As Elliot continued to write on the board, the last bell for the day began to ring. Students where packing up their belongings as some were already out the door. Elliot called out to them all as he kept writing, “Hey guys this stuff isn’t just important for life but for some of you, this will help you understand your abilities better and even improve them!” He turned around and pointed at a few students. “Make sure you copy this down Moyasu, Thermodynamics applies to you and your ability so understanding this is crucial.”285Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw83aecwIXt
Moyasu was an average height seventeen-year-old with shaggy medium length brown hair. He was wearing a black and white t-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and a necklace with a shark tooth at the center of it. He stood up from his seat and said, “Don’t worry Elliot, I got it all stored up in here.” He pointed to his head and tapped on it a few times as he walked past Elliot and headed out the door. Elliot frowned as he walked past him, and he wondered to himself if Moyasu was ever listening at all. Moyasu had a cool guy aura about him, but honestly, he was hot headed, rushed into things, and doesn’t take the time to think. His ability was quite extraordinary. His body could generate heat at a rate which he could convert the joules of energy into direct flame. He could generate bursts of heat and fire in any direction around him without lifting a finger. He could concentrate his heat and fire into any direction and even allows him to have a flying like jump ability due to the concussive forces he can generate by concentrating his fire underneath him. His hot headedness comes from his over confidence in his ability which is what worries Elliot.
Before Moyasu was out of hearing range, Elliot called out to him, “You’re going to be at dinner, right? It’s going to be around six thirty-ish.”
Moyasu’s voice rang down the hallway and into the classroom, “Wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
Elliot sat down at his desk and opened a drawer containing his keys and wallet. After taking them out and putting them into his pockets, he closes the drawer and walked over to a dark brown trench coat hanging at the door. He put it on and after giving the classroom one last look over, he shut the door and locked it. There was a small group of kids down below that caught his attention while he looked out the window. One of the kids in the group was at its center and doing tricks with a skateboard as the others cheered and yelled. The kid was skating around the entrance to the school, doing all sorts of board flips and grinding on nearby ledges and benches. One of the kids had a camera and was closely following the one on the skateboard filming him. After a while, Elliot saw Lux in her white lab coat running out to them and shooing them away while scolding them for skating on school property. Elliot strolled over to an elevator and descended down to the ground level floor. He was walking out of the entrance when a young man wearing big glasses and sweater jersey with the number one right in the middle, alongside a young woman who was wearing long jeans with a school uniform and tie covered by a kimono style long button down shirt walked up to him holding bags upon bags of groceries. The girl had long thick red hair that was pulled back into a ponytail as if she was a samurai.
She rudely shoved all the bags into Elliot’s chest and sarcastically said to him, “Aw thanks! Nice of you to offer to help a young lady out.” She stomped off with an angry look on her face as she went into a nearby elevator and disappeared out of their sight.
Elliot asked the young man, “What’s up with her?”
The man seemed to struggle with the words he wanted to say before he spoke out, “She didn’t like something I said I guess.” They both turned around and walked back into the school and waited for the elevator to come back down. Once the doors opened, they stepped in and a younger girl walked in with them as they entered the elevator and the doors closed.
The girl turned around and started to speak as the elevator ascended to the fifth floor, “Hi Elliot! Hi Liam!” Before they could say anything, she turned around in embarrassment and said, “I’m sorry!”
Elliot laughed out loud and asked, “What do you have to be sorry about Squirt? How was your day? Did you see your big sis knock down that wind user with his own ability this morning?”
The girl turned back around with a quickness with stars in her eyes as she imitated her big sisters moves and said, “Yeah! I saw her kick that guy’s butt into the dirt from my classroom! She made a cyclone spin the other direction than the one he made! It was so cool!” After finishing her reenactment, she spun around again embarrassed. She then said, “I read that guys mind at lunch and guess what? He’s totally in love with her! That’s why he always chooses her as his sparring partner.”
Elliot said sternly after hearing her remark, “Ashlynn! You know it’s rude to read people’s minds or make them do anything against their will. That’s an abuse of your ability and you need to act more mature about it.”
Ashlynn said in protest, “But I needed to know why he was always challenging her and if he was gonna be a bad guy. Cause if he were gonna hurt my sister I’d make him beat himself up or something. But now I know that he’s cool.”
