GLORY'S POV
Sixteen year old Glory RainWing sighed as she walked in the school gate with her best friend Sunny and her brother Jambu. Her twin with the crazy pink hair, Jambu, ran off to see his friends, of course, so Sunny and Glory went off to find theirs.
It was a new term at Pyrrhia High and Glory had...mixed feelings about it. She was glad she'd see her friends again (kind of) but uncertain about everything changing, life moving on. Holidays had been nearly...peaceful. Simple and boring and safe. Now she was back at school, and life was moving faster than she could keep up with.
The summer holidays had been uneventful. Glory had mostly done stuff with Sunny, since Sunny was her best friend and next-door neighbour. Easy things. Watch movies, gossip, play video games together (only when they had been really desperate). Glory never went on a holiday, so it had been a pretty normal summer break. She hadn't seen much of the others over the break (except Sunny, who she saw every day really), but she had seen Peril once at the shops.
Not that she'd gone to talk to her, though. Peril could be difficult at the best of times, and sometimes she annoyed Glory.
Not that I don't like her, though, Glory thought. She is still my friend - just not my closest friend. Sunny is. But Peril is fine (most of the time, anyway).
She had kept in touch with the others, though, in her chat messages. They'd made a group chat and Sunny had been the one that had decided they would all log on to one another every day. Of course Glory had done so, not that she'd talked much.
"So!" Sunny said cheerfully as they walked through the school grounds to find their friends. "Who are you most looking forward to seeing now we're back?" She grinned mischievously. "Have you been missing Deathbringer?"
While Glory had seen basically everyone at least once for a short time in the holidays, she hadn't seen Deathbringer once. Which was not actually the worst thing in the world, if you asked her. It's not like she had wanted to see him. Deathbringer was the boy who had a ridiculous crush on Glory since the day he had met her, and flirted with her almost constantly. Usually the reason why Glory logged off the daily chats with her friends was because of Deathbringer.
"Absolutely not," Glory snapped. "If he crawled into a hole to die I wouldn't even notice, let alone miss him."
"Well, I missed him! I missed everyone!" Sunny gave Glory a miserable face, her long golden hair drooping as if it were unhappy too. "Clay was busy spending time with his sibs all holidays; Tsunami went on holiday to the beach; Riptide was training for soccer; Peril was in a bad mood and was fighting with Flame a lot; Deathbringer was gaming and pretty quiet most of the time; Starflight was studying and Fatespeaker was well, I don't know what even happened to her. I hope she's okay."
"I'm sure she's fine. She probably had one of her crazy visions." Glory rolled her eyes. Fatespeaker predicted something would happen literally every ten seconds. It drove everyone insane except Sunny and Clay and Starflight and Deathbringer. Sunny, Clay and Starflight were nice about everything and Deathbringer was too oblivious to notice anything, in Glory's opinion.
Though Sunny was right, they'd seen Fatespeaker once staring into the fountain like it contained all the answers to her life in the park. They'd tried to talk to her, but then she'd started raving on about her predicting the island of Pyrrhia was going to sink into the sea when it was raining one day that week. Of course it had never happened, but Fatespeaker had just blamed the fountain for that. She'd said it had given her a wrong interpretation and deliberately confused her to be malicious. Even Sunny had been doubtful about that idea.
Apart from that event, Fatespeaker hadn't said anything all term on the chats except occasionally announcing her visions at random times of day. It was pretty crazy - at least, Glory thought so.
"Clay!" Sunny cried, running forwards to greet their friends who were already there, dragging Glory along with her. "Riptide! Fatespeaker! Peril! Yay, it really is all of you!"
"Hey Sunny," Clay grinned. His brown eyes were warm as he hugged Sunny, who beamed back at him. "Hi Glory."
"Hey!" Riptide smiled warmly, while Peril gave a little wave.
"Hi." Glory sniffed slightly and sat down on the bench a little apart from everyone. She was grumpy that day because Kinkajou was sick, and Glory was worried about her adopted sister. Also, school was just so loud. Glory hated the noise.
Fatespeaker sat down beside Glory, looking excited. "Glory, I've had a vision!"
"Wonderful," Glory said sarcastically. "What this time?"
Fatespeaker didn't look deterred. "I saw that when Deathbringer comes up us he'll say, 'Hi Glory, did you miss me?' And you'll say - "
"Oh three moons!" Tsunami said, coming up behind them. "So Glory still hasn't admitted her affection for Deathbringer? Ugh, Sunny, we still have to try and ship them then."
