Alkalians Page 4

  As most of the class, including Matt and Rose, awe at the marvelous change of matter, the professor sets the lump of gold aside before moving on. “We will be doing a lot with that particular branch of alchemy, where raw stones and ore are transformed into valuable metals or jewels, later on. However, I think you’ll find another part of alchemy a little more familiar. You are all aware of your battle morphs, yes?”

  Knowing the term used for the special ability they all, as a race, are capable of using, the students nod. “Good, good. Now, what you may not know about your battle morphs is, in that instantaneous moment where you transform, you are performing alchemy! For you see, when an Alkalian morphs, he-or-she is changing all the elements and compounds within and immediately in contact with him-or-her, from the vital substances making up our human forms to the energized, radioactive compounds of our morphs, and vice-versa upon demorphing. So, as we come together for class this year, we will be discussing much about the miracle of how so many, complicated alchemical reactions occur in our bodies in an instant, as well as the main kinds of elements or compounds found or produced through our morphs.”

  As some of the students nod in intrigued understanding, one of the chemicals boiling behind the professor begins to steam, and upon hearing it he quickly gets out, “Oh, excuse me,” before whirling around, carefully handling the vial away from the small flame, and pouring the green fluid into a bigger vial containing a cool, black liquid. After emptying the first vial, he takes a small, metal rod and stirs the liquids in the second vial, causing the green and black colors to swirl and blend into a hot pink color, which, to some of the students’ surprise, begins spitting out sparks. Rather than being surprised by the sparks, Prof. Loske shows pleasure from the results, mutters more indistinguishable words while writing in his notes, and turns back to the class, brushing some loose hair back behind his head. “Anyway, are there any questions so far?”

  While their faces are enough to say they are full of questions, the only student who isn’t confused, James, raises his hand before asking, “Shall we be working with clones this year, professor?”

  Snapping his fingers at the suggestion, Prof. Loske exclaims, “Ah, yes, I think we will be able to pull it off, especially with your experience from helping with them the past few years!” Addressing the rest of the class, he explains, “Another, rarer form of alchemy is not simply changing one set of elements or compounds into another, but creating a set of said substances from scratch, through a long and dedicated process of managing alchemical reactions. And the greatest example of this is making a clone of oneself. Now, by clone, I don’t mean the ability one may have in his-or-her battle morph to produce faceless clones made of solidified energy. Instead, I mean creating a durable, intelligent, fully-fleshed clone of oneself, which in itself is a long, but extraordinary, endeavor to undertake!” As yet more students are fascinated by what alchemy could do, he coughs a little before bringing up, “Now, why don’t we begin today’s lesson with a, uh…” Looking around as if trying to find a lesson to make, he spots the hot pink liquid and gets an idea. “A presentation of what some stabilized alchemical reactions can do! So, we’re going to need someone to participate. Let’s see…” Looking about the room, his weary eyes fall over Matt. “You there! Please, do come up, Mr…?”

  As the rest of the class looks to him, he realizes he is being called up and hastily stands, replying, “Calamos. Matt Calamos, professor.” He walks to the front of the room, beside the professor, and turns to face the rest of the class, not sure of what is about to happen.

  “Ah, alright then, Matt,” acknowledges Prof. Loske as he turns around to take the large vial of the sparkling liquid and pour it into a small cup, “what we’re going to have you do is sample a taste of this chemical here, and see how it will react with your body.” As he notices Matt immediately cringe away from the sparks coming out of the liquid, he assures him, “Oh, don’t worry, this stuff isn’t harmful. Well, it shouldn’t be. But still, nothing to worry about! Go ahead and try it.”

  Glancing back to the eager looks from the rest of the students, where he notices the only worried one is Rose, Matt hesitates before taking the cup and drinking down some of the liquid. When he expected it to burn down his throat, he is bemused to find it’s actually cool, and has a snappy, tingling sensation. For a moment after the drink, he stands there with Prof. Loske and the rest of the class transfixed on him, waiting to see what would happen.