Elliot said, “You can’t do that either! Look Ash, even though your fifteen, your ability can cause a lot of havoc on a large scale. And if you were ever to use your ability and get yourself into trouble, the courts will try you as an adult. So, just start being more careful okay? I know it was a harmless act, but what if someday you accidently read the mind of a psychopath huh? And he chases you down for the rest of your life because you learned his dark secret?”
Liam interrupted Elliot and said, “Hey don’t tell her that! She still a little girl and you’re going to mess her up putting those kinds of nightmares in her head.”
Ashlynn interrupted them both and replied with, “It’s ok, because if that were the case, I’d make the killer think I was the killer with my mind control and make him think I was the one chasing him down.” She let out a small maniacal laugh and she rubbed her hands together imitating a super villain. Elliot and Liam looked at each other a bit horrified and then belted out laughing. She angrily spun around and shouted, “What you think I’m kidding? I could be the bad guy! I’m a good villain! I have an A+ in drama class.”
The doors to the elevator opened and as they stepped out Elliot said, “Just keep getting good grades and staying out of other’s heads. If you turn into a super villain your grounded for life so keep that in mind!”
Ashlynn ran down a perpendicular hallway with her schoolbooks clutched to her chest and shouted, “See you at dinner!”
Liam and Elliot walked into a room with a plaque on the door that said: Kitchen and Dinning room. The fifth floor of the building was renovated from classrooms into a more family like home. There were a few hallways that led to many dorm-like rooms. There were a few community bathrooms with bathing areas and smaller kitchen areas spread about the floor. There were even a few family style living rooms with all sorts of couches and televisions hooked up to game systems. There were even pictures hanging on the walls of the various students who lived there spread through the entire floor. This floor was only accessible by a key card that only the people who lived on it had. If one were to be going there for their first time it would seem like you were teleported to the inside of a luxurious home instead of a school building floor. Elliot did everything he could to make everyone feel at home.
In the room they had entered, Jazlynn was already wearing an apron and a chef’s hat chopping up various vegetables and putting them in their respective bowls. There was a small radio on one of the counters blasting a dubstep like techno music as she bounced around to it as she continued to prep food. Liam went to a large counter and placed all the bags of groceries he was carrying. Elliot did the same and they both began to put away the bag’s contents.
Jazlynn noticed them and greeted them, “Hi guys, hope you don’t mind but I already started prepping. I couldn’t wait any longer. I skipped lunch to fit in a quick gaming session, so I’m ravenous right now.” She went over to the bags of groceries and removed a bunch of types of meats. She dove over to a counter with built in gas burners and an oven. She began to rigorously slice and chop meats and began to cook them.
Liam said, “Well I guess I’ll join Jazlynn in cooking up a feast.” Liam bent down to a cabinet and opened the door. In it was a specialized apron and hat that he wore when he cooked. After putting on his cooking attire he turned and picked up a large wok hanging on a hook above one of the many sinks. The wok spun in his hand by the handle as he flung it onto an open burner. Oil flew into the wok as he juggled ingredients around in the air that Jazlynn had already prepared for him. The oil and food in the wok began to sizzle as he shuffled it around. Jazlynn was stirring a pot on the stove and adjusting the volume on her radio. Elliot felt fortunate to be able to have dinner every night with everyone. A large number of real blood families don’t even get together for a family meals after a certain point, but Elliot was proud that no matter how busy anyone’s schedules were, they always ate as a family around six thirty or seven o’clock every night. On a normal night Liam and Jazlynn usually cooked the meals. Sometimes Elliot would join them and help cook, but cooking wasn’t something he was good at. He began setting the table. The kitchen table was huge. It could easily sit twenty people comfortably. Elliot set spots for fifteen plates with their respective utensils even though there would only be fourteen people eating tonight. He then stepped out of the room and walked down to the elevator. After entering, he pushed the button that would take him to the small utility floor underneath the roof. The doors to the elevator opened and he stepped out with a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth. The school had a couple more floors than a traditional high school, so he was able to gaze out at the sunset as it sank behind the city. Elliot walked up to a young man who was standing tall with his head bowed to the sun as it set. He had a head band around his forehead and most of his arms and hands were wrapped with white kumpur like a boxer. He was wearing a cheap pair of box frame sunglasses.
“Hey, Hikari. You coming to dinner?”
