Steampunk CTs

Ori and I spent half of the hour running that drill she was talking about earlier and the other half resting so that I have the energy back that I used up practicing. Once the hour was up, Ms. Natalia came back with Instructor Matthews.

“Alright, Alright! It’s time to look alive! Trainees Ori and Arno, let’s get ready to RUMBLE!” She pointed at the both of us and we were more ready than ever.

“Great! Then follow me.” She turned around with her cape very dramatically and began to walk off and we followed her with no hesitation.

We walked through some hallways of the school and ended up at the entrance of a large collection of buildings. Above the large doorways had the title of the school: Merlin high school. When we reached this doorway, Instructor Matthews began to explain our objective.

“There will be multiple bombs and training spread throughout this artificial school. There will also be Natalia here to stop you from diffusing those bombs. Any questions?”

“How are we supposed to defuse the bombs?”

Instructor Matthews sighed and answered my question. “Most terrorists use very basic makeshift bombs. We’ve gone over the process of defusing such things in class, Trainee.” He looked like he was gonna blow a fuse.

“Oh…” I must’ve forgotten.

“If there’s no other questions, Natalia will be on her way. This is supposed to simulate a scenario in which the terrorist already has control of the area, so we will give her one minute to prepare starting now.” Instructor Matthews winded and clicked his stopwatch.

“O-oh right!” Ms. Natalia ran through the double doors and into the school while the clock ticked. We patiently waited until Instructor Matthews’ stopwatch went off and began to approach those double doors.

“Good luck, you two.”

“Right!” Ori and I said in unison as we pushed through those double doors. It was time to prove ourselves that we were more ready than ever.

“So what’s the plan, Ori?”Once the doors closed behind us, I scanned the area and found that we were in a long hallway with rows of doors on each side. On the walls there were also posters for events and graded tests. Although, all of this was hard to make up because it was so dark. Seriously, who turned off the lights?

Ori walked over to the switch and went to turn on the light, but it was already on…

“The fuse must be broken.” I said.

“Arno, be smart about this.” She leveled the scope of her sniper with her eye and took her shot at one of the lights on the ceiling. But what caught me off guard is where her shot landed, and what happened as a result of that.

She used her flame shot to make a fire next to the light and when she did, it was like a layer of black, transparent paint peeled itself back to reveal that the light in this hallway was on the entire time.

“Arno, we gotta go!”

“Right! Blazing Soul!”

I swept Ori off of her feet and used my stemata to fly through the hallway. Once I let my feet off of the ground, hundreds of black tentacles and spikes started to dart out and try to latch onto us. I weaved through each and every one that tried to grab or hurt us as we reached the end of what felt like a never-ending hallway.

We reached the end of the corridor and as soon as I could, I kicked the door open and went flying out into the sunlight. Its rays made the shadows that were chasing us retract to the confines of that hallway. When my eyes adjusted, I took a quick glance at where we were and realized we were in an open courtyard. There were multiple pathways with various plants growing on each side of them.

“Arno, get me a vantage point.”

I shot up into the sky and landed on the ceiling of a nearby building.

“So there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we can beat her if we drag her into this courtyard. The bad news is that that’s the only way we’re beating her. She has complete control over the interior, which is most likely where most of the bombs are. She has little to no reason to attack us, so she’ll just wait in the shadows. I don’t care how you do it, but get her into this courtyard so I can assist you.”

“Got it!” As I was about to jump off the roof to look for Ms. Natalia, Ori stopped me for a brief moment.

“Do a quick scan around the courtyard for any bombs and bring them up here. I’ll defuse them.”

With my orders given to me, I swooped down back into the courtyard and flew around to look for the bombs and found a total of three overall bombs. As I flew back to Ori to have her defuse them, I studied them to see if I could do the job myself. Nope. No can do. They have these primary colored wires that intersect between one another and buttons that could be pressed, but Hami knows I’m not touching a single one of them.

I handed the bombs over to Ori and before I could even launch off of the roof, I heard the sound of the bombs powering down. So fast!

Once I was back in the air, I looked around the complex to see where I should even start looking. There were five long buildings that all connected to this open courtyard. It kinda of looked like a hand, now that I think about it. Now Arno, if you were a CT pretending to be a terrorist that’s invaded a school, where would you hide? Hmmmmmm…I got it! The pointy finger is the most important, right? So what if she’s hiding there?

I flew over to the very end of the pointy finger building and broke through the ceiling into a dark room. The entrance I created made a circle of light that I landed on with finesse. When my eyes began to adjust to the room, I saw that I was in a lunch room similar to the one at the academy. At the other end of the room was a stage with Ms. Natalia sitting on a very overdramatic throne of darkness with spikes and wires all over. What was that word Ori used that one time? Edgy.

“I can’t believe I was right! I was just taking a wild guess!”

“Why would I be anywhere else?! The pointy finger is the most important part of the hand!”