  When the moment passes, Matt goes to hand back the cup, saying, “Uh, sorry, professor, I guess it’s not going to-” when a stray jolt of energy suddenly jumps out of his arm and makes contact with the professor, zapping him and making his long hair stand up like needles. Each jumping back from the shock with Matt dropping the glass on the floor, most of the other students gawk as more volts surge all over him, making his whole figure glow an electric blue. While he looks down at himself, speechless from the sensations he is feeling, Prof. Loske, rather than being upset from getting shocked, claps his hands together and exclaims, “Excellent, excellent! This, everyone, is how this particular potion, Voltzenblood, reacts with the person’s body. It puts a static, electric charge in the person’s blood, and as it flows through their body, the electricity jolts outward through the skin, searching for another conductible substance to pass…”

  In the middle of his explanation, he is interrupted when the electric jolts suddenly intensify off Matt, lashing out like lightning bolts and striking all the pieces of stone on the professor’s desk. As everyone, even the professor, are surprised from the unforeseen reaction, the energy from Matt transfers to the rocks, causing them to glow bright blue before cooling off to show they all changed into shiny, black fragments of a new substance. Astonished by the event, Prof. Loske cautiously approaches the desk, takes one of the stones, and looks it over in his hand, his scientific wonder ever growing from the conclusion he makes.

  “Obsidian, the rare jewel formed only from magma. They all turned into obsidian. But how…” H sets it down, the whole lesson slipping from his mind, and mutters more incoherent words while scribbling away at his notes, comparing and analyzing the shards of obsidian while doing so. Left standing there, Matt doesn’t know what to do as he questioningly looks to the rest of the class, and Rose shrugs and gestures for him to come back to his seat. Once he does so, Prof. Loske finishes his notes, gives a satisfied nod at whatever he had been saying to himself, and turns back around, remembering he still had a class to teach. “Oh! Ah, right, um, well, why don’t we discuss the rock material known as obsidian, and what it has ever been used for? And after that, we’ll go ahead and call it a day, and then you can all head off to your final classes, okay?” When the rest of the class nods or shrugs in compliance, he takes off into a hustling lecture about the make-up and historical uses of obsidian for the rest of the class period.

  ***

  For the final class of the day, Matt and Rose have no trouble finding the gym as it turns out to be near the entrance of the building and through two large double doors. As they pass through the doors, they see the gym is more of an arena, with a large, elliptical-border field with ascending rows surrounding it. They also notice that all the freshmen are showing up to this class, except for a few, higher class students who are already there and huddled in a small group away from them. They soon find Sean, who sees them and waves them over, and they come to stand on either side of him.

  “So, all the freshmen are taking this class at the same time?” Matt asks.

  Sean replies, “Yep, all the freshmen will have this same hour for gym this year, so that we all can be on the same level of experience with our battle morphs. Today, however, we have guests from higher class levels to join us. The professor will explain.”

  As if on cue, attention is pulled to a woman who emerges from the group of higher classmen. Her immediate impression is dark and intimidating, more aggressive than Prof. Kaloss. Her body is lithe and strong, covered in a black and brown workout suit,
sleek black hair falls freely to her shoulders, and blacker eyes pierce whoever dares stare at her. One can’t help but stare at the scar across her right eye, shaped like the slash from a single cut.

  “Good afternoon, freshmen,” she says in a voice full of authority. “My name is Professor Orcra Serpanz. I am your gym instructor, and you will all do the activities I assign you, without complaints, without hesitation, until you complete them or collapse. My job is to make sure you are physically fit and prepared to fight with your battle morph in any situation that comes your way. You are here to be trained how to fight. There is no room here for excuses or refusals to fight; you are all Alkalians, and your battle morphs are an essential part of you. It is my intent, my purpose, to make that part of you perfection. Are there any questions yet?”

