Chapter 56. How!?

“How!? How did you know where I was going!?” Pebble exclaimed muffled underneath the blanket trapping him.

“Hehe!” Arthur snickered and continued. “Cause we can see it!” The five of them sat on top of Pebble celebrating their victory.

Clap clap clap clap!

“AMAZING!” Boulder ran up and congratulated the five trainees who bested his eldest brother. “SO SMART!” Boulder exclaimed; he was watching from afar so everything the trainee had done was within his line of sight.

“I can tell you brother! Every time you stepped on the blanket you left an indent on it! This helped the boys who wasn’t good at sensing your energy to chase you from behind! Shelly eyes were closed as they ran forward, she was sensing your power energy!” Boulder was extremely excited as he spoke.

“You got caught the moment you let them place these blankets around you!” Boulder smiled and exclaimed. He continued “Once there was only one spot left before you were completely covered by them, Julie did something to raise the blanket at that spot and covered you!”

“EH!? Julie, you could do that!? Pebble continued to muffle underneath the blanket, his body was squirming as he talked.

Julie smiled and responded. “Yeah, it’s part of power, but this is the first time I’ve ever tried it this way on you.” Her expression was one of giddiness and joy as she realized what she had done.

“I thought you were a Seer and could only stop things in place! What!?” Pebble was completely flabbergasted, what was her second power, was it not the ability to just stop things in place!?

“Hehe!” Arthur exclaimed “We’re Exotics, we’re unpredictable!”

The squirming Pebble sighed underneath his blanket; he knew he had lost today for not completely realizing what Julie’s abilities were. He thought about Shelly, did she even use any of her powers yet? Was he guaranteed to lose if he managed to escape somehow? Pebble only thought for a moment before the weight of the people on top of him was becoming more suffocating.

“Okay, okay! You pass, how long are you going to sit on top of me!?” Pebble squirmed harder one last time causing the five trainees who were still sitting on top of him to hop off. The trainees were too excited in capturing Pebble they forgot that they were still sitting on him. They quickly helped Pebble remove the blanket and apologized, however the smile on their face was apparent, they had finally passed Pebble’s training!

“Was this all your plan, Shelly?” Pebble turned to the little short white-haired girl with calm sapphire blue eyes.

Shelly shook her head. “Julie gave me the idea.” Shelly replied.

Julie learned a new trick with her powers and told Shelly what it could do helping Shelly to formulate this plan. If it was just restricting someone she could see, it wouldn’t be possible for her as Pebble was faster than where she could even point to hold in place. But if it’s a blanket then Julie could hold it in place before Pebble could ever escape as long as her powers work as intended. In her mind it was a fifty-fifty chance of doing it right.

“Tch, freaking Julie.” Pebble angrily patted the head of the curly blonde-haired girl who was only up to his shoulder and grumbled. “Good job thinking of this plan.” Pebble then pulled his hair in anger. “Gahhhhh, Shelly! What other plan did you have if this didn’t work?”

Shelly calmly replied. “You can’t jump when you run that fast.” She looked at the blankets littered still on the ground. “If we couldn’t follow you with the blankets, we were going find a way to trip you by rolling the blankets up and elevating it past your knee. Julie is all we need for that too.”

Shelly’s cool response caused Pebble’s jaw to drop. He wasn’t expecting them to have two plans using just Julie to stop him. He looked at the blankets scattered on the ground, their flexibility to be used as an obstacle to both tracks, catch, and trip him made him exasperated by his own weakness.

“Chief Gran’s training also inspired this plan. Being rolled up like a cocoon one too many times made us want to do it on someone else, hehe” Julie covered her face and begun to laugh. Her carefree attitude made Pebble sigh.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting to just run into a trap in less than an hour, you kids can have free time to do whatever you want.” Pebble waved them off and entered the house a little dejected. Training the kids has become much more difficult than the start, their improvement was massive every time he engaged with them. Although, he limited himself to only a percentage of what he could do, his flaws were exactly what Shelly had said.

“I need lighter steps…I need to be able to jump…” Pebble mumbled to himself as he slowly made way towards his room.

“Is Pebble going to be okay?” Julie asked Boulder who was starstruck by her laughter.

“Hello?” Julie waved her hand in front of Boulder’s face waking him up from his daze.

“You have a beautiful laugh…” Boulder subconsciously spoke his mind out loud. “I mean uh, I uhh… you’re pretty, I mean, you should laugh more!” Boulder embarrassingly couldn’t talk properly in front of Julie.

His embarrassed demeanor caused Julie to laugh even more, putting Boulder in a second round of dazedness. Michael heard the entire scene and sighed, Julie’s happiness and laughter was something he didn’t ever want to lose.

“What should we do now?” Arthur turned to the girl beside him and asked.

“I’ll head back to the Inn and meditate.” Seth walked up and stated calmly. “Especially before Boss traps us again, yesterday we had a lucky break, but I don’t know if it’ll continue until our training is done.” He added.

“I agree with Seth, how about we head back before Boss sets up his maze and practice our meditation?” Michael suggested.

Arthur looked up at the young man almost twice his age. The boy thought for a bit before agreeing “Okay, let’s go practice meditating.”

Shelly and Julie agreed and was about to head out when Boulder shouted. “W-wait up! Can I come with you?” Boulder asked.

“Sure!” Arthur exclaimed and continued to ask “But is Gran and Roselyn going to be okay with you leaving?”

“It’s just Auntie Orchid’s place, I needed to go say hi to her anyways.” Boulder waved off Arthur’s concern.

“Okay! Let’s all go say hi to Auntie Orchid and then meditate.” Arthur exclaimed.

“Sure, but I’ll pass on the meditating.” Boulder replied.

