Rising Shards

Lillia hadn’t been able to find much to the point that at least Oka and I felt bad and joined her scanning the room. KJ followed us around, getting her dumb camera in our faces.

“We’ve been here for days, weeks even.” KJ narrated. “With little hope of survival.”

Lillia checked the time on her wristband. “It’s been thirty-two minutes.”

“With under two hours left to complete the task, the students of Rising Shards faced two certainties: in this quest they’d either fail or die. Nothing in between.” KJ said.

“Oka, can you hit her with one of those little grass blades?” Kalei asked, still seated at the table.

“I’m…I’m afraid to.” Oka said.

“Alright,” Kalei said, hopping down from the table. She came over to us, picked KJ up and set her in a corner. “There. No go film this corner and find all the depressing things you can find about corners.”

“Uh oh,” Iris said.

“What uh oh?” Oka asked. “You didn’t actually give yourself Feral Flu and now we’re gonna be stuck in here with you?”

“That…would be really bad, Iris.” I said, not wanting to think about all of us getting Feral Flu and fighting each other and jumping around and stuff.

“No, it’s Shearing Infection,” Iris said. “It’s just.” She winced. “I really gotta pee.”

“Oh…I don’t know if that’s much better but…that’s also very not good.” Oka said.

“It’s also super private and I don’t want to hear about it!” I said.

“But what if this is the challenge?” Ko suggested.

“What, like we all have to solve this crisis Iris put herself in?” I asked.

“They said it’d be simple, so I doubt they’d plan for Iris getting Shearing Infection and drinking a few gallons of water.” Oka said. “Would they?”

“Either way, we should probably deal with this lest we encounter a situation none of us want to deal with.” Amara said, gesturing to a more frantically shuffling Iris.

“I got a spell that could do the trick.” Roux said. “It could also make it so she could never go again, so maybe not? I haven’t practiced it yet.”

“Give her a cup of this.” Latte said, pouring some coffee into a like secret bonus mini cup that popped out of the bottom of her thermos with a satisfying sproingy sound.

“No, more liquid wouldn’t help.” Oka said. She held out her empty paper coffee cup that she was carrying around for some reason. “But could you top me off, maybe?”

“Mmm.” Latte said, swirling her thermos around. “No.”

“Aww.”

“We have to come up with something.” Iris said, her shuffling growing steadily more frantic. “I’m dyin’ here.”

“Maybe if you didn’t give yourself Feral Flu every twenty minutes at the slightest inconvenience you wouldn’t be in this mess!” Oka said.

“This totally wasn’t like that!” Iris said. “It wasn’t even Feral Flu!”

“Then maybe you should’ve just…” I said. “…gone…beforehand?”

“Shut up, don’t remind me!” Iris said.

“I don’t want to remind you! I don’t even want to think about such…behaviors.” I said.

“Oh my god Zates, just say pee, it won’t kill you.” Kalei said.

Iris started doing like half jumping jacks. “Nobody else talk about this, I have to distract myself.”

“Here, get some pet food, do a quick pet food challenge, then your body will focus on the food in you instead of the liquid, eh?” Kalei suggested.

“Nobody’s gonna do your dumb challenge while we’re in here!” Maia said.

“You mean I carried all this in here for nothing?” Kalei said.

“Yes!” Maia said.

Iris got out a crumpled sheet of paper and a pencil and started writing.

“What are you doing now?” I asked.

“I’ll write them a note,” Iris said.

“But Dr. Diast has back pain!” I said. “Don’t bug her with this while she has back pain!”

“There are a bunch of other teachers there, too!” Iris said. “That way they can just let me out to pee quick and then I won’t ruin this whole thing. But they better be quick.”

“And you’re going to hand this note…where?” Oka asked.

“I’ll show it to the cameras.” Iris said.

“I don’t know how to break it to you, but KJ’s camera doesn’t have a feed going back home.” Amara said.

“Not that camera.” Iris said.

I looked to Maia for any shred of clarification from her since she knew Iris better than any of us, but she just shook her head. Oka and I peered over Iris’ shoulder to read her note.

“Hiiiiii you are loved and I love you <3333” (She handwrote out the hearts like texting style.)

“But I have to pee so I demand that you please let me and only me out or I will probably pee here and it will be gross for everyone for a lot of reasons and will probably ruin things for the next group and it will be ALL. YOUR. FAULT. And will loom over you forever. <3”

“anyways remember you do an incredible service and are AMAZING and I LOVE YOU – iris XOXOXO”

“Iris, this is deranged.” Oka said.

“No, it’s genius!” Iris said, proudly standing up and holding the note to the nearest wall. “Now they’ll see it!”

Oka and Iris started to argue more as I debated plugging my ears to not hear Iris talk about having to go to the bathroom anymore, then plugged my ears to drown out the sound from everyone shouting.

“Enough!” Lillia yelled, silencing the room. She cleared her throat. “There’s a feature on your wristband to handle…private matters such as this.” Lillia showed Iris how to send out a message for a quick way out of the void for a brief reprieve. “It only works when we’re in a node ‘close’ to the school, so to speak. Otherwise, you’d have to…do I have to say it?”

“You don’t,” I said.

“Right right, complicated void stuff, got it. You’re a lifesaver, Lillia!” Iris said as she frantically retyped the message she’d handwritten out letter for letter and sent it. After a few seconds of waiting for the message to send, she was teleported out of the room in a shimmering light.

“I never knew you could do that,” Ko said. “But it wouldn’t really affect me on void trips. I’m on a strict schedule, you get me?”

“I get you.” Kalei said, fist bumping her. “Same times every day.”

“Shut up, please.” I said, hating that we’d devolved to this point as a class.

“I wonder, does it send you back home, or does it send you to like…a bathroom node?” Kalei asked.

“Maybe we don’t need to talk about this anymore.” I said.

“A bathroom node is either the filthiest place in the whole void or like,” Kai jumped in, then trailed off immediately. “The clean...est. Like it probably has like. Things to…” Kai trailed off again.

“Maybe we really don’t need to talk about this anymore!” I said. “Kalei, you wanna get this pet food challenge going again? I’d…genuinely rather eat one of those cat treats than continue the last conversation. Lillia, anything in this challenge room working? Please?”

“Guys,” Oka said, looking downtrodden. I desperately hoped she wouldn’t join in on the conversation to the extent Kalei and the Matora sisters were. She’d moved over to the table in the room Kalei was previously sitting on.

“What is it?” I asked.

Oka picked up the weird bulky thing Iris was bludgeoning the wall with, which really was a typewriter. She pointed to a lone green key on the board. “There’s…a button on this. A start button.”

Oka clicked the button, which made the tiles glow and our wristbands light up with instructions for the challenge room. We all groaned.