(Thursday, 7th of Dawn Star Moon, 2021)
Three days after meeting the crow, tomorrow was the day that the train to Sanctuary arrives, and everyone who got accepted to the academy leaves to begin their journey. As for Jack, he was lying on his bed with the radio on the nightstand playing some music, trying to wrap his head around what was going on. Alice, Rico, and the crow appear to recognize Jack, yet Alice doesn't want to say why and Rico doesn't know all that much since he doesn't pay attention to anything. Jack was looking at the back of his hand. It's clear that he was enrolled in the academy because the crow told him about it and was even waiting for his answer until tomorrow. Unfortunately, Jack doesn't know if he has a gift. Sure the leg could be seen as a gift because it has to be magic, but Jack didn't have it before he lost his leg. Meaning he either had a talent or a unique magic. Jack would ask Rico, but he told Jack he hasn't seen him use it, and the only people who know what magic Jack uses are Alice, some guy named Zane, and some girl Ophelia, and Alice refuses to tell Jack what he can do.
"Damnit, is there any way for me to figure things out?" Jack rolled onto to his side and looked at his alarm clock, it was 23 o'clock.
Jack huffed in annoyance and rubbed his palms against his face, desperate to come up with some kind of answer, any kind of answer. Jack figured that he would have to at least have to have left something behind but where would he leave it?
"Well, not like I have any better ideas."
Jack jumped off his bed to begin looking for something that could tell him who he was before he lost his memories, and how he lost his memories in the first place. Jack started his search underneath the bed, and pulled out a couple of mundane looking objects. Underneath his bed were a suitcase, a backpack, and some kind of bolt action rifle. He looked through the bags in search of some kind of useful clue as to who he was before his memories were lost. In the suitcase, he found a bunch of old fashioned shirts with various old band logos on them as well as some old fashioned racing shirts. There were also some jeans, goggles, and weirdly enough, some dusting tools. He was weirded out by the dusting tools, so Jack took time to examine them, and noticed how they were different from one another. There were small and delicate brushes, wide brushes, brushes with steel wires instead of whatever brushes are made from. Jack then opened the backpack to see even more tools. There was a trowel, a small shovel, measuring tape, a small mesh screen, a flashlight, and a magnifying glass. Jack also noticed a normal sized shovel underneath his bed as well. Jack looked at all these tools, but they didn't make much sense to him.
"Maybe I was some kind of miner?"Jack put everything back underneath his bed to begin looking through his dresser, since he had no better ideas.
He carefully emptied my drawers of their contents, since they were folded and Jack didn't want to ruin them, and as he searched through his drawers, Jack noticed something. On the bottom of one of the drawers, there was a finger-sized hole.
"Like a wise man once said; "If there's a hole, I want to go in it!". Jack put one finger and the hole, and luckily, nothing happened.
Jack lifted the fake bottom of the drawer up and out of the drawer. He put the fake bottom on the ground to look inside the drawer, noticing three notebooks were in there.
"Aha, I got something." Jack was proud of himself, but deep down, he felt kind of stupid for not doing this sooner.
All three notebooks appeared to be made of a leather-like substance, with the first one having a green cover, the second being blue, and the third one being brown. Jack noticed a pen at the far right of the secret compartment, and noticed how the pen appeared to be made out of a sniper bullet. He looked at the pen closely, and it appeared to be used quite a bit, he guessed this must have been his pen. Jack picked up the green notebook first, thinking it was some kind of diary, but unfortunately, life is not merciful like that. Instead, the journals were filled with sketches of places underground that were made of a variety of materials, mainly rock though. These sketches were incredibly detailed, and the sketches only appeared on the left hand pages, while the right hand pages were words. Jack read the words, and they mentioned civilizations a lot. His main focus was on a sketch of an underground building that looked like a colosseum that was on the last page, but some of it was ruined and falling apart. There were a variety of plants growing all over the cave while a hole in the ceiling let light into the cavern. Jack looked to the right of the page and read the writing.
"I found this colosseum underneath a construction sight, and I'm so glad I did! These guys were planning on building a skyscraper on top of this place, man if they built a skyscraper here, that would have been bad. Anyways, this colosseum appears to have been built around 70,000 years ago, I don't know what civilization this is, but I intend to find out! I'm heading back with Alice a week from now, and then I'll write more about it. Though the cave is a bit unsteady, maybe I should bring a helmet for us. It honestly feels like the rocks could fall on us at any given time. "
The date on this says it was written around a month ago, so Jack thinks he can get a pretty good idea as to what happened. It was extremely likely that Jack went to check out these ruins with Alice, and a rock fell on Jack's head, making him lose his memories. Still, he was curious as to what exactly transpired. How did Jack lose his leg? Why does everyone want to keep his life before my amnesia a secret? His train of thought was interrupted when Jack saw the view outside his window suddenly go red, and he turned to look out the window, and saw a lot of fire. The source of the fire appeared to be coming from the town. Jack instinctively grabbed his binoculars and used them to look into the town. In the town he saw a reptilian man with the lower half of a snake, and a dragon head.
