Chapter 55. That day

That day after recovering a bit, the trainees made their way to the gated entrance of Gran’s estate to head home. They looked up at the gatekeeper who was sighing dejectedly at the board game before him. The usual match the gatekeeper would have with Boss as the trainees tried to make their way back to the Inn didn’t happen that day.

Boss was nowhere to be seen. Arthur noticed that Boss wasn’t sitting there grumbling and shouting expletives at the gatekeeper for cheating and asked the gatekeeper. “Where’s Boss?”

The gatekeeper only realized that Arthur was waiting there ready to head home when Arthur shouted. The gatekeeper awoken from his daze responded. “I don’t know, I thought you kids would know something.” He then turned over to his partner who was supposed to be watching the entrance also, the freaking person was asleep assuming everything was under control.

Shelly looked ahead at the way back to the Inn and closed her eyes, there was no sign of the teleportation energy made by Boss. “I don’t sense anything.” She stated calmly. However, there was no way to know until they started walking.

By the time they arrived back to the Inn without a single teleportation the entire crew felt off. They had expected Boss to pull something out of his sleeve and were on high alert the entire time only for nothing to happen. That didn’t stop them from maintaining their vigilance until it was time for meditative training with Gran.

During their meditation Arthur and Michael managed to find and use their meditative energy to enshroud their bodies. However, unfortunately just like the day before they could only manage to control it near the end, stopping one attack each from Gran. Yet, Boss was still nowhere to be seen.

Arthur couldn’t help but ask Gran after rubbing his bruised arms and legs “Chief Gran, do you know where Boss is?” It was just a shot in the dark of a question, if the kids didn’t know where Boss is, why would Gran know? Unexpectedly Gran nodded his head and said, “With Roselyn and Dr. Galil.”

“Why?”

“Names for the baby.” Gran stated calmly. Roselyn, Boss and Dr. Galil have been discussing what the baby’s name should be depending on the gender this entire day. When Gran said that if the child were to be a boy, he’d like it to be named Block. Boss who overheard Gran’s comment barged in and rejected Gran’s name and told Roselyn she could do better than Block if it was a boy.

Roselyn didn’t mind Gran’s naming choices but thought it would be fun to come up with some other names, so she agreed to opening ideas for other names. Boss pulled Dr. Galil with him into the room and pulled out an empty piece of paper and the three began writing and discussing possible names.

When the trainees were with Cobble, Boss and Dr. Galil was in Roselyn’s room writing a list of names. Once it was about time for the trainees to be done with their training Roselyn and Dr. Galil got up and left for brunch. They tried inviting Boss, but he declined, he was immersed in expanding the growing list of names.

When the trainees were back at the Inn, Boss came running down from the stairs of Roselyn’s room with a long list of names stretching all the way up from behind him. Seeing the long list of names Roselyn thought it would be better to go over it outside under the nice warm sun than her room.

Boss carried the list out back and placed it down near the rippling pond. That afternoon it was the entirety of Gran’s family, Boss, and Dr. Galil reading out the names beside the pond expressing which names they liked and dislike until only a few names were left.

“Do you guys want to see what names are left?” Gran asked the trainees before them. Arthur was incredibly excited and nodded his head. Seth didn’t really care much about it so he excused himself and left for the night.

Within Roselyn’s room the three were staring at the shorten list of names, Dr. Galil and Roselyn threw out the names that was the same as the people they knew meaning names like Orchid, Arthur and Michael was immediately eliminated. Boulder complained adding a 2.0 and # next to the names wasn’t even really a name so all the ones with numbers and symbols were gone.

“What names did you pick?” Arthur asked as they made their way up to Roselyn’s room.

“Block if it’s a boy.” Gran replied.

“What if it’s a girl?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Block too”

The four trainees shared strange looks at Gran’s answer. Upon arriving at the door, the remaining four trainees snuck their head in only to see three people furrowing their brows concentrating on the small list of names remaining in front of them.

Arthur walked over and snuck a glance at the list of names on it. At the top of the list it was Block followed by a short list of names Arthur couldn’t pronounce on the top of his head. He then looked at the list of names for girls, he only managed to see one name before a hand covered his eyes.

“Wha—?” Arthur fumbled to push the hand of Boss away from his face.

“Oh sorry, I was stretching.” Boss calmly apologized. He then looked up at the four trainees who were all hovering around them. “Come, come help us pick a name.”

“Is Block still on it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you guys alone.” Gran didn’t want to stay and think about names any longer, it took them the entire afternoon just to shorten that list. As long as Block was still on its Gran was content.

Having new pairs of eyes and fresh input from the four helped shorten the already short list of names for the baby. However, this didn’t mean it was a quick process. It wasn’t until Gran walked in two hours later and telling everybody that Roselyn needs to sleep did everyone decide to leave.

Once everyone had left Roselyn held the shorter list of names.

Yawn

“But, I’m not tired.” Roselyn complained rubbed her eyes after yawning.

