The Next Generation (Secret Society of Second-Born Royals Fan-Fiction)

Chapter Twenty-Five: James

       "Have you seen Ellie?" Connor asked me. I shook my head. "No. Why?" "Well you seem to be with her a lot so I figured maybe..." I nod. "But is she missing or something? She should be eating." "That's what I was looking for her." Connor explains to me. I nod. I'm glad Ellie has someone else looking out for her. "Her room maybe?" Connor suggests. "I'll look." I tell him. "You enjoy your breakfast." He nods and retreats to his table.
       I'm walking down the hallway to find Ellie. Her doors open a crack, but I still knock. No response. "Ellie." I call out. No response. I peek my head in to see if she's there. She's on her bed staring at the ceiling. I walk over to her. "You should be eating breakfast." I tell her. But she doesn't respond. "Ellie?" I say. But she just continues to blankly stare at the ceiling. "Ellie!" I say louder this time starting to get worried. She blinks a few times looks over at me. "Oh hi." She says. "Ellie! You have made heart attack! Gosh you scared me!"
       "Sorry. I was talking to someone." She tells me. "Who?" I ask intrigued. "His name is Gavin." "Oh. Well, you can't tell him anything about this. You know that right?" He said motioning around him. "Don't worry. To him, I'm Emma, and I'm his imaginary friend. He's really sweet." She tells me. I nod. "You should go eat something." I tell her. "I'm not hungry." "Something." I insist. "Fine." She says and gets up reluctantly and walks out the door. Mission successful.
       Today is testing day. Usually we wait a little longer, but we're doing it early this year. It's basically a what have you learned kind of test. I instruct the kids to stand in a straight line down in the training room instead of outside. It's raining. "Today, is test day! Woo! Hurray. You will be tested individually based on your powers. Connor? You're up first."
       I take Connor into a room that I have prepared for him. "First task. Precision. Take the needle and see three stitches without using your hands. You must also thread the needle. This is a timed test. Tell me when your ready." I tell him. He studies the table of sewing items, then nods at me to start. I give him a countdown, and he begins.
It takes about three seconds. Which is just faster than I was expecting. I write it down it the log. "Good." I tell him. I walk him over to the next station. "Strength. Pick up each sand bag without touching them and tell me when you think you should stop. Don't over do it though, you have to hold it for ten seconds once you can't hold anymore." He nods. I could tell that he was nervous though.
       Each of the sand bags fly up and hover in the air. After about six bags up in the air they started to shake. He added another one to the stack, and an eighth. "Okay I'm done." "Okay I said starting the timer. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five four three, two, one." Then all of the bags fell to the ground immediately. Connor bends over breathing heavily. "How much did those weigh?" He asked me. "They each weighed thirty pounds." I tell him. "So I lifted 240 pounds?' He asked, surprised. "Yes, that would be the math." I said nonchalant moving to the next station.
       "Endurance. Here we have two more of those thirty pound bags. Pick them up and hold them as long as you can." He lifts up the two bags and holds them. After about two minutes, his hands, which he was holding out to focus on the beats, began to shake. About fives seconds later, he regained his focus. I wrote this down in my log. He lasted about five minutes before he dropped the bags. He was again, breathing heavily while I wrote in my log.
       "That will be all. Thank you." I said as I walked to the door to leave. "Did I do good?" He asks me. I stopped to look behind me at him and said reassuringly, "You did great.". He smiles at me and I leave the room.
       I walk back to where the kids are standing. I've never seen them so quiet. Even Evan actually looks nervous to some degree. Personally, I don't agree with doing this test so early. But they cut our training down by two weeks, because of increasing threats. These kids can handle it of course, but we shouldn't be putting this on them yet. I can't really fight it though, because of me yelling at Catherine the other day.
       "Grace?" I called her. She follows me to her testing room. "Strength. This is a one hundred pound sand bag.  I want you to push against it until you reach the end. I will be timing you." She nods. I give her a countdown and then start the clock. At first she barely gets it to budge, but she changes her position a little and then pushes to the end in about 12 seconds. I write this down in my log.
      "Agility. Here's an obstacle course. Run through it. You'll be timed." She nods once again. She got into her fighting stance and I gave her another countdown. She went through the course incredibly quickly. A lot faster than I thought she would. It took her nine seconds to go through the whole course. I again wrote this down in my log. I probably should have typed it instead of writing it by hand. Or at least gotten a clipboard. It's really messy. Since she did all the running for the last three weeks, I didn't need to time her. "Thank you." I say walking out of the room.
       I bring Evan to his room next. "Strength. I want you to dead lift weights until you can't anymore. What do you think you can start with?" "520. I got up to 510 yesterday." Unfortunately I have to let him do it. I don't want him to hurt himself, but I've got to let him try. I nod at him and point to the weights as I log stuff down. "Ready?' I asked. He nodded and picked up the weight. (I don't really know much about lifting stuff or anything so... sorry.) He lifted about five hundred-fifty pounds before telling he couldn't do any more. "Since we have basically seen everything else in your training you're done. Thank you." I say leaving the room.
       I bring Devon into his testing room. "Since your powers are very straightforward, I'm just going to say various true or false statements to start. Cyclones spin in a clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere. True or false?" I ask him. "True?" I nod at him confirming. I have a sheet to read off of. I'm not really sure who wrote them, but they are really random. "Goldfish only have a memory of three seconds." "False." He said a little more confident this time. He got all of them right, so I moved on. "Now we're going to do opinions." I started reading off whatever the sheet told me and said if I agreed with it or not. He again got all of them right. That is all that sheet says for Devon. "Thank you." I said leaving the room.
       I brought Ellie into a different training room. I read the sheet which was titled Ellie, but I didn't like what I saw. "Ellie, I'll be right back." She nodded as I walked out of the room.

Author's Note: So updates might be a little slower now. I'm really busy with school at this point, so I might not be able to write like I have been before. I will try, but no promises. Thanks! Bye.