"We interrupt this program of Rigel Theatre with this emergency warning, a salamander has breached the city!" The radio stopped playing orchestral music to inform Jack of what was going on. "Those who can't fight please report to the underground shelters until further notice. We are currently sending word to a nearby Guardian Station as this announcement plays!"
"I'm going to regret this." Jack went to his bed and crouched beside it, just to pull out the bolt action rifle, and he moved his hand around under the bed until he felt something else, ammo.
Jack noticed a strap on his rifle so he used the strap to sling it over his back as he put the bullets in his pocket. Jack grabbed his aviator jacket and began making his way to the garage, which had some scrap metal he could possibly use. Jack didn't know why, but he felt it was his duty to get down there and take care of that salamander. As Jack began running, but he accidentally ran into someone in the hallway.
"Jack, where are you going?" The person Jack ran into was none other than Uncle Enrique. "The safe room of the house is in the other direction!" Uncle Enrique then noticed the bolt action on Jack's back. "Where did you get that rifle?"
"I'll tell you later, right now, I just need to get to the garage right now." Jack tried making his way towards the garage but Enrique stopped this.
"Why do you need to go to the garage?" Uncle Enrique sounded as concerned as he was curious, so Jack decided to answer honestly.
"I need to head down to the village, I don't know why, but I feel as though it's my job to help save everyone." Jack announced in a determined manner, and while Uncle Enrique did look surprised, at the same time he wasn't.
"Jeez, I told your aunt that you were not going to change no matter what happened to your memories." Uncle Enrique laughed to himself a bit. "But she never listened, she wanted to keep your memories a secret from you because she didn't want you to end up hurting yourself in the career, or worse, dying."
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Jack had a hypothesis as to what Uncle Enrique was saying.
"That's right, you aspire to be a Guardian and to attend Sanctuary with your friends." Uncle Enrique informed Jack, and he was so happy he was right. "In fact, the reason you lost your leg and memories is because you wanted to become stronger."
"What do you mean?" Jack wondered, maybe he could inform him of what exactly happened the day Jack lost his memories. Or better yet, tell him what his magic was.
"You see, your magic is weird, and I don't know how it works, all I know is that you get stronger the more ancient ruins you go to." Uncle Enrique unfortunately didn't know exactly how Jack's magic worked, but at least it was a start. "You and Alice were heading to a cave a month or something back, but unfortunately, the cave was incredibly unstable, and some construction equipment was driving overhead. From what Alice told us, you gave your only helmet to her, since she forgot hers. When the rocks fell, you pushed Alice out of the way, only for a boulder to fall onto your right leg, crushing it while the rock hit you in the head. The head injury wasn't as severe, but it was like getting hit in the head by a brick, so you were unconscious."
"How did I get out?" Jack asked, but then he remembered how stupid of a question that may be, considering his right leg is missing.
"Alice tried calling for help, but there is no cell service in a cave." Uncle Enrique continued. "She tried pushing the boulder, but to no avail. She didn't want to leave you behind in the cave in case another giant piece of rock crushes you, so she did the only thing she could at the time. She used her pocket knife to cut off your leg and dragged you out of that cave herself."
"..." Jack didn't understand why Alice would do that for him, they were just friends weren't they?
"She took you to a hospital, followed by her calling us to tell us what happened." Uncle Enrique was finally finishing his story. "Obviously, Matilda, Lucius, Noemi, and I got there as soon as we could, the first thing we noticed was Alice sitting in one of the hospital chairs, hugging herself. Her make up was running down her face, and she stayed the entire time to hear about your news."
"Does she blame herself?" Jack asked, and Uncle Enrique was caught off guard by this question. "If the shoe was on the other foot, I would blame myself."
"Tell you what, I won't even bother stopping you now." Uncle Enrique pulled something out of his pocket and gave it to Jack. "Here, there's a locked chest in the garage, and I want you to open it. There's a weapon in there you used before you lost your memories, and I'll let you use it on one condition."
"What condition would that be?" Jack questioned his Uncle, and while Jack was curious as to what he wanted to promise, he had a feeling he knew what it was.
