Monachi: Masters of Water and Fire (6 page)

The last time we were at school, when
Tess’s hair started on fire wasn’t the first time
that happened to her.

Tess confessed to me about the time when
she was six and she was playing around with a
candle. She leaned into it and her hair caught on
fire. When she put her hair out under the sink,
there were
no burn marks or
singes, so she
thought she was going crazy. Well, now she
understands what had happened.

And if we’re telling confessions here; that
time back in the lab when I had a fortress of water
around me - wasn’t my first time either.

One day, when I was just eight years old
and swimming at our local pool, I dove off the
high dive and when I came back up above the
waterline, there was water surrounding me in all
directions as far as three feet; like a force field of
water not letting any other water inside the circle.
When I went back under the water and popped
back up, the force field was gone. Well, now I too,
understand what had happened.

This makes
me wonder
what else
had
happened in my life that could’ve been one of the
elemental powers affecting me.

I mean, I’m almost sure they haven’t, yet I
have the strangest feeling they have.
Did my parents know about me being a
Monachi
and never told me? What about Tess’s
parents, did they know and never tell her? And
how weird is it that I happen to be best friends
with someone who’s also a
Monachi
?
These questions are going to have to be
answered sooner or later, and hopefully not much
later.
Another story I wanted to tell you, (yes I
have two), is on a different subject as well, but
still worthy of mentioning, somehow.
I think Tess has a fainting problem.
Can people have a fainting problem?
If so, Tess has one.
She faints at least once every two weeks.
She will just randomly faint.
Sometimes she faints in dangerous places,
and maims herself.
I’ve never fainted before.
Tess confessed to me that one time she was
walking around in an office when she suddenly
felt
a tingling sensation,
felt
lightheaded, and
fainted. She fell straightforward, hitting her head
on the corner of a desk, and fell face forward onto
the ground. Someone had to slap her, to wake her
up.
She said that it was at that point that she
saw a lovely face that told her;

So when she woke up, that’s exactly what
she did.
She said she felt like she had been slapped,
even before she knew she got slapped.
Odd isn’t it?

Now that we knew
about the
reward
hanging
over
our heads we had to be
extra
careful.

That meant we couldn’t get help from
anyone because you never know who listens to
the alerts, or however else they are spreading the
news.

Anyway, after we finished running away
from that woman with the camera, we hid behind
a church. If we walked for about another hour
we’d make it home!

Tess leaned up against the church to catch
her breath. “We’re so close to making it home,
Maddy!” she cried as she closed her eyes. “I can
seeit now.”

After we took a ten minute break, we began
walking again. Trying not to look suspicious, we
didn’t look into any cars to see if they were
staring at us.

After about half an hour, I began to see
some city’s lights reflecting through the clouds.
We were close to Boise! Tess and I joined hands
and started running.

Once we got into the city, we knew we
were about ten minutes away from home. After
all, Tess and I were next door neighbors.

We walked, and fantasized about what we
would do when we got home. “First of all, I need
to brush my hair and teeth; then get into some
different clothes,” Tess said. We were wearing the
same clothes as when we got arrested. Tess was
wearing a polka-dot tee shirt and jeans. I was
wearing a yellow top, green jacket and orange
pants. Wasn’t I colorful?

When we reached the five minute mark I
began to panic. What if our parents turn us in to
the cops for the reward? I shook that thought
from my head. Our parents wouldn’t do that.

There were cops
at our doorstep.
We
traveled all the way here just to find the cops at
our door!

We quickly jumped behind a tree as to not
be detected. Tess sighed, and spoke, “Like I said
before, I’m giving in.”

I looked at her; the look on her face was
serious. I couldn’t let her do this. We hadn’t come
all this way just to give in. I was so mad at her I
could just slap her. So that’s what I did. I looked
her in the eyes and gave her a good slap across
the face.

