situation would entirely go the same here (the movie had a bizarre final act revealing one of the gangs actually consisted of time traveling aliens, while the other consisted of dimension traveling robots, Stella always gets angry if I question it when we watch), I did imagine the arriving students walking around, rhythmically snapping their fingers together before getting into knife fights with us.

Instead, we all mostly kept to ourselves outside of the people that got raided. Sometimes we’d get stares from groups from the other school walking past us in their cloaks, but I hadn’t even been heckled yet. I still hadn’t seen Laenie yet, but Aira was around, sadly much quieter than I was used to with her, but she’d been through a lot. It was nice to have her back, even if I wished I could do more to help her recover from her big blowup with Laenie after a long and arduous journey in the void.

I waited outside one of the computer labs with my class, as well as a group of Wildfire Hearts students across from us, who mostly just checked their phones. We were actually technically on the Falling Shards campus, in a big computer lab that was like ten or so smaller computer labs separated by thin walls forming boxes around them.

“OK, so they just told us the thing was delayed.” Kalei said.

“Uh huh,” I said.

“So why are classes cancelled today for this?” Kalei asked.

“I couldn’t tell you.” I said.

“I know I should just stop trying to make sense of this…” Kalei said.

“This one isn’t a competition or part of that Recreant deal, I think.” Marmalade said.

“Correct.” Lillia said. “Both schools require a ‘badge of Cani societal good standing,’ whatever that means. Today we’re earning ours.”

“That sounds so dorky.” Kalei said.

One of our classmates was late; my favorite classmate actually. I didn’t see Oka rushing up to me, but sensed her presence almost. Or I heard her yelling.

“Zeta!” Oka nearly tackled me as she hugged me tightly.

“Hi!” I said.

“I missed you,” Oka hugged me tightly.

“You were gone a day.” I giggled.

“Yeah, but it was a long day.” Oka said. “I spent my whole Sunday with the Kilanders, and do you know how awkward it is when you’re really bummed that your cousin got turned into a dog monster and having to explain that to the family who keeps asking what happened? Even though they’re Cani so they should absolutely know weird business happens with us?”

“Dang…” I said.

“Dang is right,” Oka said. “In that dang, I missed my Zeta.”

“I missed you too…” I said.

“It wasn’t all bad, though, I did get to meet my great uncles, who were super nice.” Oka said. She let go of the hug, but just moved her hands to my shoulders. “Oh wow, have I mentioned how much I love your shoulders?”

“Alright, do you two need a minute or like an hour to get this out of your systems?” Kalei asked. “This is gonna be so annoying if you do this all day.”

Kalei was a bit snippier than usual, but we knew why so we tried not to jab back as much. With the new students officially here, her chances of imminently seeing Nikki and Risa were very high.

“I’ll ease up in a sec,” Oka said.

“Aw,” I said. “I probably won’t.”

“We can ease up for now,” Oka said. “Then turn it back up to full me in lovey dovey mode after class!”

One member of their class was actually taking the time to introduce themselves to the Wildfire students. It was Tay, who had a big three subject notebook in hand, as she was documenting the new students for her ever-growing library of student drama.

“Well, at least you two aren’t like that.” Kalei said. "I'll take lovey dovey mode over that."

“Was anyone else expecting like more of a…” I gestured vaguely between us and the other class. “Like fights and such?"

“I was ready for fights in general even without Wildfire Hearts,” Marmalade said. “But I guess we get that out of our systems in the void, generally. Maybe they’re the same?”

“Yeah, for real,” Kalei said. “I thought we were getting like all the violent jerks, all these Wildfire kids are just huge dorks.” Some heads turned at that. “Not you guys, obviously. Whatever.”

“Count yourself lucky you’re here and not there, Falling Shards is getting all the violent jerks.” A boy from Falling Shards also waiting for their computer lab room to open said.

“Holy crap,” Kalei said. “Where have you been, dude?”

It took me a second to recognize them as well as it had been ages since we last talked; it was Syval, Kalei’s friend from Falling Shards. I guess he was technically my friend too, but I’d barely talked to him.

“Who is that?” Oka whispered to me.

“That’s Syval.” I whispered back.

“Ohhhh.” Oka said, definitely not remembering him at all.

As the two of them caught up, our computer lab finally opened. I sat down next to Oka before our wristbands went nuts and alerted us that we had assigned seats for this.

“They still do that?” Oka asked as I came down from my latest jolting moment that totally poofed my tail up.

“I don’t get to sit by you?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Ms. Letoh said. She was our teacher for the day, apparently. “I’ll disable the alert, so we don’t have to hear that many, many times today.”

“Ms. Letoh, what exactly are we doing today?” Marmalade asked.

“Earning your badges!” Letoh said, clasping her fists in front of her with a sparkly eyed expression. “It’s an important duty of every Cani at this school.”

“And we do that…on the computer?” Marmalade asked.

“We’re just going to be…” Letoh chuckled ominously while keeping her bright expression. “Playing a little game, is all…”