ASTORIA
I woke up to a weight on my chest and stomach. Looking down, I find a certain, dark haired witch quietly snoring, face against my stomach, arms around my waist. If it wasn't for the red rose, plucked out from the field before running back to the castle, placed on my nightstand, I would have thought the whole thing had been a dream. It felt like a dream too good to be true.
I pretty much knocked out as soon as I hit the bed. All I remembered was Zander telling me that his love potion finally worked on me and he has me right where he wants, followed by a terrible, evil laughter. The memory forced a laugh out of me, causing the witch to stir and bury his face on my stomach.
"Zander." I ruffled his hair to wake him up. "I really need to go to the bathroom. Wake up if you don't want me to push you off the bed." He just shifted and nuzzled his face on my neck instead. "Wake up, Prince Idiot."
"No." He groaned, attempting to cover my mouth but ended up accidentally slapping my cheek.
"I need to pee."
He yawned. "Cool."
I'm sure it's late in the morning and we will miss breakfast if we do not wake up soon.
"Zander, I have to go."
"No. No no no no. My prisoner." He mumbled with a tired voice, tightening his arms around me. "Mine."
I smiled and pinched his cheeks, ignoring my stomach full of butterflies. Those annoying little shits. "I'm telling everyone you're the little spoon in cuddling."
His eyes snapped open, squinting them at me. "I do not cuddle." He frowned. "And I most certainly am not a little spoon. Whatever that is. It sounds insulting. I'm not a little spoon. Or a big spoon. I am a knife. I am a fire breathing, sharp, edgy knife that can - "
"You're a little spoon who loves cuddling."
"Do not."
"So, what are you doing right now?"
"Not cuddling." He scoffs, releasing me instantly, almost pushing me off my bed.
I then stood up and patted his cheeks lightly. "Thank you. And good morning. I'm going to take a shower. I'll see you at breakfast."
***
I take such quick showers, my whole family always thought I never took decent showers when in reality, they all took unnecessary long showers. Celeste takes at least two hours, which is why when she barely started going out with her wife, she would always be late for their date. It's because she has an entire concert, pretending to be Janelle Monae in the shower. Oh how I miss teasing my sister and embarrassing her in front of her wife. But then she does it to me too. I bet when she meets Zander, I will be crying in my room forever. But will I be crying because of what my sister will be saying, or what Zander will be telling her? Please, please, let them meet. I don't care if I have to suffer.
When I arrived at the dining hall, there aren't too many people left. Orion already finished his breakfast, though he is taking his time drinking his coffee just to keep Zander company, halfway through his meal. I found the two boys talking to each other when I entered. As I sat down across the two of them, I noticed the differences with their expression. Orion has a brow raised while Zander is smirking.
"What."
"Orion said I should have kissed your back. That means we kissed the wrong way. That means we have to redo our first kiss. For the third time." We have to make out but with our backs."
What in the actual fuck did I just hear right now?
"What?"
Orion smacked his forehead with his palm. "No! You told me Astoria kissed you and I asked if you kissed her back. I meant like, if you returned the kiss, not that you kissed her back literally and -- you know what? Never mind." He took a deep breath to calm himself, turning to me. "I'm happy for the two of you. About time. Good for you kids. Be safe and all that." He murmured before drowning in black coffee.
"...Anyway." I cleared my throat, deleting everything that happened for the past three seconds. "Scooby gave me the heads up that Florencia and friends will be out of Queen's Garden to do some hunting or whatever. That means we get to get out of the castle and visit her evil lair. Orion, you should come."
He shook his head. "I'm okay here."
"It will be nice if you could see the equipment Florencia has in person rather than just pictures. I'm not a techie so I could be missing some obvious things that can help us. But you're an expert so you should see the things for yourself. Also, it's good to step out of the castle. Queen's Garden is a pretty place, even though it's surrounded by evil people at the moment."
"What if the guards catch us or something?" Orion questioned worriedly.
As if he doesn't run faster than me or can kick some serious ass if he wants to. I bet he can easily take on some of those werewolves. That is, as long as they don't shift.
"We'll just hide in trees." Zander gave me a wink. "Don't worry Orion. I won't let anyone near you. I will kick their butts. I got you."
I had to ask, "What about raccoons?"
He grimaced. "We do not ever speak of that creature. From now on, we will be addressing said creature as You-Know-What. It is the law. Anyone who fails to follow will have to eat herring for dinner and no bacon for the rest of their lives and their children also cannot have bacon."
"Wait, what's wrong with raccoons?" Orion asked.
"Foul, disgusting, evil creatures." Zander answered, shaking his head. "Thinking about it is giving me goosebumps."
"Poor baby." I pouted, putting some food on my plate. These sad hash browns make me sad.
"It's true. I am baby."
"You were Orion's baby at some point, you know." I pointed out. "He adapted you when you were just an innocent little Loki. Orion was your daddy."