  Seeing her speech had put the freshmen in a cold sweat, she smiles a little, and tells them, “I see. Before we get serious, though, we’ll have some fun today. If you look behind me, you’ll notice a few students from the intermediate class are with us. They are all volunteers for our inauguration.”

  “Inauguration?” asks Rose.

  “Yes. In gym class, we hold an unofficial welcome ceremony for you freshmen on the first day of school. Today, you will all get a taste of what full-out combat is like. These intermediates behind me will fight you.”

  The freshmen are suddenly groaning and frantic, thinking these more experienced students would crush them in battle. Matt and Rose are surprised, while Sean says, “Whatever you do, don’t panic. They get a kick out of it.”

  Prof. Serpanz unfolds a list from one of her pants pockets. “When I call your name, please step forward and choose which of these seven intermediates you would like to fight. You will then morph and battle until one surrenders by demorphing. All of you freshmen will participate, and you cannot choose an opponent who just battled. Any questions?”

  The freshmen are silent, many hoping not to be picked first.

  “Good. Let’s get started. First to fight will be…” She scans through the list before catching interest in one name. After a moment of pause, she calls it out. “Rose Alamence!”

  Startled at being picked first, Rose walks forward slowly. As the freshmen back off to enlarge the distance, Prof. Serpanz commands, “Choose your opponent.”

  Rose studies the seven students lined up before her, but she doesn’t pick one yet. She glances at each one, locking eyes to any part of them, and keeps it up for a long minute. Finally, with a few of the intermediates getting impatient and antsy, one guy in a sweatshirt barks, “Will you pick already!?”

  Right after the man’s outburst, catching everyone by surprise, she immediately points to him and responds, “You. I choose you.”

  The man sneers and walks forward after a stunned moment. “Think you’re a tough girl, huh? When this is over, you’ll be so sorry for picking me.”

  Rose ignores his comment, and closes her eyes while clasping her hands together with the pointer fingers straight up. As the freshmen, including Matt and Sean, wonder what she’s doing, Prof. Serpanz says, “You may morph now.”

  The guy vanishes in a bright flash, and when the light dims, a large, Golem-like creature, near thirteen feet tall with an exoskeleton of thick stone, replaces him. Resembling a humanoid robot that just unfolded from a boulder, he glares down at Rose eagerly.

  Rose then enters her own battle morph. She comes out of the flash in a full-green battle suit of leather armor covering her body. Her hair becomes royal red in color, and energy briefly seems to be vibrating off her mystique form. The freshmen, once staring in fright at the Golem, gaze with awe at her majestic beauty and power. She opens her green eyes, no longer soft but hard, the eyes of a warrior.

  The Golem makes the first move by running straight at Rose, the ground shaking beneath his seismic stride, and throws himself forward to tackle her. Meanwhile, Sean covers his eyes with his hands, peeking between his fingers, and moans, “Oh, that’s gonna hurt.”

  Before the Golem reaches her, Rose does several back flips out of the way, and the Golem’s massive bulk merely grinds and rolls across the floor. As he gets back up, she produces and throws leaves that resemble spinning blades. They cut into the Golem’s upper body, where thin lines of green light appear to show he is damaged.

  “You’re throwing leaves at me?” roars the Golem. “It will take more than that to take me down!” He starts running back towards Rose, who forms a larger throwing blade behind her back from energized leaves. The Golem comes right up to her and kneels down, arms outstretched for his hands to clap and crush her.

  Rose then throws the leaf shuriken, and it saws across the Golem’s face and blinds him in both eyes. As he growls along with the burst of green light from the wounds, she dashes between his feet, produces dagger-like leaves, and starts stabbing at his legs, chiseling more wounds into him.

  By this time, Sean is astonished from Rose’s performance, so he drops his hands to watch and gawk along with the growing number of surprised students, both freshman and intermediate. Matt, however, isn’t visibly surprised. He stares at Rose in combat, his expression calm and focused, as if he is studying her.