"TSUNAMI!" Sunny yelped, rushing over to her. "How was your holiday to the beach?"
"Fine." Tsunami shrugged. Her gaze flicked to Riptide, who smiled back. Glory tried to hide her grin. Everyone knew about that ship.
"Hi Glory," said a new voice. "Did you miss me?"
Glory groaned as Deathbringer sat down beside her, grinning. He was a tall boy with black hair and a rakish grin that never seemed to leave his face. Glory swatted him with her maths book.
"I KNEW IT!" Fatespeaker crowed. "Deathbringer, I had a vision, and - "
"Nevermind that," Glory interrupted her. "Deathbringer, news flash: I hate you."
Sunny's mouth dropped open, horrified, and Tsunami rolled her eyes. Deathbringer stared at Glory in mock agony.
"How could you say that, my queen?" he said, pretending to look hurt. "I am in love with you, and I am quite positive you love me back."
"SHIP!" Tsunami yelled, and Glory went bright red with fury.
"Deathbringer!" Glory hissed. "JUST STIP FLIRTING WITH ME FOR TWO SECONDS."
"One, two," Deathbringer counted. "That's two seconds, my queen. May I begin flirting with you some more now?"
"I am not your queen!" Glory retorted. The rainbow haired girl stood up and stalked off slightly. "Oh, how have I even lived this long without killing you?"
"Thank you for letting your true love live!" Deathbringer called after her, and Glory almost stamped her foot.
"This ship had saaaaiiiiiled!" Tsunami sang. Glory considered going back to punch her in the arm. Or maybe Deathbringer. Or maybe both of them.
"It has SANK," Glory shouted back, deciding not to resort to punching them or she'd feel ridiculously guilty later.
"Hi Glory!" Starflight came up, pushing his glasses up his nose and he squinted at her slightly. His face lit up as his green gaze fell on someone nearby. "Hi Sunny!"
Sunny smiled at him. "Hello Starflight."
Glory smiled slightly - everyone also knew about the Sunnyflight ship as well as Ripnami, except, well, Sunny. She seemed completely oblivious to Starflight's crush on he, and Glory thought he'd probably never tell her at this rate.
Not my problem, she told herself firmly, but Deathbringer, well, he was her problem.
Not that she liked him in that way, though. He was the worst person in the whole school. Glory didn't kow how she ended up as his friend, but, nevermind. He was an idiot though, more like an idiotic classmate than a friend.
Peril jumped as the bell rang. "Aaaargh!" she complained. "It's the beeeeeeelllllll. Whyyyyyyy now?"
"Come on," Tsunami said to Riptide and Clay. "Time for our class." They were in a different class from Glory, apparently Glory was in the 'smart' and the 'creative' class. Though Glory had her doubts about that - Flame and Viper were in her class too, and they were not exactly the best students in the world. Fatespeaker was definitely creative, with all her visions, but Glory was positive there had to be a mistake when the teachers put Deathbringer in that class.
"Let's go let's go let's go let's go!" Fatespeaker shouted, rushing on ahead and dragging Starflight along too. "We have Maths first, yayyyy!"
"Oh great," Glory griped. "What did we have to do to have Maths first on the first day back at school?"
"I don't know what I did," Peril said. "But I'll try and remember so I can apologize for it later."
****
Glory scowled as a note came flying out of nowhere onto her desk. What now? she thought irritably. The last three notes had been from Fatespeaker, announcing more stupid visions.
Vision No. 1 - Mastermind wasn't going to notice when the bell rang because he was talking so much (which wouldn't have surprised Glory in the least).
Vision No. 2 - Starflight was going to lose his glasses again that day (which wasn't really a vision, it was almost guaranteed he would, he always did).
Vision No. 3 - Tsunami and Riptide were going to start dating that term (Glory was actually surprised that they hadn't yet, so yeah, pretty obvious again).
This new note was in messy handwriting though, and wasn't in Fatespeaker's signature purple pen, but in thick black pen. And it said just three words:
PLEASE HELP ME.
"Three moons," Glory hissed through gritted teeth. It wasn't even signed by a name. She pushed it towards Sunny who was sitting beside her.
Who wrote it? she mouthed. Sunny would know - she knew everyone's handwriting, even everyone's favourite computer fonts to send messages in.
