Reality Check

Kiel's Mistake

A/N - you'll get this soon!! Here's a quote from AOGG that reminds me a ton of this chapter—

"Every day, I would pick a different memory of you and play it over and over and over again in my mind, until every hair, every freckle, every part of you was exactly as I remembered."

. . .

September Song (by JP Cooper)

"You were my September song, summer lasted too long. Time moves so slowly, when you're only fifteen . . ."

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Kiel had been confused on countless occasions in his life. More than the average person, he liked to think — and not to say that he was any less amazing. The obstacles piled up, throwing his whirlwind of a life upside down again and again. Keeping him confused, until he made sense of it all. And then, the next confusing thing happened. Or as Owen might call them: plot twists.

The confusion had started when he tried finding his parents when he was little, back when he didn't know he was a clone. And the confusion hadn't stopped there — it'd become more common once he first tried learning how to do magic. Hanging out with Charm, he had a hard time making sense of science and Quanterium.

Even more so when he discovered he was a clone. Then, again, when the whole character in a book thing happened. Adjusting to life in the nonfictional world was maybe his hardest feat yet, with it being so entirely different from what he was used to.

It took some time, but Kiel got through every obstacle with flying colors. Some things — like where his nonexistent parents were — had taken a lot of questions with no answers. The confusion about them hadn't stopped, not until everything clicked into place once he discovered he was a clone. Even that confused him at first, on a number of levels. It still did, since he didn't have all the answers yet.

But this situation topped everything he'd ever known to be confusing, because Kiel had no idea what was going on, or how to fix things. Just like countless times before, he had a thousand questions but no answers. And despite Kiel's belief that he could figure out anything he set his mind to, this wasn't something he could figure out.

As he tried to make sense of it all, it just became harder for him to wrap his head around. Instead of going to her friends, Bethany had gone back to the Boy Scouts camp — on purpose, and she was clearly on her own. But all questions of what she was doing and where she was going seemed ten times important once he saw the Magister. The once-kind man who'd taken him in from the streets, giving him a home and teaching him magic.

Never in a million years would Kiel have thought that the Magister would be looking for Bethany. Did he intend to hurt her? What did he want with her? Whatever it was, it couldn't be good. It'd given Kiel an all-too-familiar feeling of dread once he saw the look in the Magister's eyes. The same way he'd looked at them when he'd tried to kill Kiel and Bethany three years ago.

Not exactly a welcoming feeling.

This was not the version of the Magister Kiel had hoped to see. He had hoped for maybe some improvement from his old master's end, that at least the Magister would've stopped terrorizing people. What a dumb idea that had been! There wasn't a single reminder of the once-kind, caring man Kiel once knew.

A thousand questions swirled through his head, yet to be answered. Why was the Magister after Bethany? It seemed so random. He couldn't be after her powers again — Bethany's powers didn't work anymore! For some other reason, she was trying to get away from the Magister. She wasn't even using her shapeshifting powers to fight him like she usually would if confronted. The whole thing seemed strange to Kiel.