ffghh

At that moment, Roc was helpless, and Ingram didn’t let the chance go to waste. He kneed Roc in the gut, knocking the air from his lungs, and then grabbed Roc by the arm and one of his wings and leaped off the edge of the arena. In midair, he seized Roc’s legs with his feet, leaving him unable to fly or resist as he took to the air, rising into the sky above the arena, and then dropping into a divebomb. His plan was simple: fall towards the arena with Roc in his grip, then let go and pull back, sending Roc crashing into the ground before landing daintily like a butterfly over the pulverized eagle warrior.

In their exchange, Seraph finally managed to wing Phune with a holy blast, leaving his arm numb, but with a frustrated snarl, Phune waved his other arm and hit Seraph in the leg with a sphere of water. Seraph collapsed, howling in pain as the water dissolved his clothes and flesh. He had felt this burning before, this corrosion of his skin. Noah had used acid against him during their fight, and right now, a tsunami of bad memories was washing over him. In his mind, he was back in the slums with Noah standing over him. Considering where the arena was built and where Noah was watching from, his delusion wasn’t far from reality. He couldn’t go through that pain again, that horror.

Towards the middle of the semester, Mrs. B. devised an assignment where we had to act out a soliloquy from any Shakespeare play. I chose Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech from Julius Caesar. As we had to be in costume for extra credit, I brought a flat sheet to school to fashion into a toga of sorts. There was a supply closet in the front of the room where people could change. Boys would pretend to peek in the closet when girls were changing. There wasn’t much to see for the most part, as girls might throw a long night gown over their clothes to play Juliet. The door locked on the outside when closed completely, so the few kids with major changes could do so with some privacy.