The young man looked back at him while keeping a unique stance, “Yeah, I’ll be there. I’m finishing some of my Jeet Kune Do exercises.”
Elliot tossed his cigarette off the roof and headed back down the elevator. This time he descended back down to the ground floor. Through the elevator door he could hear a bunch of extremely loud girls laughing and prancing around. The doors opened and revealed Lux standing in the center of a circle while four girls swarmed her and were all talking at once about their day.
Lux looked up and saw Elliot and shouted, “Hey look there’s Elliot, he’d love to hear about all of your guys’ days.” All the girls turned to Elliot excited and screamed his name. They began to swarm him instead and Lux made her escape down the hallway and back into her lab. Lux usually would stay in her lab when she wasn’t teaching and run various types of experiments all day. Elliot met her when she applied to be a teacher when he opened the school. She was trying to leave her high paying job as a lead chemist, to find something where she would have more freedom to do her own things. Elliot gave her the teaching job, even though at that time, none of the kids were old enough to attend a grade level high enough to even learn the subjects she could teach. Until the earlier students were old enough to attend high school level classes, Elliot helped her with her experiments and she even developed a lot of the school’s safety and defense systems. Lux was always researching the origins of Esper abilities and their development in human bodies. She was a well-known figure in the science fields and top of her class graduating college. Her old colleagues and mentors would lecture her about teaching low life poverty stricken degenerates the sciences and how she needed to partner with them and help develop new technologies to compete with Esper’s and their abilities. She knew that the only reason people sought after her was because of her own Esper ability. She had what people called Quantum Mind. Her brain could process information faster and more efficient than a hundred peoples brains combined. Her brained worked faster and quicker than most modern super computers. With her vast knowledge of all fields of science and mathematics, she could predict outcomes hundreds of times over before running her experiments. She could learn or mimic almost anything the see’s or reads. She was hands down probably the worlds smartest person. The only downside she had was that she was selfish, rude, belligerent, authoritative, and mean. There was nothing in her mind that would hold her back from saying how she felt at any moment and why what she was currently doing was more important than anything anyone else was doing. Elliot knew she was most likely this way from the scrutiny and lack of freedoms she had working for other big companies. No one ever viewed her as a person but more as a resource and she hated it.
Elliot looked down at the gaggle of girls dancing in circles around him talking miles a minute. Two of the girls were Tsuki and Yoko, and the other two were two thirteen-year-old girls named Chloe and Zero. After letting them all talk for a while, he interrupted them and said, “Dinner will be ready soon, so you girls should go get ready. You can tell everyone about the rest of your day around the table.” All the girls danced their way into the elevator and the doors shut taking them away. Elliot sighed and said out loud, “Who knew raising so many girls would be so crazy. They’ll literally all talk at the exact same time without getting mad at each other and they somehow can hear and understand everything everyone else is saying.” The front doors closed behind him as he went out on the school lawn and picked up the cigarette, he had thrown off the roof a moment ago. He was trying not to liter anymore and had a relapse. He knew he shouldn’t be smoking on the school property, but he owned the place, so he didn’t care. But he knew he shouldn’t leave evidence for other students to find and then take up the habit. He threw the cigarette in the trash on his way in. Making the trip once again up the elevator, he took of his trench coat as he entered the kitchen.
It was still only Jazlynn and Liam, but they had almost all the food cooked already and sitting on the table at its center. There was a large hot pot with different kinds of meats floating around in it, there was two types of curry, spicy and sweet, then there were various side dishes like ramen and yaki soba about. Everyone had different tastes and feeding fourteen people nightly was rough when sticking to one kind of dinner. There were two vegetarians, Hikari and Chloe. Jazlynn and Liam always made sure they weren’t left out and always included meals they liked.
The sound of a skateboard rolling down the hall echoed off the walls. Through the doorway, the boy who had been skating in the lobby area earlier came riding in. He did a kick flip and landed on top of a chair he was going to sit in and quickly ended up in a handstand on the board and did a crazy flip into his seat off of the board. Before the board hit the ground, he caught it in one of his hands and placed it under his chair. Elliot clapped for him but then said, “That was very elegant, and I know it took a large amount of skill, but you know better than to be riding that inside Toshiro.”