“What the heck was that for?” Tess cried.
“We’ve gone through so much and have
traveled so far to get back home;I’m not letting
you give up now.”
She looked at me with a sudden
‘lightbulb
turning on brain’
expression on her
face, as I
looked right back at her. She nodded; I’d finally
managed to slap some sense into her.
We needed a plan.
I turned to Tess.
She always had a plan, and today’s the day
that we needed her plan the most.
Well, besides that time not long ago when
we were being held captive in that cage.
Tess thought about it for a minute. Then
she pointed over to the forested area beyond her
house. I then remembered that when we were
little we dug little passageways underground to
get us places unseen.
We quietly snuck over to the bush where
we hid one of the passages to get us into my
backyard. Tess lifted the bushes and nudged me
in first. When she was getting in, she started to
scream “Maddy! Help! Someone has hold of my
foot!” I grabbed her arms and pulled as hard as I
could.
It was like a game of tug-of-war against me
and one
of those
blasted cops, and Tess
was
unfortunately the rope.
“Pull-l-l-l!” Tess yelled as I pulled.
“I’m trying!” I yelled back in reply.
She pulled one of her arms away from my
grip, and with a quick flip of her wrist, shot a bit
of fire from her hand, and directly at the cop on
the other
end. Startled, and now on fire, he
released
his grip on Tess, and we all
fell
backwards.
We didn’t have time to waste.
While
the cop was trying to
untangle
himself from
a tree root sticking out
of the
ground near the entrance of the hole we were
struggling in, Tess and I continued through the
underground passageway, and quickly ended up
in
a
different
section of
her
backyard. Going
unnoticed, we then
dashed over
to another
hidden passageway that led into my backyard.
This time Tess went in first, and after I took
a quick look around to make sure we weren’t
being followed, I jumped into the passageway,
and traveled into my backyard.
Strangely, my house wasn’t surrounded by
cops. We cautiously went inside.
Finally! We
were safe.
We ran upstairs and headed straight to my
room,
changed
clothes,
and
went
into
the
bathroom to wash up. Not long afterwards, we
went downstairs.
You’ll never guess who we saw.

She was standing at the foot of my stairs,
arms raised to the side yet completely still.
I ran down to the bottom and hugged her.
“I thought you were dead!” I cried as I hugged
her.
“I am dead.” She said.
“What? No, you’re right here.”
“I’m using a bit of magic to be here today. I
don’t know how I did it, it’s weird.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to tell you, it’s not safe. You think
it’s over, but really it’s just begun. These next few
days will be the worst and weirdest days of your
life. But you’re going to live through it, I know
you will. I have to go now. Goodbye.”
She then disappeared.
I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
We went into the living room just as cops
burst through the front door. “Get them!” they
yelled as they charged at us. We split up, Tess
went one way and disappeared around the corner
of the stairway, and I went another way.
I had to defend myself. I created two water
balls at once, and threw them at the charging
cops. I repeated that process quickly, and when
they were all on the floor flopping around like
fish out of water, I dropped to my knees on the
floor, exhausted from all the energy I used to
thrust out the water.
I let in a deep breath.
It can’t be this easy,
there has to be some twist,
I thought to myself. I was
right, and all of a sudden I felt someone grab me
from behind and start to handcuff me.
“Don’t even bother trying anything funny.
These are magic-proof cuffs.”
I recognized that voice.
It was Carson.
“Hey buddy, long time no see!” I said.
He chuckled. “Not a pleasure to see you
again Miss Webber,” he replied.
Someone’s Mr. Grumpy Face today.
All of a sudden I heard Tess yelling, “Let
me go, this isn’t right!”
She was right about this not being right.
Does that even make sense?
One of the men said “We can do this the
hard way, or we can do this the easy way. Your
choice; I suggest the easy way. The easy way is
you keep your mouth shut and listen to what I’m
about to say.
Ok.
So you’re going back
to
Washington D.C. whether you like it or not. I
promise
you
that you’re not going to get
dissected. We just want to take some tests. So if
we just work together…”
Tess interrupted “Not interested.” She set
her hair on fire, a classic Tess move. Though, this
time there was something different; something
more. The fire was twice the size it usually was.
“How are you doing that? We put you in
magic-proof hand cuffs!” he yelled.
“Well you didn’t put me in a magic-proof
helmet!” she yelled back.
“It’s supposed to turn off all magic!” he
cried.
“Well then, it sucks at its job,” she replied.
She set her
hands
on fire next, melting the
handcuffs and her red cast. She was going all out
rage.
And trust me; you don’t want to feel Tess’s
fury.