Sunny's mouth flashed a small grin. Ship, she mouthed. Ship ship ship ship ship!
Oh no. Glory knew who that was, then. She turned around to glare at Deathbringer, who grinned back innocently.
"Please," he whispered. "I don't know what the answers are for this substitution. Is it in another language?"
Glory scowled and scrawled on a note the answers.
A. 12 square root.
B. a5
C. qb
D. 346 × 4 = 1,384
E. 13 divided by 5
Sunny glanced at the note and frowned. Those aren't the answers, she scrawled on Glory's maths book page.
I KNOW, Glory wrote back with a small grin. Serves him right. She tossed the note back to Deathbringer, who called back, "Thanks!" and not particularly quietly.
Of course, Mastermind didn't notice.
After that Glory heard a heated argument between Deathbringer and Peril, who were sitting together, over the answers, and for once Peril sounded like she had gotten them right. Sunny buried her head in the desk so she wouldn't burst out laughing.
Finally the bell rang, and Glory scrambled up with relief. Finally! As soon as she left the room, Peril went up to her. The girl with red-orange hair and fiery copper streaks glared at her, looking annoyed.
"You totally pranked him," she hissed.
Glory rolled her eyes. "I had to. That'll teach him."
"Yeah, but why did he have to start having a go at me?" Peril demanded crossly as she followed Glory down the hall to Literacy. "He said I was the one who got the answers all wrong!"
Glory felt like laughing, but managed to keep a straight face as she asked, "Did you let him keep the wrong answers?"
"Of course. Why would I help that idiot?" Peril huffed.
"Did he copy them all down?"
"Yeah."
"Brilliant." Glory smiled. "Mastermind's going to flip. We weren't even doing all that rubbish."
Peril's stormy face finally cracked and she grinned. "Yeah. I don't think Deathbringer even read the questions. If he had, he'd have known we were doing addition and subtraction."
****
Out of Glory's friends, only Peril was in Glory's Literacy class. Sunny, unfortunately, was in a different one - with Fatespeaker and Riptide and Tsunami. Sunny had to put up with Fatespeaker's visions in class, which she did very well, but still. Riptide and Tsunami, well, all they did was flirt with each other. Clay, Deathbringer and Starflight were in the same class, and honestly, only Starflight seemed to actually do the work. Clay was always a bit confused and Deathbringer barely tried. So, ultimately, Glory hadn't come off that bad.
Peril was actually a pretty good student. She was smart and quick to answer and loved sport. One problem - and a problem that always got on Glory's nerves - was Peril was a horrifying doodler.
Glory liked drawing. It was one of her favourite things. But she did not like doodling on classwork. But Peril, on the other hand, drew all the time. Sometimes it wasn't even a picture. It was just scrawling. Like triangles coloured in with black pen and random lines streaking across the page. Even gory pictures like terrifying dragons eating people. Drawing people dying was a speciality of Peril's. So was drawing fire and creepy menacing looking dragons and all sorts of things ranging from ghosts to Frankensteins and guillotines to chop of people's heads that dashed across the pages of work that the Literacy teacher gave them to complete (which was definitely the thing Glory hated the most. The guillotines, not the work. She actually preferred the work).
But there was one thing Peril liked drawing more than all that insanity, and that was Clay. She drew Clay smiling, working, sitting down, standing up, close-ups of his face, sleeping, talking, running and even as a dragon that somehow managed to look realistically like Clay with a kind-hearted smile that wasn't giving out vibes of psychological problems like all her other doodles.
It was no small secret Peril had a major crush on Clay. Glory was one hundred and one percent sure everyone in the whole school knew it - well, except Clay himself. Peril was too frightened to tell him, but she adored Clay. Glory knew for a fact it was all Peril thought about. Once, last year, Deathbringer had teased Peril that he was going to tell Clay that Peril was in love with him. That was the day when Peril had nearly gotten expelled.
Her excuse had been, What? No-one ever told me that it was against the school rules to hit my classmate with my bag really really super hard! It wasn't my fault he was standing on the second level when he got slammed with it and fell down all the stairs and is in hospital with a broken ankle and a fractured knee! He should apologize to me, not me to him! He was the one who was INSULTING me!
