Shades of Justice: Page 44

Gordon arrived in the kitchen of his parents home. his phone said it was about ten in the morning on Tuesday but he was so tired that it didn't mean anything to his mind. He heated up two toaster waffles and ate them without thinking about it. withing fifteen minutes of getting home had kicked off his shoes and passed on on his bed.

He shot awake like a gun had gone off. His room was dark. the glasses in the pocket of his Letterman jacket were dark as well and had no messages waiting for him when he put them on. His phone said it was 5:30pm. He went downstairs and found his parents already home and going about their usual evening routines.

His mother was in the kitchen making something sweet for one charity or another. She had changed out of her business attire into old sweats and gotten right back to work. She saw him out of corner of her eye as she was pouring melted chocolate from a pot into a pan to cool. "Gordon, Your coach called today, he says you quit football." She said with most of her attention on the chocolate.

Gordon nodded. "I uh, I don't know, school's gotten pretty intense this year and football just isn't as fulfilling as it used to be, I guess." He fumbled.

His father came into the kitchen. "School and your grades is the most important thing son, but you also made a commitment to your team, and you don't learn anything about personal responsibility when you just give up on a commitment you've made because its no longer fun or entertaining. The coach and your teammates need to know they can count on you son." 

His father's lecture got under his skin. "And who am I supposed to count on Dad? And why does anyone have to count on anyone, it's a below average high school sport in a below average town, full of below average nobodies. It's not war Dad, its sports and in the long run if high school football is the reason I learned the be accountable for my commitments then you were pretty shitty parents." He snapped as he stomped out the kitchen and then the front door of the house.

He wandered for almost an hour and found himself led by the sounds of the football game being played at the high school. he was on the far side of the perimeter fence. His old team was ahead by a touchdown. He sat and watched the rest of the game, an easy victory, he never would have even stepped on the field had he still been on the team.

As everyone filed out of the stadium he made his way around to the entrance and slowly fought through the crowds. Once he was inside he made his way back to the locker room and ran into the coach as he was leaving the locker room having just given his post game speech.  He didn't seem surprised or angry. "Mr. Jones. Good to see you." He offered.

Gordon nodded. "I just wanted to come by and thank you for checking up on me with my parents. I know it wasn't the best way to quit the team but I gotta focus on school this year." He explained.

The coach nodded. "You know that excuse is only gonna fly until your report card comes out, the D's and F's are gonna knock it right out of the sky." He sighed. "You wanna maybe try the truth this time?" he asked. Gordon shook his head. "Is it drugs?" The coach asked. Gordon shook his head again. "Peer pressure?" he tried again. "You running with a dangerous crowd?" He dug a little deeper. 

Gordon looked down the hall at the patch of field he could see. "Maybe, but their dangerous for the right reason's." He explained.

The coach nodded. "Your parents ok with bailing you out of jail?" he asked again, no coldly, not judgmentally, just asking sincerely. 

Gordon shook his head.  "No, but jail is the last place I'll end up." he said flatly with huff.

The coach nodded. "The coffin is worse." He offered.

Gordon nodded. "How come you're so calm about this?" he asked.

The coach leaned against the cement block wall. "Because after seventeen years I've learned to spot the determined ones. I rarely know what their determined to do, but determination always looks the same, you guys wear your honor stapled to your chest and run breast first into the world like you're immortal." He sighed. "Once I spot the determined ones, its just a matter of clearing the road ahead for them as best I can before their gone." he got up off the wall. "So, you need the road cleared, you just let me know. You may not be on the team, but as long as you're a student, I'm your teacher." he said before patting him heavily on the shoulder and heading out to the field.

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Shades of Justice: page 43

Mark saw the weariness in the other Shades, looked to Sonya on the bed with Dante at her side. He cleared his throat. "Technarious, these kids have been fighting for weeks now with little to no training. No other team has done more with less than they have. I think they need a break." He pointed out.

Technarious looked at each of them and realized Mark was right. He nodded. "You have all been doing the very best that you could given your circumstances. You've fought hard and the Earth has fared well under your protection." They all stood a little taller despite their weariness. "You've won some big victories, but we've got a long way left to go, and we're not getting their with you guys soul weary and bone tired." They all nodded quietly. "Take what time you can. Barring emergencies I'll see you all in a week for training." several of them moved to protest. "Don't even start. Your next mission is defeating exhaustion, no go!" He demanded. Everyone but Dante, Sonya and Mark nodded and teleported out of the command center.

Mark look to Dante. "You can get going too. She's going to be there for a while." He assured him,

Dante shook his head. "I'm staying here. I haven't been very supportive since this whole mess got started, she's going to see me here when she wakes up." He declared.

Mark nodded. "Admirable. but she's going to be out for at least another day or two based on the sedatives, when was the last time you slept?" He asked.

Dante shrugged. "What day is it?" He asked. Looking around the command center at the lack of clocks, calendars, and windows.