Exactly like yesterday, Boss was nowhere to be seen, the gatekeeper had expected this and was more focused today. He greeted the six people who had arrived noticed Boulder.

“Young master Boulder, you’re going out?”

“Yep! I’m going to go say hi to Auntie Orchid.”

The gatekeeper nodded his head and started opening the gate.

Once the six walked through Arthur turned around to look up at the gatekeeper. “Mr. Gatekeeper Boss is thinking of baby names with Roselyn! I think he’ll be back tomorrow!” Arthur waved goodbye after letting the gatekeeper know.

The gatekeeper waved a bit back and closed the entrance. His partner walked over and looked at the empty board game for two, “Not here today either?” He paused for a moment and continued “You know, I’ve been watching you and Boss play this game, I think I know how to play it, want to play with me?”

“Are you sure you know how to play it?”

“Probably, you can teach me if I do something wrong.”

Sigh

“If I must, I guess I can teach you how to play this game.” The gatekeeper was already fixing the pieces on the board as he grumbled. His partner laughed it off and sat in front of them. The two quickly started to move their pieces.

“Auntie Orchid! I’m back~” Boulder shouted from outside of Orchid’s door.

Like a gust of wind the door opened and a woman with dark green hair and piercing yellow eyes rushed out and stood before Boulder and them. “Boulder!” Orchid reached down and yanked the kid up off his feet pulling him into a tight hug.

“I miss you! How was Lumiere!? Did you meet my teacher? Did she say bad things about me? If she did, she’s lying!” Orchid continued to shake Boulder left and right vigorously as she asked her question.

“Auntie, put me down, put me down you’re embarrassing me!”

“How am I embarrassing you, no one is arou—” Orchid finally noticed that Boulder brought along some friends. Familiar faces she’s seen almost every other day was looking at her with wide eye.

Orchid immediately dropped Boulder onto the ground causing him to stumble in order to regain balance.

Cough

“Why’re you kids here today?”

“Auntie, they came with me to say hi, don’t be rude.”

“Wha--? Huh? How am I rude? I’m just asking them a question!”

“Auntie, if you don’t apologize, I won’t come back to the inn, never ever again.”

“Whaaat!? Fine, I’m sorry for being rude.” Orchid grumbled and apologized.

“Hehe.” Boulder smiled at the five and waved them in as he walked into Orchid’s room. Orchid who was staring back at the bewilder eyes of the five who had witnessed such a scene felt her eye twitch as she pointed inside the room, inviting them in angrily. The crew slowly walked in with Orchid slamming the door shut behind them.

This was the second time Seth had seen Orchid since the day at the staircase, what she had showed back then and how she was like in front of Boulder was like two different sides of a coin. One was a scary woman who had the power to back it up, the other was an embarrassing auntie who didn’t even realize other people were around. He just like everyone else didn’t know exactly how he was feeling seeing this side of Orchid.

Orchid’s room was like that of an apartment, there was a bedroom, bathroom, living room, and a kitchen all within the Inn. It was many folds bigger than any of the other rooms within the Inn.

Orchid carried out a plate of snacks and some drinks and placed it on the living room table. She sat down on her own sofa and turned her gaze over to Boulder who was already happily munching away on the snacks she had brought out. “When did you come back, Boulder?” She tried to recover from her embarrassing behavior from before.

“Oh Auntie, I saw your teacher, I told her about you.”

“What did she say!? Did she say I’m a bad student? Because I wasn’t a bad student she was just a bad teacher!” Orchid’s attempt at being calm was blasted away instantly.

“Haha” Boulder laughed, he enjoyed messing with the Auntie of his. “No, she said you were an okay student.”

“Okay? Okay!? I’m the best she’s ever had! What does she mean okay!” Orchid was enraged as she grinded her teeth.

Boulder shrugged his shoulder. “She said you were too wild, beating people up everywhere you go.” He paused for a moment and mimicked what Orchid’s teacher had said “Aiyah, if it wasn’t for that she’d be a great student…”

“Ima beat her up, I’m soo going to beat her up.” Orchid angrily flared.

“Aiyah, if she said she’s going to beat me up, tell her she’s much too immature to take me on.” Boulder continued to mimic the teacher. The five trainees couldn’t maintain a straight face as some of them covered their mouth to quietly laugh.

Seth was stuffing his face with snack so that he wouldn’t let out any laughter, almost choking on them in the process. Orchid noticed Seth’s coughing and handed a glass of water that appeared in her hand to him. Seth was a hesitant to reach for it until her piercing angry gaze forced him to drink the entire glass in one go.

Orchid returned her gaze Boulder and asked. “How was Lumiere?”

“It was fun until recently.” Boulder replied.

“What happened?” Arthur asked. He was curious what the school was like.

“I don’t know, everything got tougher and stricter, not as bad as my dad’s training, but teachers became more serious and were training us like it was a military camp or something.”

“Do you know why?” Orchid asked.

“I’m not sure, I heard rumors it was by the order of the Headmaster, but I don’t know…”

“You already have red hair, that’s pretty much all you need from Lumiere, you can try attending Naturelle and see if you’re capable of becoming a Prodigy like my future hus—I mean, your dad.” Orchid directed her gaze at the five kids and young adults who were awkwardly sitting and listening to the conversation between the two.

“I can’t, my teacher said he’ll tell me why when we go back to school after break. He only told me to not worry and that all students in this country will be going to Lumiere after the break.”

His response instantly caused Orchid to raise her brows as she looked at the trainees who also had a confused look on their face.

“Huh? We’re not going to Lumiere.” Arthur responded.

“Eh? If not Lumiere then where?”

“Naturelle.”

“Huh?”