Hell's Gate Academy

Him

Another year starts in a school where I know no one. The last school expelled me for imitating another student. I am a shapeshifter. A rare type of shapeshifter that can not only shift into animals but into other people that they have seen and touched before. The downside to this ability is you can easily forget the form you were born in. I don't actually know what I look like and just change different parts to what I like.

I guess I remember a vague description of myself. That's although. I don't let it bother me if I need to leave. I can be someone else. They are driving me to a school called Hell's Gate. Someone supposedly created it around a gate to hell. The gate is somewhere in the catacombs beneath the school and is forbidden for students. Unfortunately for them, I've never been one to give a fuck about rules. I was expelled from quite a few of my schools.

Since I went somewhere, they claimed was forbidden. The only reason these people still bother with me is that I'm supposedly dangerous. With my ability to change into other people, I also can grab their powers. More like I'm mimicking them. But I have access to all of their powers, not just one. Because of that, they think I am dangerous. Long ago, more like 10 years ago, creatures like me were hunted. They killed us on-site.

I spent 2 years on the Run. From the people who killed my parents when I was four. I changed myself so many times that I did not know who I was in the end. Those were the years I ended up losing my memory of what I looked like. It was unfortunate, but I lived and that can't be said for everyone. I've had people die for and because of me. It is unfortunate, but that's what happens when you're running for your life. People die.

There is only one life I regret because he died for me. I didn't ask him to either. He just claimed that he had been running for too long and he could do something good before they killed him. I told him he didn't need to. I could survive without his help. I wasn't the nicest person I'm still not. He did it anyway, and I've always regretted how rudely I treated him. I couldn't change it though he died over 10 years ago.

A month after that is when everything changed. The people that once hunted us claimed they could not hunt us anymore. A new rule was made that people like us could live as long as they monitored us and taught us how to use our abilities. When that happens for the first time in my life, instead of happiness like I should have felt, I felt sadness. If he would have lost a month longer, he would still be alive today.

When that rule was broadcasted everywhere I turned myself in. I was sick of running, not having anywhere, and always being afraid that someone was going to kill me. I got to admit I kind of regret it. The schools they put me in feel more like prisons. I might have not had a home, but I was free. I've been in over ten prisons. That's what I call the schools, at least. It's what they are, at least for me. I'm not allowed out anywhere not without supervision.

One of them actually put bars on my window and locked me in at night. I'm pretty sure if they could, they would have locked me down in the dungeons underneath. They think of people like me as the freak among freaks. Quite a few of the teachers and students would tell me to my face that I need to be put down like the animal I am. My answer was, who is the animal, the one that has been treated cruelly for something that they didn't even do, or the ones that treat them cruelly?

Now I am being driven to another prison. The lady driving me is the one the council assigned to protect me. She's supposedly a griffin. I've never seen her change, though. She's never had to. At least they wouldn't attack her, so they didn't attack me when I'm with her. Griffins are noble creatures that everyone respects. She's tried her best to help me. Something I don't need, but I'm secretly grateful for.

I would never tell her. I pretend I don't know her name. I do. She doesn't need to know that, though. I just called her Griffin. I did it at first to annoy her. I soon came to realize though that nothing I do affects her. She has never once gotten irritated at me. She's been disappointed but never irritated, never once raising her voice. It surprises me I'm not used to kindness and I see it every day from her. At the moment, we are driving through a road in the forest.