seymoure | Jun. 17th, 2005

Jun. 17th, 2005

30.

The boys were awakened by some kind of quiet pinging sound that gently nudged them to arise. A few minutes after the pinging ended a knock came to their door.

David was up like a shot and across the room.

Sadly, a burly teenaged boy was in the hall.

“I am here to take you to the breakfast room,” The boy said in a voice that could have been made of crumpled construction paper.

He then waited the three minutes the boys took to get up and ready. When the fellows him in the hallway they were not alone.

Everywhere the corridor was peopled with those of all ages and sizes. They passed children and older people of every recognizable race, and a couple who looked barely human.

The diversity was positively intoxicating. Mickey wanted to ask everyone where they were from and what is was like where they were from.

David could hear all kinds of languages flowing in the air as they passed on their way to eat.

When they came into the dining hall, both boys were struck with the smells of so many different kinds of food that they could barely control themselves.

They walked to the serving line, and picked up trays. While moving down the line they didn’t know what half the things before them were.

Mickey started to take a bowl of something green and the large brown man behind the sneeze guard looked at him.

“Have you ever eaten that before?” He asked.

“I don’t even know what it is,” Mickey giggled.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have that for breakfast.” The man said as he took back the bowl. “Stay with things you know today, there will be a lot of new and exciting things happening today. Food you can experiment
with later.”

David looked at the amazing variety of food.

“We have people on varying schedules,” The man informed, “Some are having dinner and others are here for breakfast.”

Mickey couldn’t decide between oatmeal and hot and sour soup, so he had both.

David had chicken fried steak and tiramisu. (He always had chicken fried steak, since their father had always used this as a gauge for the quality of a restaurant. If they made good chicken fried steak, the rest of the menu could be trusted.)

Mickey was amazed how well the oatmeal (with a touch of maple syrup) and hot and sour soup went together. David like the chicken fried steak, but the tiramisu wasn’t what he thought it was. He wasn’t crazy about the taste of coffee and so was taken by surprise by the dish.

The food wasn’t their real focus though. At the table just to the right of theirs was a large man who appeared to be Scandinavian. He was light skinned and blond. But that was not what made him fascinating. It was his eyes.

They wouldn’t stay put.

As he ate and spoke with his companion (a plain looking black haired woman with a sincere concentration on her face) he had wandering eyes.

These eyes looked all around the room all the time he ate. His head never moved, and the eyes seemed to look straight ahead all the time. It was just that those orbs moved around his head.

Like the eyeballs were some kind of creature crawling around under a blanket, the eyeballs wandered to the back and top and sides of his head.

David was so fascinated that he caught himself being caught by the eyes looking at him.

He ducked his head in embarrassment and then glanced up to see the pair both looking in his direction. Then the woman looked at him too, and that was too much. He turned in his chair and faced the other way.

Looking that was he saw a man with no eyes at all.

The figure was coming through the entrance way, and while he was a good six feet tall he had nothing on his face at all. No mouth, no nose and no eyes. At this point he raised his right hand and there was the missing eye. He had an eye in the palm of his right hand.

Now David had no idea where to look, so he concerned himself only with his food and his brother.

“We ain’t in Kansas anymore,” Mickey thought.

He had seen everything.

“Tell me about it Toto!” David thought back.

Is anybody still reading this story?
Just wondered

31.

“I am Grestor.” A powerful voice wrapped itself around the two boy’s heads, maybe inside, maybe outside.

Both looked up immediately. Neither saw anything.

Someone with a powerful voice cleared his throat somewhere below eye level.

The McCauley kids looked just past the edge of the table to see a two foot tall man. The short fellow was built like a crate that should be carrying something large and heavy.

David tried hard not to smile. Mickey didn’t think about it.

“I am to take you to your orientation,” came the booming voice.

The speaker wore a yellow jumpsuit with a like colored mask. His head was of equal size to his fists. This guy, it seemed, could do just about anything he wanted to do.

There were no orders given, but Grestor’s gaze told them what was to be.

The diminutive powerhouse made a military turn on his heal and started to move away.

Both boys stood, and without a beat followed Grestor marching out of the dining area.

In the hallway they saw people of every shape and size, nationality and race. Mickey thought to himself that this must be something like what the U.N. looks like on their lunch break.

Then they passed someone (they couldn’t tell anything more specific about the person) who was at least 8 feet tall and could not have weighed more than 50 pounds.

“Cammander Bean,” Grestor greeted.

“Grestor” the tall one answered.

David wondered if their relationship and cordiality had anything to do with the varience in height. Sometimes people tried to over-compensate about things like that.

They walked past a room with closed doors that boomed with regularity and once sounded like there was an explosion inside.