“Uh huh.” Gran walked his wife over to the bed and helped her on it. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight~” Yawn

The next day Arthur was the opposite of when he and Michael had to run to Cobble. Being the first one out of bed and ready to go, Arthur was reinvigorated and excited to for today. He wanted to go back train and discuss the name of the baby straight away.

Michael flicked Arthur’s forehead. “Training with Pebble, remember?” Arthur rubbed his forehead “Yeah I know! Did Barkie and Boss leave early today?” Arthur asked, his puppy would sometimes leave with Boss early to Gran’s place to play with the animals.

Michael looked around the room and replied, “I guess so.”

Shelly walked in with Julie beside her. Arthur also noticed that Silver was gone and asked. “Went with Boss, today?”

Shelly nodded her head; Silver had leapt off her bed and opened the door itself hopping onto the awaiting arms of Boss outside this morning. “They left an hour ago.”

“Can we stop Pebble today?” Arthur asked.

“Of course we can!” Julie exclaimed she had a feeling that they could finally tag Pebble today. “Let’s go~” Julie pulled the arms of Michael and Arthur and dragged them out of the room. Shelly trailed from behind watching the ever-excited positive Julie.

Julie was completely different than when they had first arrived, the first-time training with Cobble, Pebble, and Gran revealed something she didn’t want anyone to see, only for to be the one to not remember. After barely scraping by every hurdle during her training Julie’s once emotional pessimistic demeanor slowly transformed to one that had hope for the future.

Everyone may not have shown it after Michael had told them to not say anything, but their actions certainly did. They would exhaust themselves every night trying to meditate and control their energy better. Shelly had caught Arthur giving Michael worried glances from time to time only to shake it off and focus on the training. There was nothing they could to but prepare as much as they could.

Today was no different, preparations were thought of and made to trap Pebble and tag him. Cloths littered the grassy backyard. This was the plan that they had came up with.

At first, they thought of creating a maze and forcing Pebble to run through and tag him from all sides, however with a limited amount of time and Pebble’s unwillingness to even run in that direction stopped that plan in its tracks.

Shelly then thought about just using a rope and attaching to it to each other to completely net Pebble. However, this plan would trigger Pebble to run away before they could even circle around him to entrap him. They had to find a way to not make Pebble run away instantly and yet at the same time have it be quick enough to prepare for the morning.

Some days they would chase Pebble around and examine his actions. Other days they would put blockades and barriers to see what would happen. With Cobble, they had to use brute force, with Pebble they had to plan and discover a weakness through trial and error.

“Go trainees go!” Boulder shouted off from the sidelines as Pebble and the trainees had a standoff. He saw what happened to Cobble and was cheering on for another day of the trainees putting up a show.

“What do you have planned this time?” Pebble eyed at all cloths that littered the entirety of the ground. There over 20 different 4x4 meter cloths placed all around the grass blanketing all the areas around Pebble.

He saw that they were just placing cloths around him, so he didn’t bother to move, he paid close attention to the ground as they did and noticed there was no trap holes for him to fall into either.

“You’ll see~” Arthur replied and continued to fix the cloths. Once he was done, he gave the go ahead to Shelly and the rest who was done with the blankets around them.

Pebble was prepared as he watched the five trainees circling around him, their pace was slow as they got into position. Pebble scanned the space needed for him to run through, there was still plenty of time before he needed to go.

The boys who were behind him stayed quiet; they were getting closer to each other making it more difficult for Pebble to run away through them. The space around the girls in response were much wider. “So, they want me to go through the girls eh?” Pebble muttered.

“Well you can’t make me!” Pebble thought to himself and instantly and turned around towards a smaller gap between the boys and tried to escape through it.

The moment Pebble turned around the trainees were fully prepared for the gap they had purposefully left opened for Pebble and closed it instantly. Pebble instinctively turned towards another direction and vanished. However, his move was predicted as the blankets in his directions were raised blocking his path.

The five secretly tied the corner of each thin blanket and raised it up just enough to trip Pebble. Pebble turned again vanishing from the spot. Unfortunately, his attempt was blocked again as blankets continued to be raised just enough so that he couldn’t plow through it.

“Eh!?” How do they know?! The five was closing in on Pebble fast, the blankets were raised causing him alarm as he continued to run on the blanket’s flat blankets towards other gaps around him. The blankets were being raised higher and higher, trying to trap him completely hole.

Pebble not once stopped in this instance running and turning at high speed towards any openings left. One small area large enough for him to make it through if he sped up was in his sight. He went for it as the five-trainee charged forward with the blankets in their hand hoping to cover the man.

“Yes!” Pebble escaped through the smallest gap as the blankets carried over by the five trainees fell onto nothingness. Suddenly, before he could celebrate after running through the gap a blanket remained raised directly in front of him.

“Crap! … JULIE!” Pebble shouted his last words as he ran face first into the blanket covering him up like a ghost. Pebble scrambled to remove the blanket as he ran with it over his body. However, it wouldn’t budge, his speed slowed giving enough time for the trainees to jump him tackling him into the ground.

“WE DID IT!”