Mark nodded. "It's Dante takes a nap day." Mark said with a soft smile. "Ask your glasses to lead you to the bunks, get some sleep. I'll call you if there's any change." He assured Dante.

Dante nodded and put his glasses on. "take me to the bunks." He said mostly to himself. and followed the directions that popped up on his lenses.

Technarious was busy at a computer console catching up on the status of the command center. "Did you really have to cut a door into the wall?" He asked.

Mark shrugged. "You should be glad this place is still standing. These kids have had a raw run so far, and your memret wasn't as smooth or efficient as either of us hoped, took a while for it to kick in." He explained. "Considering the circumstances I think things are going better than we could reasonably hope for." He pointed out.

Technarious nodded. "Never under estimate the power of sheer dumb luck." He said.

Mark nodded. "But don't depend on it either." He added.

They bumped fists. Technarious went back to his work. "I hope they enjoy their time off." He said.

blood and profit: page 66

It turned out to be a surprisingly beneficial way to combat time. He was assigned to an indoor protean farm. For the first few days he was fascinated by the watching the system work. His job was to pull the full protean pouches from the grid and replace them with empty sacks. If any tubes gave a pressure alert all he had to do was go to where the tube had turned bright red and either undo the kink or squish out the blockage. Ultimately it was simple, mind numbingly dull work, but the facility had not yet been fully automated and so it required this one bit of human interaction.

Apparently mind numblingly dull repetitive work was what his mind needed to regain its creative drive. By the end of the first week he was a chapter into the only writing he had done in more than five years. His weekend disappeared into delivered food and the constant clacking of his keyboard. His mind only barely gave in to the biological needs of his body and by the time he was due back at work he felt the toll it was taking, but he didn't care. He grabbed a tablet, got dressed and went to work.

And that's how P.H. Turner wrote his final work. using every spare moment he could find while working at a Protean farm helping to create supplies for a journey he would never take.

It was over a month into the draft before his kids could get away to visit him. They had scheduled their breaks so they had two days off together to catch up. Mew arrived home not long after P.H. had gotten home from the farm. She rang the door bell out of politeness but then let herself to find him sitting at the kitchen table, typing like a man possessed, still in his dirty farm clothes. She saw what he was doing and couldn't help but smile. "I was going to ask how you were holding up but considering the fact that your writing again, I'm going to say that things are going slightly more than well." She patted him on the shoulder lightly before walking into the kitchen.

He didn't respond with anything more than a non-committal grunt. She opened the refrigerator and saw that it was nearly empty. "Let me guess, you've been living on takeout and junk food." She sighed. "Dad you could have said something, I would have come by sooner." She whined.

"Uh-huh." He offered, totally absorbed in his writing.

Mew shook her head with a knowing smile. She hadn't seen him like this since she was a teenager and she was happy to see him so absorbed again. "Ok well, I'm going to go shopping for food and things for the weekend, you just keep writing." She said watching his hands blur over the keyboard as he worked.

"Ok honey, you have fun." He offered automatically. She nodded and left the house.

Lidarion: Page 39

The Librarian looked up from the book to check on his audience. "I understand that you have come a long way, but your questions have ancient answers and while I appreciate you suffering through my translations, we've only just begun. If you would kindly join me for dinner we can continue the book this evening." The Librarian looked tired and had significantly less pep in his step as he led the group out of the scroll room and back into the main library.

The windows were dark now, the librarian had been translating most of the day, Squints moved up to join him and they quickly fell into a conversation.

Brook, Dean, Lisa and Trent began their own conversation in hushed whispers. "I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew with this one." Brook started.

Dean shrugged. "That's assuming any of these stories are even remotely true." He countered.

Lisa nodded. "Assuming they are true, how do we know if the Paragon's are even still alive today, or trapped in physical form, or what ever it is the Titan's did to them." She asked.

Brook looked at the distant glare coming from Trent. "Thoughts?" She asked.

Trent cleared his throat. "It's a long journey no matter what. We've already traveled further than I ever have in my life and this thing has barely even started." He looked to Dean. "If you need to go, go. With what we brought in Gold we can buy a ship that will serve our purposes." He looked to Lisa and Brook. "You two can be back in Lidarion today by way of the door." He finished.

Brook shook her head. "If you are staying, I am staying." She said with finality.

Lisa nodded. "Brandon wanted us to work together and his efforts led us here, so here I stay." She agreed.

Dean shrugged. "I have no desire to ever let my sister beat me up again so my ship is your ship for as long as you have need of it." He offered.

Trent nodded. "Your all fools, but your my kind of fools." He said with a warm smile.

"Hey guys!" Squints voice echoed down the hall the group had stopped in. They looked up to see him peeking his head between two gigantic hand carved wooden doors. They were large enough to make Harruff look small and had barely needed to be opened for him to pass through. Squints was on the far side of the doors. "When you're done with your little meeting, you might want to look at this!" He shouted happily. and disappeared back behind the door.

They were not far from the doors, maybe a hundred feet and quickly made their way down the hall to see what ever had cheered him up.