“The Danger Room!” Mickey whispered to his brother.

“Music room,” Grestor corrected.

After walking at least 5 city blocks, the trio turned and entered a door.

Inside was a lecture hall with the shape of the inside of a bowl.

Seats went down the sides, with a podium at the bottom and the center. David had seen something like it on a field trip to a college. The room was built like this to maximize the lecturer’s visibility and
acoustics.

In the room (counting themselves and Grestor) were 10 people.

Mr. Position was at the podium, Carvine and Jeremy were sitting at opposite ends of the room, as far away from the center (and each other) as physically possible. Down front was a girl with no hair, but (David
noted) a nice figure. There were a pair of twin boys who were David’s age and size. There was also, a couple of seats back, a hovering black fog that faintly resembled a person.

This creature’s presence was more than mildly unsettling to the boys, although it seemed that no one else even took notice.

“Mr. Position?” Grestor said.

“Thank you, Grestor, I can take them from here on out,” The man answered.

Grestor nodded to him, then the boys and turned and left without ceremony.

Position looked down, flipped a tiny switch on the microphone that was imbedded in the podium, and pointed the boys to the front row.

“If our last arrivals will be seated we can begin the orientation,” He said, sometimes in the mike, sometimes out.

The boys took seats on the aisle.

“My friends,” he began, “Some of you have been here before and some of you are completely new. But, for all of you, this day will mark a transition that will change your life in the world significantly.”

It was at this point with the most unearthly roar brought an end to orientation. And a hailstorm of fire brought an end to Mr. Position.

32.

In the nano-second it took to turn from the incinerated Mr. Position towards the source of the blast of flame, the fire was interrupted.

What they saw was back of a woman who seemed to be turning the flames aside. Her arms were extended and she was wearing a short cape that billowed with her.

In the time it took them to stand the flame stopped.

The woman turned and ran to Position’s body, that lay crumpled across the podium. She shouted into a circle on the wrist band she wore on her left arm.

“Lazarus, lecture hall, now!” She commanded.

David was struck by her self confidence. And her beauty.

She was black and had an amazing amount of swirling black hair offsetting her soft features.

“You are thinking too much about girls,” Came Mickey’s voice in his head.

Mickey looked back towards the source of the blaze, and was truly speechless.

There stood a dragon.

A real, live, honest to Jack Kirby dragon.

A small boy stood stroking the beasts golden mane. The dragon was a rainbow of shades of green. He did look like one of the creatures you might find in an old Jack Kirby-Stan Lee giant monster comic.

“Fin Fang Foom!” David gasped

Mickey nodded in recognition.

“Don’t worry,” said the boy.

The dragon pushed his hand for more petting.

“I am Emo, I control emotions.” The boy told them, “I have calmed him. We’ll get him back to containment as soon as the right people get here.”

At this juncture a man in a robe that included a hood that obscured his head. The figure hurried past all of them, and moved down beside the woman at the podium.

“All of you, get out!” The woman insisted.

By the time she said this, the dragon and the boy were already gone.

The boys and their companions in the room exited with haste.

The woman turned back and closed the door, with herself on the outside.

That instant a blue light escaped under the doorway.

“I’m sorry to be so brusque, but there was no time,” she told the youngsters.

“What happened?” Mickey said incredulously.

“The attacking force was able to sabotage Rugglestump’s containment, so he was still in his battle mode and had no other enemies to fight.”

Carvine picked up something off the floor, Mickey saw and found another of its like near him.

He recognized it right away.

“Dragon pearls!” He said triumphantly.

“Just like a clam can get a grain of sand in its shell and cover it with a liquid that ultimately becomes a pearl, the same thing happens with the dragon’s scales. After the pearl becomes large enough it simply falls out.” The woman told them, with the tone that identified her as a teacher.

“Who are you?” One of the twins asked.

“I am Dr. Amelia Thursday,” She said off handedly as she looked back at the door and saw there was no longer light escaping from under it, “The call me The Protector since nothing, as yet, had been found that
can hurt me or anyone under my protection.”

The door opened and the man with the hood exited the room, followed by a totally bald Mr. Xavier Postion. The recently deceased man was apparently blind, since you could only see whites on his eyeballs.

The man in the hood walked him away.

“Wasn’t he dead?” Carvine asked.

“He got better,” Mickey said with a laugh.

“He will continue to get better. In a week or so he will be back to his old, annoying self,” Dr. Thursday informed them.

The band on Thursday’s wrist beeped, and she put it to her ear.

“Certainly,” She said.

The doctor opened the door and looked back at them.

“Come along,” she said, “I’m in charge of you now.”

David was very happy.