"Where are you keeping him?" Alexis demanded, practically yelling at Master Terra.

"It's none of your concern," the master responded, holding in his anger. Parker couldn't believe that Master Terra was still responding calmly to Alexis at this point. If it had been him he was pretty sure that he would've snapped and screamed at Alexis. Day after day of being verbally attacked by a student should've been enough to make any of the masters lose their cool. However, Master Terra didn't show even a hint of being frustrated.

"How is it none of my concern? Lara is back and Colton is working with her!"

Master Terra started walking down the corridor toward the staircase to make his way down to the caves. "It is none of your concern because we masters are handling the situation." With that, he disappeared through the floor. Alexis stared at the ground in frustration. She wasn't able to move the floor to go through just yet. None of them could figure out their Earth Imperial besides Caleb.

"We need to figure out what that kid knows."

"Alexis, maybe we should just let it go for now," Parker suggested. He could see the anger growing on her face so he didn't push any further.

They made their way back to the common room where they found Caleb, Hailee and Ana studying next to the fire. "Did you find anything out?" Caleb asked. He got his answer with a glare from Alexis and a look from Parker that said "Don't bring it up anymore."

-----

Classes came and went quickly for the next few weeks. They were finding that as each went by, they became more and more exhausted. If it wasn't for their Omni class and their tutoring session they might have been okay but the extra work was drastically taking its toll on them.

Walking into their Air Water class they took a seat with Eliott. Master Kingston stood at the head of the class waiting for everyone to show up. Parker enjoyed the change in scenery for this class. He loved being by all of the ponds that The House of Leith used for their Water Imperials.

Before everyone arrived, Alexis made her way up to the front of the room to talk to Master Kingston. Parker saw her start walking to the front and quickly got up and followed closely behind her.

"Alexis, we've told you, there's nothing for you to fret about. We have it handled." Parker could hear the frustration in her voice as she spoke and he couldn't blame her. Alexis had taken every single opportunity she could over the past few weeks to inquire about Colton. She seemed to seek out Master Kingston and Master Terra the most figuring they would know the most.

"Couldn't I just have a word with him? Just like five minutes, that's all I need."

"No. You need to just let it go…" Parker grabbed Alexis by the wrist and pulled her away in the middle of the master's sentence.

He dragged her back to their spot in the room against her wishes. When they took a seat next to their friends on the grass she let out a loud, frustrated sigh. Parker looked at Caleb, hoping he had done the right thing. Caleb nodded his head as if he had been reading Parker's mind.

"Let's begin," the master said from the front of the room. "You will continue your work of using air and water in order to stop a group of enemies. To do this, we will team up so that two groups will take turns stopping each other. Are there any questions?" Everyone shook their heads no and found their spot in the room.

Parker and Alexis worked with Eliott and one of his friends. They'd come up with the idea to create a miniature hurricane in order to clear a path through their enemies. They discussed how it would look and how effective it would be while they kept looking over at Caleb and Ana's group to see if they could tell what they had planned.

At the end of the class time Master Kingston informed them that they had that evening to finish planning their strategies and would be implementing them the following day.

Their Air Fire class went by in a flash along with lunch. Working with the different masters in their Omni class was a nice change of pace but they also hated having to change their attitudes based on which master they were working with that particular day.

After everything they'd been through, they still only had air and water down pat. Master Kingston, along with Eliott, had worked extremely hard at making sure they had control of the water every time they were in private together. There were times when they'd be walking down an empty corridor and Master Kingston would pop out of nowhere throwing some water attack at them that they'd have to stop using only their Water Imperial. It took several weeks of this tactic before Parker wasn't taking water shots to the face. Alexis and Hailee seemed just fine with being able to stop her, almost from the first time that it happened.

When they made their way to the clearing in 23-D Master Kingston was sitting cross-legged on the grass. Parker looked at her confused. Normally when it was her day they received a message at some point in the morning to go to their main Imperial room.

They stood in front of her as she sat with her eyes closed. All of a sudden, there was water all throughout the air around them. As though it had come out of nowhere. All of them stared in disbelief at what they were seeing. Parker and Alexis looked at each other baffled as to where the water had come from.

After a moment, the water fell from the air to the grass at their feet. Master Kingston opened her eyes and looked up at the kids. She could see the look on their faces and asked what the problem was.

"What do you mean? Where did all of that water come from?" Parker sounded both impressed and confused at the same time.

"Where would you guess that it came from?"

"I would guess that you've been lying to us this whole time and you're actually an Omni and you pulled the water from a separate space that you always have access to."

Master Kingston laughed. "That would be handy wouldn't it? Maybe that's something we can look into trying with you guys but I am not an Omni."

"Then where did it come from?" Hailee asked.

"My surroundings," was all the master said. The four of them looked at her confused.

"There's no water in here though…" Caleb said.

"There isn't? Then how do you explain what I just did?"

"That's what we're asking," Parker said slightly frustrated.

The master stood up and stretched her arms out in front of her. The water appeared again and just as quickly fell to the grass at their feet. "Your task for today is to find the water in the room."

After a moment of staring at each other in silence they split up and began searching around the room. Parker figured that she had to have brought water in for the lesson and hidden it somewhere in the room. He'd been through the room hundreds of times and he'd never seen any water before.

He ran into Alexis, literally, as he walked around a tree. They both fell to the ground laughing after realizing what had happened. "Have you found anything yet?" she asked.

"Bupkis."

"Bup-what?" she asked, having never heard the phrase before.