Another body moved through the doorway and this time it was Moyasu. He took his seat and flipped his hair backwards as if he were about to pose for a photograph. Another two bodies came waltzing in. Ashlynn came bursting through the door with a huge smile on her face as she was talking the other girl’s ear off that had entered with her. The other girl was Penelope. She was still wearing her school uniform and skirt, but she had a big puffy winter coat on, even though it was still warm out. She was also wearing mitten style winter gloves and her hood was up with the drawstrings pulled tight, only exposing her nose and mouth and a few locks of hair that randomly were poking out through the hole. She didn’t talk much and had a note pad and a pencil in one of her hands. She took a seat at the table next to Toshiro while Ashlynn ran over to her older sister, who was still cooking the last of the food. Yoko and Tsuki’s voices bellowed down the hallway outside of the kitchen as they laughed and talked faster than a cheetah could run. They came spinning through the doorway holding hands and laughing and collapsed into the seats next to Penelope. Lux and Zero came prancing through the doorway and took the seats next to Elliot on each of his sides.
Zero immediately bombarded Elliot with questions upon sitting next to him, “So where did you go off too last night Huh? Were you sleeping in garbage again? I just know you were! You missed the best part of the party to. Just because you can drink and most of us can’t doesn’t mean you have to run away from us! If it weren’t for Dimitri, you’d probably still be lying in garbage right now eating off of trash cans!” She was standing on her chair lecturing Elliot, who was a grown man.
Elliot chuckled and said, “Well, it was a long night to say the least!” He put one hand behind his head and laughed nervously. At the moment, in the empty chair next to Zero, Chloe appeared out of thin air with a poof. Her arms were crossed, and she had a sour look on her face. She was wearing a pink tracksuit and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
Elliot took this moment to break away from his lecture and asked, “What’s with that face Chloe?”
She responded angerly, “I forgot to put my clothes in the dryer and had to rewash them because they smelled moldy. So, I have nothing to wear. I also think some of them are probably ruined.” She vanished out of thin air for a moment and reappeared but this time she was holding Dimitri, who looked like he was kidnapped while asleep. She snuggled him tight and said, “You’re so soft Dimitri I wish I could just have clothes as soft as your fur. Dimitri struggled for a bit to escape but once he saw all the food on the table he gave in and knew if he stayed long enough, he would get fed good food.
Everyone heard a loud crunch come from Lux. Everyone present looked over at her as she was holding her right cheek and sobbing. “I just bit my cheek,” she sobbed as she took the gum she was chewing out of her mouth. Everyone laughed at her.
Moyasu said after laughing, “The big brain of yours doesn’t stop things like that from happening?”
Lux, still holding her cheek, said, “No, and that’s like the tenth time today I’ve savagely bitten into my cheek.” Lux was addicted to chewing gum in her attempt to quit smoking cigarettes. She thought it was a good way to quit accept the fact that on every stick of gum she randomly bites the inside of her cheek to the point it draws blood. And it happened quite often. She stuck her finger inside her mouth to check if there was any blood. After her inspection she pulled another piece of gum out and started to chew it.
Just then, Hikari came into the room followed by Sukudo. They both took their seats and Sukudo pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and set it on the table and struggled to open it.
Elliot said, “Do you think that’s really the best choice to go with your dinner?”
Sukudo looked up at him and snarled, “I’m twenty-one now so I’ll drink what ever I want. I am a lady now you know.”
Elliot stood up and took the bottle and set it on a counter behind him. “You are twenty-one, but you have a lot to learn before you’re a lady. First you need to start acting like one. He reached under the table and pulled out a nice and expensive vintage wine. He opened it and poured some into a glass that was already in front of her. “This is the gross crap your parents drank on their honeymoon. So, enjoy. If the rumors are true, then this is what a lady drinks at dinner.” He sat back down in his seat and put the bottle under the table.
Jazlynn and Liam came from over by the cooking area and placed the last of the dishes down and bowed. They quickly put all the dishes in the sink they used to cook and took off their aprons. Jazlynn took her hat off and sat next to Ashlynn and Liam kept his weird looking chef’s hat on and sat on the other side of Toshiro. Everyone was finally seated with one spot still open. Liam started to speak out loud when everything became silent, “Oh wonderful cosmos, thank you for giving us life, the universe, and everything!”