Not her regular, just being herself crazy
either. She was going nuts.
“I DON’T WANT
TO EVER GO BACK
THERE AGAIN! TWO OF MY FRIENDS, AND
PROBABLY
INNOCENT
HUNDREDS
OF
OTHER
CHILDREN
HAVE
BEEN
MURDERED THERE!”
she
yelled,
stomping
towards the men.
“AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED
ON WANTING TO MAKE A DEAL BECAUSE IT
WON’T END PRETTY, AND I’M PRETTY SURE
YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO BE ROASTED
ALIVE” she continued shouting.
They came charging at her full speed, but
she
blasted
fire
at
them,
knocking
them
backwards and into a china cabinet that came
crashing down onto them, knocking them out
cold –
wait -
Hot
. Trapped underneath the
burning cabinet they were
‘China’
toast.
Another man came running through the
front door and headed right for us. Tess threw a
flame at his head,
but he
barely dodged it,
singing the tip of his hair and catching his hat on
fire.
He quickly threw his hat off.
The man pulled out what looked like a gun,
and shot Tess with a beam of light. Her powers
went off and she fainted.
“What did you shoot her with?” I asked
nervously, while messing with my handcuffs.
“It’s agun that the lab made. If you have
magic, it cancels out the powers you are using at
the moment, and makes you faint. Plus another
little twist.” He said looking rather smug.
“What other twist?”
“Well, since it’s a magic gun, it shrinks its
subject down to marble size.”
“How did you even make that? How is that
even possible?”
“Has anything that’s happened around you
this week ‘
seem
’ possible?”
That was a good question. The answer was
simply - no.
I looked down at Tess as she was already
shrinking. I looked back at the man with no hat
and asked him, “What’s your name?”
“My name is Zeke,” he replied
as he
continued to pull something from out of his jacket
pocket. It was a little plastic jar, about 2 inches by
1 inch, and it was circular.
I
looked down at
Tess
again. She got
remarkably small! She was about 1 inch tall now,
though not getting any smaller. “How did you
even manage that?” I asked while still fussing
with my handcuffs.
Abruptly, he made a grab for her.
I couldn’t let him.
Still able to use my water powers, I slipped
free from my handcuffs (they really suck at their
job!), kicked him in the shins, and threw a big
gush of water at him. Letting go of the shrink ray,
he grabbed at his shins and fell to the ground
gasping
for
air,
drowning
from
the
water
engulfed around his head.
I picked Tess up off the floor and slipped
her into my jacket pocket. While he was still
struggling for his life, I grabbed his shrink gun
thingy. I was not going to let him do the same
thing to me.
I quickly looked the gun over, saw a ‘
size’
dial on it and turned it from ‘
tiny
’ to ‘
normal.’
I
laid
Tess
back
on
the floor, aimed the gun
towards her, and pulled the trigger. She grew
back to normal size in a matter of a few seconds
and woke up.
She
grabbed
the gun from
me, set her
hands on fire and melted the gun. She then found
a red cube on the floor near Zeke; kind of like the
one that I saw in Penny’s jar.
She then crushed the cube, and
‘poof’
it
disappeared. It was a good feeling watching her
crush that thing.
Zeke managed to get to his feet and said,
“Carson, Rodger - get the uniforms.”
Those names were way too familiar. They
came out into the open with some kind of wired
uniforms.
Still livid, Tess asked, “What are
those?
”
“Those are high-tech uniforms that were
tested on
Monachi
, and they cancel out powers,”
Zeke answered.
I looked back at the uniforms. Each one
seemed like a one piece suit with footies; except
with built in gloves and turtle neck.
“So? You can’t make us get into them,” I
said. I thought I was starting to sound like Tess.
I’m supposed to be the nice one, so I made a
mental note to stop doing that.
“Oh, can’t we?” they said.
Setting her hands on fire, Tess remarked,
“Here’s a tip; never threaten a girl who can set
you on fire.” She shot
flames
the
size of
basketballs at Zeke
knocking
him
over
once
again. She turned to Carson and Rodger. “You
don’t even know how long I’ve wanted to do
that,” she pronounced.
She displayed
a huge, creepy killer-like
smile, winked, and blew her fists out.
She grabbed my arm and said, “It’s time to
run.”
I nodded.
She let go of me as we headed out the back
door.
Apparently, they saw this coming.