"Bupkis. You know, nothing, nada, zilch." Her confusion was removed but then she started to laugh at the word itself.

"Who even uses that word?"

"My mom used it a lot at home…" As he said it, he thought back to his family. He'd barely given them much of a second thought since he arrived at Lancastre.

"Oh, okay. I'd just never heard you say it before so it threw me off a little."

"Sorry. Have you found anything yet?" She shook her head to answer him.

They split up again and continued to look for the remainder of the class. By the end, they returned to the clearing mad as they could be. "There is no water in here!" Parker yelled unintentionally at the master and regretted it immediately. The moment his lips closed a ball of water hit him in the chest.

"Then explain where I got the water to hit you."

"You must have it somewhere on your body." The master fanned out her robes to show that there was no water on her person.

"Think for a moment. I didn't stream water from anywhere. It came straight up and fell to the grass correct?" They nodded and looked down. Hailee slapped her forehead.

"It's in the ground. Duh. I'm such an idiot. How could I not realize that…?" Parker stared at her still confused. She raised her hand out in front of her and slowly raised it a few inches. Water droplets lifted into the air from the grass.

"You mean you let us search around this room for an hour looking for water that was at our feet the whole time?" Parker was on the edge of yelling again as Master Kingston nodded her head. "What was the point of that?" he yelled.

"In order to be successful in the field you need to be able to think quickly on your feet. If there are any living plants, trees or grass near you, then there is water as well. Those things need water in order to survive and continue living."

"What do you mean be successful in the field?" Caleb asked.

"I mean, there are troubling times ahead based on what's happening now." With that, she gestured for the kids to leave and go to their next class.

"Um… Master…" Alexis said. "Our next class… is in here…"

"Oh… well, I guess I will leave then." She walked through the middle of them and exited the room.

"I'll be right back," Parker said. "I'd like to go change into something dry." He ran out of the room toward their house entrance. When he got to the staircase to go down to the twenty-first floor he ran into Colton.

"Excuse me…" Colton said without looking up and seeing who it was that he'd almost run into.

"Colton—" Parker started to say. Colton looked up and saw that it was Parker in front of him and he took a big step back, a slight hint of fear in his eyes. "The masters let you go?"

He nodded but didn't say anything for a moment. They stood staring at each other. Parker knew he needed to get moving so that he wasn't late for class but he couldn't pass up this opportunity. He couldn't even begin to think what Alexis would do to him if she found out he had a chance to interrogate him.

"I take it you still don't remember anything then?" Colton nodded again. "What kind of stuff were they asking you about?"

Colton shrugged, still not verbally saying anything.

"So, did the masters figure anything out?"

"They just kept asking me about the same thing over and over." Colton spoke nearly inaudible.

Parker leaned in as he spoke. "What do you mean the same thing? Were they asking if you were working with Lara?"

"Who's Lara? No, they kept asking what I'd done with their cores. I don't even know what a core is." Parker looked at him perplexed. He couldn't even help him out by describing what a core was so that it might jog his memory. "How am I supposed to know what I did with something that I don't even know what it is?"

"We heard them talking about that too but we don't know what it is either. Otherwise I'd try to help you fill in the blanks."

"You think I'm guilty don't you?"

Parker didn't meet his eye at that question. "We just want to figure out what's happening." Parker turned and jumped down the staircase to get his things. Realizing that he'd spent too much time with Colton and was going to be late if he didn't hurry he jumped into his Space Imperial and sprinted through the corridors.

Reappearing outside of the room at the last second he walked in next to Master Sora. The master didn't say anything as they entered.

Parker sat down next to Alexis and wanted to immediately tell her everything that happened but Master Sora stopped him. "Today, you will ride your spheres." Mumbling broke out around the clearing. "You all were able to create it, some with more effort than others, but now is the time to learn to ride it. I will give you time to try on your own and then we'll come back together later."

The five of them went to their usual spot to start trying out this new task. The first thirty tries were all met with failure as they were thrown around the trees by their own spheres.

"How are we supposed to be able to do this?" Parker asked. "I can't even figure out where to begin."

"We need to balance perfectly on top of it for it to work." Caleb said.

"Perfectly on top?" Parker asked incredulously. "I trip walking down the corridors sometimes. How am I supposed to balance on top of a spinning sphere of air?"

Alexis started to laugh. "It'll be fine. We'll figure it out just like we always do."

"Well, I need to take a break and there's something I want to talk to you guys about so let's just take a breather for a moment." Everyone gathered around him and they sat next to a tree to help hide themselves. "I ran into Colton in the corridor when I went for my robes."

"You what?" Alexis yelled accidentally. "Did you talk to him?"

"Of course I did. I was afraid of what you'd do to me if I didn't." Caleb laughed at this comment knowing that Parker was completely right about the fact that Alexis wouldn't have taken kindly to his news if he hadn't talked to him.

"Well, what'd you ask and what'd he have to say?" Alexis was leaning forward sitting up on her knees waiting for a play-by-play of the conversation.

Parker walked them through the entire conversation making sure not to leave anything out in fear of Alexis yelling at him. He knew he shouldn't feel afraid but she had been extremely adamant about everything that had happened with Colton. Maybe once they had figured everything out and fixed it she'd get back to her normal self.

"So, basically what you're saying is we don't know anything new?" Parker nodded slowly. "Ugh…!" The frustration moved from her face to everyone else's. "We need to figure out what in the world a core is and how it can go missing."