Different.

Chapter 21: Welcome to the club

"Wow. Um. Alright, thanks."

I wondered to myself if I was going to constantly be a step behind everyone else because I still had so much to learn just as Jenna finished up with her typical bright eyed grin.

"Cool. I'm Delaney," A girl with short, choppy blue tipped hair raised her hand nonchalantly and half waved. "I live in the primary village, and I'm a slasher."

When she met my eyes, she could probably tell that I was confused, because then she winked, and her face exploded in a plethora of long, thick, spikes.

"Christ!" I screeched, banging my knee on the table as I jumped up suddenly.

My reaction elicited a chuckle from her. "Gnarly right?"

She turned her head side to side in a mocking version of modeling the things protruding from her skull, twisting this way and that and posing. Each was about as thick at the base as three of my fingers put together, and tapered to a sharp point maybe four inches away from her. They were pure white, like she just had a bunch of little bones that she could push out of her body on command.

I found myself thinking how glad I was that I was a shifter and not a slasher. I wouldn't have the guts to be able to handle that ability, let alone handle how painful it probably was.

Making a sound like rock rubbing against rock, they slid back into her skull, and I sat back down slowly as they did. I was still in awe of what I had just witnessed. How was that even possible? But then I guessed, someone could've said the same thing about what I did.

I didn't spend much time to mulling that over though, because the next person in the circle was introducing themselves.

"I'm Parker. I live in the outer village. I'm a scanner."

At the mention of the outer village, I gave Adam a sideways glance. He only looked back at me and shrugged a tiny bit.

Parker, the one I recognized to have the deep voice from before, didn't seem like he was going to offer up anything else. So I piped in, curious at just what a scanner was exactly.

"What does that mean? What can you do?"

He looked at me with his mopey eyes, studying me for a long moment, and then reached down to rustle around under the table. After a second he slid me a slip of paper and a pen so fast I almost missed it and caught them right before they hit the ground.

"Do you know any other languages?" He asked, looking bored already.

I shook my head no. "Why?"

"Then just write down a math problem. Don't make it too easy."

I still wasn't sure why I was doing this, but I did it anyways. I didn't want to take too long, because I could feel everyone's eyes on me, so I wrote whatever came to mind.

25x^2 + -120x = -144

When I had quickly scribbled down the work and figured out the answer I scratched over it, making extra sure it wasn't visible anymore. Clipping the pen to the paper, I tried to slide it back to him. But the pen held it down and it only went awkwardly halfway across the table. He started to crane over to reach for it, so I shifted it the rest of the way to him, mumbling a meek apology.

He took one look-that lasted maybe half a second-at the paper, set it back down, and said aloud, "x = {2.4, 2.4}."

"No way! How did you do that?"

The problem wasn't the hardest one in the book, but he still would've had to at least go through the steps to figure it out, even if he didn't need to jot it down. Yet all he did was glance at the paper and he knew the answer in less time than it took me to write it out.