Five behold the crystalline gates, two of which are now mates. One lives for order, for he is creation, the other lives for love, for he is connection. Without those two, life within all shall die. One brings heat and another brings voice. Untrained, both bring destruction. The last is truely power but powerless, he cannot bring aid, he cannot bring peace but he is still needed, because without him the others cannot truly exist. The first of the single pure mind, The second of the entwined body, The third of the liberated soul, are necessary to bring the two clashing forces to stillness. Creation must balance to destruction and destruction must never outweigh creation. With all five, their values combined shall lift mankind from the ashes.

Zach opened his eyes with the last of the words ringing in his head. The five values, what could they mean? He rolled over in the bed and was met with the sleeping face of Conner. The dream forgotten Zach looked at Conner’s face, he admired his long lashes, his pink hair, his button nose, and most of all his lips. God he wanted to kiss Conner, but he dare not wake him. Zach carefully untwined himself from Conner’s limbs and slipped out of bed. Stretching he checked his watch, 5:30am It was still early in the morning. He looked around and some of the students were sitting in chairs reading from the still massive pile of books.

Zach spotted Nick off to the side practicing some combat moves. He had the basics down but his technique was a little sloppy.

“You want to twist your hips more when kicking.” Zach said.

Nick smirked and picked up his notepad from where it was laying, a few feet from his practice area.

“I would expect that you would know all about doing that!” Nick wrote.

“Oh? We have ourselves a jokester here!” Zach said with a broad grin on his face.

“Say, don’t you think it is time for a sparring match?” Nick wrote.

“That is a great idea, how about we spar using our abilities? I have started to learn how to use it and I need practice. And you need to learn how to control yours.” Zach said.

Nick grinned and shook his head in agreement. Not wanting to disturb the others both of them went to the surface. Zach knew a place where no one would be in harm's way during the sparring match.

They set some ground rules before they began.

“Ok so three hits the body is a kill, one hit to the limbs is a mame.” Zach said and they were off.

Nick came in for a side swipe to Zach’s legs but that was a faint. The real attack was directed at Zach’s left arm. Nick’s muscular arms had the power to knock a tree down but Zach was like stone. He took the full force of the punch and didn’t move an inch. Caught off guard Nick stumbled back a step but rebalanced himself quickly. Zach now down an arm, side stepped Nick’s roundhouse and slapped Nick’s heel while it was flying through the air. Nick grunted in pain and took a knee and called a time out.

“You ok?” Zach asked.

“I will be in a minute. what the hell did you hit me with? It felt like a sledgehammer hit me!” Nick wrote.

“Oh sorry, I used my ability to absorb the blow from your punch and redirect it through my other arm into your heel.” Zach said, reaching a hand out to help Nick up.

“I can feel you holding back, Zach. You could have put me on my ass even if you really did have only one arm. I’m not going to do likewise.” Nick wrote.

“Oh you are on!” Zach said, and they took their stances.

This time Zack took the offense and came in with a quick left right jab to Nick’s chest. Nick blocked the first blow but was struck by the second one.

“First hit!” Zach called out as he twirled away from a single jab from Nick.

Nick smiled and opened his mouth a crack and whispered “first strike indee”. Zach seeing this coming, braced himself and used some of the energy that was in his own vocal cords and literally spitting it out to counteract Nick’s assault, but Nick’s voice had the force of a hundred jet engines in it which made Zach fly backwards into the dust. Zach may not be able to beat Nick in a sheer force battle but he has speed on his side, so he took a step to the left then to the right then to the left once more. He continued doing this until his body was completely saturated with kinetic energy. Zach’s skin began to glow in a iridescent Red, Blue, and Yellow pattern. It was nearly mesmerizing in all it’s glory. Then Zach disappeared from sight. For a second Nick thought Zach had turned invisible but then the wave of air hit him head on. Stumbling back Nick felt a light tap on his back, right between his shoulder blades.

The second hit. Zach only needed one more to win the sparring match. Nick wheeled around to see Zach standing behind him. His entire body was steaming and part of his vest had black marks on it. Almost as if the shear friction scorched it.

“Well I knew I could use energy to boost my speed but I never knew it would boost me this much.” Zach said in bewilderment.

Nick was so confused and so amazed that Zack’s comment caught Him off guard. So much so that he began to laugh.