Orion put down his empty mug.
"Can we just forget this whole morning didn't happen?"
"Yes."
***
After waiting a couple of hours after breakfast and putting on a shower for the guards that we're just chilling in the library, we all went through the secret way out of the castle while Scooby covered for us. Orion was happy to see other trees than the ones at the courtyard, and enjoyed the loud singing of birds. Zander warned him, "Look out for any You-Know-What" as we made our way through Florencia's lab. Once we reached the entrance, Orion couldn't help but laugh at it.
"Wait, so this is where Florencia's secret evil lair is?" He pointed at the plants that cover its door. "Isn't it kind of funny that out of all the empty field, this is the only spot that has plants that are all toxic to werewolves, vampires, and witches? That's not suspicious at all. It's like, you can walk through all this space but specifically not this spot for no reason at all. Mother nature just wanted this spot specifically for these plants that could specifically hurt the residence of this place."
"That's true," My same exact thoughts when I first saw it. "But it sure does keep them away. Either that, or they know something is down here but they are too scared to find out. Or they know exactly what's down here and knows better than to enter." I lifted the door and gestured for the boys to enter.
"I feel like I'm Indiana Jones right now." Orion says eagerly, going in first. "I should be holding a fire torch or something."
"I can help with that!" Zander magically summons a thin branch from a nearby tree and puts the top end of it on fire.
"No!" I quickly took the wooden stick and waved it to extinguish the fire. "No." I turned to Orion, who was about to take it. "No." Clicking my tongue, I gave Orion a light push forward, then Zander. "Go on. Behave. Hands to yourself."
Zander turned to me with a wide grin. "How am I supposed to keep my hands to myself when you're here?" I smacked his arm. "Just kidding! I'm a good boy and will never do that. Unless you want me to."
"Whoa." Orion ran ahead, looking at the laboratory in awe. "It's so modern looking! Look at this computer that is actually new and not a million years old!" He ran to Florencia's desktop computer and hugged it. He actually put his arm around it and nuzzled his face on its big screen.
Zander turned to me. "I think we should give him some privacy."
The two of us watched Orion go around the room and admire every single technological devices loudly, describing what they are and what they are made of. His eyes are twinkling and everything. He really does love these kind of things. Sometimes, I wonder if Orion is part Cyborg.
Zander observed the formulas that are written on the glassed, dry-erased boards, as well as the cork boards that held Florencia's notes, reminders, hit lists, and blueprints. I joined Orion in the other half of the room, where the NASA tech is standing. The black and gray device that resembles a gun, but is not exactly a bullet-firer.
Orion is circling around it, studying its every details.
"This is nice. So very nice."
"And dangerous."
I wonder why NASA would make something like this in the first place. This is basically a portal gun. If Florencia gets the equations correctly, she will be the first ever person to open a portal. If she is successful, she will change how we see the world. The rules of the physical world, physics, would change. This will open up possibilities to other worlds. One step closer to a multiverse.
I snapped out of my deep thoughts when Orion suddenly pointed the portal gun at me.
I raised my hands up defensively.
This is my time.
This is a plot twist.
Orion is a villain all this time and he's going to kill me.
"What?"
Orion blinked. "I'm not going to kill you!"
"Oh, I was saying that out loud?" I laughed awkwardly. "Sorry."
"Look inside this thing." He pointed to the mouth of the machine, where a bullet, or whatever goes in here, is supposed to come out from. It's just an empty space in the shape of a sphere. Its walls, surroundings, are all metal. Orion took a push pin from Florencia's cork board and demonstrated that the metal walls in the interior part of the tech is magnetic. "Whatever goes in here, that is probably the main thing that will create the pocket world. This device is probably just the launcher. Maybe like a catalyst or something."
"I don't get it." Zander stood beside Orion, looking at the NASA tech.
"Okay, so you know in the first Avengers movie, they built something that allowed Loki to open up a worm hole for the aliens to come to Earth? This tech is basically like that. As for the power source, the tesseract, that's probably what Florencia is working on right now. That's the thing that goes in this device. It's what will allow the pocket world to open up. Probably. That's just my guess." Orion adds quickly. "We don't know anything for sure unless we have genuine information of all these things."
"It's okay." I sighed, dropping down on a chair. "It's better than no ideas at all. We'll ask Miko and Ivy if they can help, if they don't already have enough on their hands."
Orion pointed to the desktop. "Do you think Florencia will have any information on her computer?"
"Maybe. Let's check really quickly."
And so we looked through Florencia's computer, which luckily did not have a password. We didn't really find anything useful. There were some information about the things she stole, but it was nothing that we didn't already know. Chemical properties and their reactions when mixed with other substances, formulas of certain chemical equations, and possible calculus equations that could help with her computations. I have to say, Florencia must be so intelligent if she is able to do all these calculations.