  The Golem, realizing he’s being attacked from below, rotates to have Rose in front of him and lifts a huge fist to bring down on her. When the fist falls, Rose rolls out of the way, leaving it to slam into the ground. She then leaps onto the Golem and climbs to his back, where she forms something like a seed and plants it between the shoulders. She hops off, flips a good distance away, and kneels to watch her opponent.

  As the Golem turns around to blindly face her, he starts to shout, “Hold still, so I can kick your-” when he feels something happening to his back. The seed suddenly germinates with energy, and wooden vines sprout and grow from him. The vines rapidly wrap around his bulk, and before he can grab at them they constrict him in tightening pressure. He tries ripping at the vines, but new ones grow and bind his arms, and the constriction continues as orange light radiates from the spots being crushed and the wounds already visible on him.

  “Constrictor Weed,” says Rose to herself, knowing this battle is already over. The Golem struggles against the vines, but the squeezing force only increases, and the orange light darkens to red. Almost immediately after the red energy soaks him like blood, he demorphs. A large flash of red light swallows up the Golem and its huge parasite, and the man is revealed, collapsing to his knees from exhaustion and disbelief.

  ***

  All of the freshmen are speechless, and all the intermediates, except one man who is in an orange coat and red pants, are amazed. They all turn to Prof. Serpanz, who does a satisfactory nod and says, “Not bad, Rose Alamence. Not bad.”

  Rose demorphs, returning to her human state, and walks back over to her classmates while her defeated opponent trudges back to his. The freshmen cheer and praise her, and Sean asks Rose, “How did you do all that? You took him down without breaking a sweat, and he couldn’t even touch you!”

  Rose, smirking, answers as humbly as possible, “Well, I guess I was just more skilled than him.”

  The freshmen continue cheering for her until Prof. Serpanz says, “Now, who will be next?” and they become dead quiet. She scans along the list, and finds another interesting name. With a bit of a sneer, she calls out, “Sean Wyseinburg.”

  Sean, after sighing, slowly walks forward. Looking at the row of intermediates, he says to himself, “Let’s just get this over with,” and chooses the guy with the orange coat. The man walks out to meet him. He wears brown leather boots, has short, spiny yellow hair, and a shaven face. His eyes are a golden yellow, both sinister yet calm, like the eyes of an eagle. Prof. Serpanz says, “Morph, then begin.”

  The two foes both morph behind flashes of light. Sean has a brown battle suit with scale-designed, chain-mail armor. His opponent has the armor suit of a samurai, missing only a helmet and colored red with streaks of orange and yellow. Out from between his two hands comes an energy sword of bright amb
er, and he dashes at Sean from propulsion at his feet.

  The only thing Sean does is sigh again. The blade smashes into him, slashing and slicing with great speed at all parts of his body, leaving spurts of green, yellow, and then orange light. The shredding continues, and when the wounds turn red Sean demorphs with a bang, and his opponent stops the glowing, sharp edge of his blade at his human throat.

  The freshmen are shocked and horrified, while the intermediates don’t look surprised, a few of them chuckling with enjoyment. Sean turns and walks back to the freshmen, passing by Prof. Serpanz, whose stare is enough to show disappointment. He returns to his spot by Matt and Rose, both gawking at him in confusion before Matt asks, “What happened out there? Did you even put up a fight?”

  Sean replies with an uncaring attitude, “I didn’t even bother fighting, because I can’t. So I just picked my poison, let him do his job, and now I’m back here.”

  “But, what do you mean, Sean?” Rose asks, not able to believe his story. “Why can’t you fight? All Alkalians are able to fight in their battle morph; it’s instinct that you should know how to battle with your powers!”

  Another freshman is called upon to battle an intermediate. Seeing he’s got time, Sean tells Matt and Rose his story:

  “A year ago, I was a freshman here at the college. That’s why I know so much about it already. I was able to handle all the classes I had, except gym, because I don’t know how to fight. What I mean by that is I can’t figure out what my powers even are; without them, I’m just a punching bag! But I grew to ignore it, and I got around alright. Until the exams.