Glory would have been happy to have blamed Deathbringer completely for that, but she found it hard when she'd actually visited him in hospital with Sunny and Peril. Peril hadn't apologized, but when she'd actually seen him lying there in the bed with all the white sheets around him and bandages and bruises on him, she had looked guilty. Really guilty, in fact. She probably actually would have said sorry too, if it wasn't for Deathbringer telling her he totally had rights to tell Clay now because of his injuries. Then Peril had hit him with a pillow.
Actually, Deathbringer had probably regretted the whole disaster more than Peril had.
But he and his mother, Quickstrike, hadn't pressed any charges. Deathbringer had assured his mother that it had been a total accident and it wasn't Peril's fault, and he had been the one to start it all. So the school had let Peril stay, with a lot of pleading from Deathbringer (he had felt bad about the whole thing after he heard Peril might get kicked out of school). Though that was only partially the reason why Peril had 'student has anger issues' on her school file. And it was partially the reason why because there had been another little incident which had involved a broken guitar (for that Peril had insisted it wasn't her fault if the guitar got broken because she tried to hit Deathbringer with it when he was teasing her again about Clay. She explained to the school that she had been aiming for Deathbringer, and it wasn't her fault she missed and had smashed it hard against the wall instead. But for that 'd been permanently removed from all the Music classes forever).
Glory knew though, maybe better than most people that Peril's house and family was a mess, despite her confident and defiant attitude. Peril's mother, Kestrel, was nasty and unfriendly, though cared strongly about her daughter. Peril had a twin brother called Sky that was in Tsunami's class. He was a nice enough person, but what Glory didn't get about him was his weird obsession with snails.
Peril's family at home didn't just end at her mum and twin, though. Her aunts, Ruby and Tourmaline, also lived there, along with her uncle Vermilion. She also had two cousins that lived at home too - eight year old Cliff and hateful Flame, who was the same age as her and in their class. And her grandfather, Osprey, was very sick and dying.
But Flame and Kestrel weren't the worst of Peril's family. The worst was her grandmother, Scarlet, who was conniving and nasty and manipulative and made Peril do all sorts of things. She encouraged Peril's anger and Glory knew Scarlet was a bad influence on her - but what could Glory do? She'd never even met Scarlet. None of them had. And Scarlet didn't sound like the creepy grandmother that would die anytime soon.
Luckily, Peril's house was literally enormous and her bedroom was huge, big enough for four people, and also on the bottom floor of her house.
Which was good, because then it made Peril's house something like refuge for people who had nowhere to sleep for the night.
Namely Starflight and Deathbringer. Peril, Starflight and Deathbringer all lived in the same street (Deathbringer and Peril next-door neighbours) and Peril's house was just two streets away from Glory's too, not that Glory had ever had to go there.
But Deathbringer and Starflight had. Starflight's father, Mastermind, rarely got home from work, constantly doing science experiments and researching. So Starflight's half sister, Fierceteeth, was usually queening over the house.
Fierceteeth was defiant and loud and rude and always hung out with the bad group at school in her 'gang'. Starflight was literally terrified of his violent sister, for good reason. Fierceteeth often kicked Starflight out of the house so he couldn't sleep there, had to beg to stay with Peril.
Deathbringer's reasons were a little...different. Often Deathbringer was in trouble with his mum, either grounded or kicked out for a night or two, or maybe his mum sometimes wouldn't come home until really late.
His mother, Quickstrike was searching for work. She'd been out of work for months and they were really struggling. And Deathbringer didn't help. Often he was out late doing things Quickstrike 'didn't approve of' or out late hanging out with his other friends (Glory didn't really like them, they were Flame, Saguaro, Viper and Ochre). So when Deathbringer was forced out he went next-door to Peril, who snuck him or Starflight into her bedroom to use her camping equipment and sleeping bag. Then, early in the morning before any of her family would notice, Peril would wake them up and send them out with some food to go to school early, and the same thing the next day if they had to.
The reason Glory knew all this was because, besides Sunny, Peril was the one who told her everything that was happening to her. Still, Glory didn't consider Peril as her closest friend, but Peril seemed to think she could confide in Glory about all her problems. Whenever Deathbringer or Starflight had been kicked out Peril was there for them, and Glory was first to know.
Not that Peril's family knew anything about it. Scarlet would certainly murder whoever was seeking refuge if she found out, but she wouldn't. Peril had assured Glory that she'd never get caught, but Glory did have her doubts. Peril wasn't exactly the most subtle person in the world
But none of those things are my problems, Glory reminded herself, as she quickly answered the next question on the Literacy sheet.