I looked at once of the papers from her trashcan and saw all the computations she had to make. Two pages of math for one answer. One number, and even one wrong sign, can fuck up the entire thing. I remember crying about negatives so much in my calculus classes. Sometimes, the website for our homework wouldn't accept my answer because I put a comma instead of a decimal. Getting the wrong answer on a problem that you've worked on for an hour is worse than a break up.
I noticed the several pencils snapped in half in the trash as well.
I too, have gone through that.
I wonder if magic will be used at any point of this project. Witches can manipulate energy. From what I've learned in my classes, things like portals, opening wormholes, or rips in time and space, lots of energy is required. Exponentially high amount of energy. There's also the matter of stabilizing those portals, or wormholes. Surely, magic has to be involved. Whether as a booster, stabilizer, or something. There may not be a technology that can do it alone. If it was possible, some crazy scientists would have done it already.
But then again, I don't even know anything for sure.
Physics is such a scary, yet beautiful thing to tackle.
"Okay so we didn't really learn anything." Orion sighs in defeat.
Zander giggled. "Yes we did. We learned that Florencia loves Nickelback and has all their albums saved on Spotify. And she likes taking Buzzfeed quizzes. And that she watched the new Star Wars movie illegally."
Orion laughed along. "And risked giving her computer some virus. She should have just hacked into a movie theater's archive and watched all new movies, clear, for free. If I, a person who doesn't know anything about hacking, can do it, I'm sure she can too."
"Wait." I turned to the man behind me. "You do that? That's horrible! People work hard on their movies, you know."
He raised his left hand. "Watching movies illegally," and the right. "Or stealing from science laboratories and companies, kidnapping and imprisoning people, forcing them into a world you created just so you can rule over them. Clearly, I'm not the big villain here, Astoria."
"Yeah, okay." I then quickly shut off the computer and checked the room to make sure there was nothing out of place. "Let's get out of here before Scooby throws a tantrum." I'm more worried about dealing with Scooby if we're late than if Florencia catches us.
***
We made it exactly an hour back to the castle, just as we promised the teen wolf. We returned to the library to see if we can get any more information on wormholes, portals, or whatever Florencia is trying to create. It wasn't until dinner time when we got out and acknowledged other people in the castle. Orion, Zander, and I talked about sharing Solution 15. We've decided not to do it right away. We will be choosing who to give it to, for now. Only those who we can trust. We can't just give it to everyone because we could get caught if someone were to accidentally use their magic, or shift or use their enhanced speed in front of the guards.
"Orion, I have a really important question." Zander walks between me and the technician as we headed to the dining hall. "Not related to anything or whatever. But, if you were to describe me as a utensil, which one would I be?"
Oh my god.
"What?"
I ran a hand over my face, already know where Zander is heading.
"Like, would you say I'm a knife? A sharp, cool knife? Or a fork? Like a big fork that Poseidon and the Devil has? Also a follow up question, don't you think it's strange that both Poseidon and the Lucifer both have a trident? What if they're the same person? Also a follow up question to my follow up question. Do you think they use their giant forks to catch dinner? Like, does Poseidon use that thing to eat giant octopus, and Lucifer eats, like, giant souls or whatever demons eat? All this is hypothetical of course because they aren't real." He shakes his head. "Anyway, back to my question. Don't you agree that I'm not a little spoon?"
Zander looked at Orion expectantly, waiting for an answer.
Orion looked at me, then him, then let out a sigh.
"Yes."
And the witch turns to me and sticks his tongue out.
I can only smile at him and shake my head. "You are a precious dork."
"That sounds like a compliment." He sang, nudging me with his elbow. "It sounds like you have a crush on me, Astoria. That's so embarrassing. I'm going to tell everyone."
When we reached the entrance of the dining hall, it turns out that everyone is here.
Everyone.
Including Aquila's leaders.
All eyes were on them. Now, heads turned to us as we entered a dramatic scene. The hall is completely silent. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Zander freeze entirely, including his breath. Standing at the other side of the room is Zetta, silver hair up in a pony tail, dressed in a peach dress and a blue coat. Beside her is Roman, covered in all black clothing, red eyes staring right at me. At the middle, standing slightly in front of the others, is Florencia, face as blank as ever, wearing a dark green suit, as well as her silver snake crown. There's also Ingrid, blaring her orange irises at the crowd, wearing casual gray and black clothing. A new addition to their group is someone with violet eyes, black hair up to his shoulders, taller than the others, just as broad as Orion, dressed in a dark red jacket and casual black jeans. Another witch in Aquila.
His eyes seem to be fixated on the person next to me, full of disbelief, lips parted open.
I slowly turned my head to Zander and noticed his similar expression.
I heard the other witch let out a shaky breath.
"Alex."
Zander closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head.
"You're supposed to be dead."
My chest tightened at his tone. Full of discomfort and hated. This couldn't be...
"I can't believe you're alive, little brother."