Everyone said together, “Thank you for the food!” And everyone started grabbing food and filling their plates like wild animals. Zero was standing on her chair again, this time with chicken strips in her hands as she spun around reenacting part of her day for Chloe. Liam and Ashlynn always waited until the rush settled down before taking any food. Even though Yoko and Tsuki had their own plates, they were constantly eating off each other and talking nonstop. Elliot watched out as everyone ate dinner and conversed with each other. A tear almost came to his eye as he thought about how much he loved eating with everyone. He would sacrifice anything to protect these people. Even though none of them were his own flesh and blood, he loved every single one of them like a member of his blood family. Besides Lux, he spent ten years of his life raising these children and providing for them. Liam and Sukudo were both twenty-one, and were attending colleges off campus during the week, everyone else was various ages between thirteen and nineteen who lived on this floor. Spring break was about to start soon, and a lot of the other students who stayed their had already left early to return home to visit their families. There were other students who still lived on the opposite end of the floor, but they had their own groups and ate their meals usually in the other living quarters kitchens. Elliot’s group was different than the other ones though. Everyone at their table had lived there since day one, and all pretty much grew up together even before Elliot obtained the school. Elliot took an oath to protect these children and would even kill any evil that would be bestowed upon them. In his mind, every single one of them had peered into the gates of hell and were bestowed one of the cruelest fates at an early age.
He heard Zero belt out, “And that’s when I told him I didn’t care if he was a boy, I was gonna kick his ass! And gave him an upper cut just like Jazlynn!” She spun around on her chair again and plopped down into it.
Ashlynn chimed in, “I would have made him eat dirt in front of all his friends with my ability and he would be shamed for life.”
Zero replied to Ashlynn’s remark, “Oh my god! Ashy would you do that for me? He was being so mean to my friend I just couldn’t let him get away with it!”
Elliot butted in, “No No No, none of that. Zero, you’re lucky you didn’t get in trouble and don’t encourage Ash to do things that will get her in trouble. She’s already teetering on the fence between good and evil and we don’t need and tiny supervillains on our hands.”
Zero shouted out like a hero and said, “If she were to become a villain, I would stop her and bring her back home!”
Moyasu cutted in and said, “You’d stop her? You and what power?”
Zero shouted back, “I don’t need to be an Esper or have powers to save her. I would use magic or something.”
Moyasu responded, “Magic isn’t real so that’s out of the question.”
Zero got angry and shouted back, “Yes, it is! Magic does exist! Elliot told me when I was little it existed, and I believe in it.” She threw one of her chicken strips at him and it hit him right in the forehead. She then extended her hand and told him to hand it back. He took the chicken strip and ate what was left of it and one bite. Zero gasped and shouted, “You jerk, that was mine!”
Moyasu said with a smile, “Well if it was yours why didn’t you use that magic to get it back?”
Elliot interrupted them both and said, “Just because magic doesn’t exist in the way you want it to, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Magic exists everywhere. Magic is when you stand up for something you believe in regardless the costs. It’s when you stand up for someone knowing you’ll lose the fight but doing what it takes to protect them. It exists when you see the people you love and care about smile. Doing the right thing even when no one is around to see it. Making sacrifices for the sake of someone else and helping others reach their dreams. Those are all forms of magic that only some people have or can give. Just because something isn’t shooting out of the end of a wand or a staff doesn’t mean magic doesn’t exist. And just so you know Moyasu, anyone can save somebody, ability or no ability. There’s many more ways to save someone other than from physical harm.” Elliot helped himself to seconds as Zero sat there staring at the floor with tears in her eyes. Everything Elliot just said, was what he said to her many years ago when she was upset to learn she was born with no abilities. Growing up, all the other Esper children would make fun of her and tease her by calling her Zero due to her lack of an Esper ability. Zero’s real name is Luna but she ended up keeping the nickname Zero. She always said she didn’t need to have a power to save the world or anyone and that she would use magic the way Elliot described it to save people. She knew that she was the weakest one at the table, but it drove her to work harder every day. She was determined to show everyone that she could still be strong and save people without a power and embraced the name Zero. She practiced martial arts with Hikari every day. She hung out with Lux in her laboratory and learned all kinds of things about physics and math that weren’t taught at her grade level. She did everything humanly possible to prepare her body and mind so that she could someday help someone. Everyone kept eating and talking while the sun disappeared completely behind the city.
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