"You have to promise you won't get hurt." Uncle Enrique pointed at Jack's heart before poking his chest.
"Sorry sir, but I can't promise that, but I promise I won't die any time soon." Jack took the keys and began making his way to the garage where the motorcycle was.
"I guess that's all I'm going to get."
After a couple minutes, Jack reached the garage door with a couple hangers with caps next to it. On one of the hooks was a longhorn bull's skull design, and Jack put the cap on before entering the garage to see the old fashioned motorcycle sitting in the corner of the garage, another thing Jack noticed was that there was indeed a chest in the garage, so he went over to the chest in order to open it, noticing that there was only a lantern inside of it.
"Well, better than nothing I guess."
(Scene Change)
Well today is just terrific.
First Alice was woken up from a good dream involving herself, Jack, and some things she will not go into detail right now. Then her favorite shirt gets chewed up by her dog, and now a goddamn salamander is attacking the city! What makes this even worse is that they live in the middle of a desert, and there aren't many lakes nearby, so they have to kill the salamander using good old fashioned violence. As if the situation couldn't get any worse, Alice don't know any ice or water abilities, just darkness, light, and fire. But she could summon a small water elemental, so it's not all bad. She was wearing sweats, sandals, a black jacket, and no make up on her face, so she wasn't in the best of moods.
"Zane, have you finished hacking into the fire hydrants of the city?!" Alice shouted as she stood in the street, followed by her pulling a single strand of hair off her head while the Salamander focused its attention on Alice. "I can only do so much right now!"
"Hey, I made this security system myself, of course I'm going to have trouble hacking into it!" Zane shouted from behind a burnt wall, using his laptop to hack into the autonomous fire hydrants around the city to focus all on the Salamander.
"Wait, If you developed it, you should have access to it!" Alice shouted as the strand of hair she pulled out was suddenly engulfed in a black and red flame, allowing her to cast a spell. Alice outstretched her palm, and a powerful blast of black demonic energy came from Alice's palm, striking the Salamander in the chest.
"Why should I have a key? So someone else uses it?!" Zane didn't like giving himself easy access into a system, which was weird, but Alice is not one to judge. Actually, She was.
"Where are the twins?!" Alice knew Othelia was getting her mech ready, but those twins should be arriving any moment. "They should be here!"
"You rang?" Beside Alice was one of the twins wearing a red panda-style onesie, and given the mirror around his foot, this twin was Rico. "Sorry we're late, I had to beat Nico at connect four."
"We're in the middle of a war zone!" Alice looked at the Salamander and noticed it was charging up a ball of fire in its palm. "Get down!"
Alice ducked down to avoid a ball of fire coming at her, but Rico used his brother, in mirror form, to reflect the fire ball by kicking the fireball. The fireball was sent back to the salamander, and the salamander managed to absorb the flames, so the fireball did no significant damage to the creature.
"Huh, not sure what I expected there, so you're going to summon that genie or leviathan?" Rico jumped to Alice's side.
"I can't summon either of them, I need gold for the genie, and massive amounts of water for the Leviathan." Alice answered before pulling a knife out of her pocket and cutting her own wrist. Alice used the blood to draw a demonic circle on her arm. "Instead, I'll just summon a Wind Spirit." From the circle on my arm, a phantom-like being emerged and moved wildly like the wind. The wind spirit hovered around Alice defensively, and she was planning on using the wind spirit to deflect any flames, allowing Alice to come up with a plan on taking on the salamander.
"aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"
Alice heard the sound of someone screaming, and she looked behind her to see a single headlight coming toward her and Rico. Both Alice and Rico both moved out of the way and watched as the figure drove by them. Time seemed to slow down enough for Alice to see who was driving the motorcycle. The driver had fingerless leather gloves, a brown hat with a longhorn skull design on it, a bomber jacket, black cargo pants, a collared shirt, and boots. Alice could also see some weapons on his back while he pointed a pole forwards like a lance. The entire time this was happening, he was screaming with both fear, courage, but mostly insanity.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" Alice recognized this voice, but it can't be who she thinks it is...can it?
The mysterious figure was ramming the pole into the chest of the Salamander without a second thought, but he didn't hit the brakes, so he was crashing into the salamander full force, all while screaming his head off. The salamander use its tail to swipe at the motorcycle, causing it to collapse while the man reacted quickly. He used the pole to vault himself over the monster. The man rolled on the ground and removed his goggles to put them around his neck, allowing Alice to see his Amber eyes clearly.
"Okay, bad idea, I came here without thinking."
Jack, please, never change.