Melody and Harmony: page 12

It was a favor big enough to earn him the time off for the festival, without loosing his new job. The club owner called it by one of the ancient slang names, "Mary Jane". He didn't say what he needed it for, and Aaron didn't ask. He didn't say how much and Aaron didn't ask. All the club owner told him was where to go, when to be there, and who he was meeting for the exchange.

The last thing the club owner did before showing him the door was hand him four cash cards, each of them held more money than Aaron could spend in half a year. The club owner handed them over like he was passing out club fliers and saw the look on Aaron's face. "You may work for favors but these will open and close doors you'd never be able to approach otherwise." he explained.

Something in the back of his mind started screaming. This was just a simple exchange, what doors would he possible need this money money to handle? His conscious mind chalked the oddity up to the differences in the way rich people valued things and took the cards. "This much will make us targets of every low life with a cred scanner between here and any of your 'doors'" He used air quotes for the club owners benefit.

"If I thought you couldn't handle thugs and punks, I wouldn't have asked you back." he said with finality and turned his attention back to his other work. Aaron left quietly.

Back at the table he filled his friends in using their shorthand mumble toned garbage speak. Words within words, verbal misdirects, and empty trap sentences to deter anyone who might have been listening. It had taken them years to develop the language, but it had never failed them.

They finished their drinks and left the Shadow Church one at a time, each of them went in different directions at different times, then when they were sure they weren't being followed they met at their agreed upon location.

It was the last time the night went according to plan.

Spoonerville: Page 10

And that's how Rodney spent the last two weeks of summer break. Eating pizza and playing video games. He didn't know it at the time but it was easily the longest period of normalcy in Spoonerville in years, and before he could even really begin to appreciate it, it was over. The school year started on Monday.

The spoonerville education system consisted of exactly three hundred and thirteen kids in grades K through twelve. Putting about twenty three kids in each grade. These kids had grown up together from birth in most cases. They knew each other intensely and as they got older, intimately. So when someone left it was like a death in the family, and when someone new arrived it was cause for celebration, mostly.

Social ecosystems are delicate, living things with a thousand moving parts. Change any one previously existing variable and you risk throwing a stable system into chaos. Add and entirely new set of variables and you guarantee chaos. Good administrators spend their career fighting against the eternal flood of chaos with everything they have. Great administrators ride the chaos like a wave, reaching out to touch the water here an there to balance out an uneven swell. They don't fight the tide, they just direct it so it reaches land safely and with as little incident as possible.

Marcus Spooner  High School consisted of a gym that they shared with Alicia Spooner elementary and what looked like a squat beige one story office building. Derek had already explained the basics of the social ecosystem to Rodney. There were one hundred and twenty one students in the high school, Rodney was one hundred and twenty two. Even in a school this small cliques still existed, just in smaller numbers.

Rodney lived less than a quarter mile from the school and there were no buses for him to ride. He had plannned on just walking to school until Derek and Vivian offered to pick him up in the morning. They were finishing up a game of Mario Party the night before.

"Why bother?" Rodney asked. "I like like, maybe three hundred yards from the school, save your gas." He replied.

Derek shook his head. "Just ride with us, it's your first day." He insisted.

"It'll be fuuuuuuun." Vivian sang in a teasing tone.

The mini game ended and Rodney shrugged. "Sure, why not." He gave in.

The next morning he paced nervously in the entry way of his grandmothers house and hated himself for it. His crush on Vivian had only gotten worse and she seemed to know almost instantly about the power he had subconsciously given her. Thankfully neither of them had spoken about this power exchange out loud and so they continued their silent one way tug of war.

The Volvo pulled up and Derek honked the horn to summon Rodney outside. He practically dove into the back seat. "Morning" he offered, shutting the back door of the car. "What's that smell?" he asked.

Derek laughed and Vivian poked at a green pouch hanging from the rear view mirror. "Burnt sage, dipped in patchouli oil." She explained before turning around to smile sweetly at him. "You a fan of the Grateful Dead?" She asked.

He knew of the band but couldn't remember actually ever hearing any of their songs and he said as much.

Derek shook his head as he pulled into the school parking lot. "You'll know more than you ever wanted to" He pointed his thumb at his sister. "Thanks to her. She's a dead head, through and through." He parked the car and pulled the keys.

Rodney moved for the door but Derek stopped him. He held out a heavy iron key. "Here, take this." he offered. "It's my emergency key to the pizza place." He explained.

Rodney accepted they key and looked it over. There was a thin line of silver inlaid into the fat iron head. "Why do I need a key to the pizza place?" He asked.

Derek smiled. "You probably won't. But I can't be awake and in town 24/7, so if you don't mind I was going to put you down as the emergency contact for the store." He explained. Rodney looked back at they key again, sensing its weight even more now. "If you're ok with that." Derek repeated.

Rodney snapped out of his daze and nodded. "Yeah, it's cool, thanks." He replied.

Vivian opened her door and got out of the car, the boys followed her lead.