Rushing down the stairs the next morning, I grabbed some OJ and went to make an omelette when I looked out the kitchen window. News vans crowded both sides of the street, making it nearly impossible to drive down. I watched in fascination as Mr. Jenkins from across the street walked outside and started pelting the vans with eggs.
"Way to go Mr. Jenkins!" I cheered for him as I took another swig of OJ. Unfortunately, his actions had gotten all the news crews out of the van and someone had seen me through the kitchen window. I dropped to the floor as fast as I could as the cameramen started pulling out their cameras. Crawling out of the room, I went upstairs to look at myself in the mirror.
"God, I hope they didn't get that." My hair was sticking up in several different directions and my shirt was dirty, covered in a mixture of barbeque sauce and grease. I didn't need that picture getting out the day after I became famous, I can just imagine the comments...
Making sure the blinds were closed in my bathroom, I took a quick shower before putting on clean clothes. Making my way downstairs, I realized that I'd left the heat on and my omelette had turned into charcoal. To make my day even worse, I got a call from Rick just as I was cleaning up the mess.
"Hey man, I can't drive today. My truck's blocked in by reporters and they refuse to move." Rick's voice was shaking, he was obviously pissed off.
Sighing, I put away the pan and started going through the pantry looking for something easy. "I'm going to ask the school to teleport me in, it's their fault that this happened."
"GET OFF MY LAWN BEFORE I SHOOT YOU!" Rick's dad had apparently woken up, and I could hear him yelling in the background of the call. Grabbing a granola bar, I walked to the living room and turned on the TV.
"Hey, when did your dad get a new shotgun?" I asked, barely managing to hold my laughter down as reporters scattered on the screen.
"A couple days ago, he said it's enchanted so that he can use Elemental Energy as bullets." I could see Rick shaking his head in disgust from the front door of his house on my TV. "I already tried to get teleported in, school said they had to shut the system down while they're expanding to make room for all the new people."
"Well, shit. I might just skip school then." I said, watching the TV with a grin as I saw the cop cars pulling up to his house. The reporters all looked happy that the cops had finally arrived to stop the crazy man with the gun, but what they didn't realize that Rick's dad used to be a cop.
"Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I told them if they didn't like it then they can come get me themselves."
I thought about it for a while, but realized that I needed to head to school to make use of the private training rooms. I'd been going over the Storm Tyrant Body Refining manual, getting myself ready to break through to the fourth layer when I realized that if I practice during a thunderstorm I'll advance much more quickly. Thankfully, the private rooms at school had the ability to use formations to mimic different training environments.
"I can't, I need to use the training rooms today." Finishing up the granola bar, I threw it away and started trying to figure out how to sneak out of the house.
"Well, good luck man. I'm gonna go watch Mission Impossible."
Rick cut the call, and I laughed as I got an idea. Making my way to my room, I hid behind the drapes and started to gather elemental energy. Creating storms is actually fairly easy for me, all I need to do is gather enough Storm Elemental Energy in a single location and a storm will spawn. The difficult part of Storm Calling is controlling it, storm's are notoriously difficult.
Doing my best to gather a higher percentage of Water Elemental Energy than Lightning and Air, a mist slowly descended on the area around the my house. It took me nearly half an hour, but the entire street was covered in the mist and you could barely see 5 feet in front of your face.
With a giant grin on my face, I opened up the music function on my implant and bought the Mission Impossible theme song. I opened my window and pulled the screen out, laughing as I listened to the music. Landing as softly as I could on the grass, I hopped a couple of fences before heading to the street. Thankfully, I'd woken up early for once so I actually managed to make it to a bus stop a block over just as it pulled up.
"Hey Sarah, how'd you manage to dodge the reporters?" I asked as I jogged up to the bus, climbing in behind her.
"My mom's paranoid, had a secret tunnel dug out of our basement the day after we moved in." She grinned at me mischievously.
"Wish I'd thought of that." I muttered as I sat next to her in the middle of the aisle, ignoring the looks of awe on all the underclassmen's faces as they recognized us.
An hour later, I'd managed to book a private training room for the day. The teachers were all too busy dealing with the nearly 2,000 new students to deal with the 100 of us that'd been there for a while. Which meant that they had just told us all to train after threatening us with dire consequences for slacking off. Ms. Johanson had even shown up with a giant cauldron and started cackling while Principal Hubert had been threatening us, rest assured that none of us would dare to slack off today.
Taking a deep breath, I turned on the formation while adjusting it's settings. Instantly, I appeared on top of a snowy mountain well above the tree line. Sitting down cross-legged, I closed my eyes as I felt the Elemental Energy gathering around me. A thunderstorm slowly came into existence right above my head, and as I began to gather the Energy from it following the 4th layer of the Storm Tyrant Body Refining Manual a lightning bolt struck me directly in the head.
Surprisingly, it didn't hurt. Instead, it felt like I'd drunk 20 Red Bulls, a 2 liter of Mountain Dew, and injected my heart with Adrenaline. My heart rate tripled instantly, and it was all I could do to make myself stay still as I directed the Lightning Elemental Energy down my spinal column and through all my major nerve clusters.
My body started jerking, completely out of control as the Energy stimulated my nervous system. Unable to keep it going, I opened my eyes and yelled out frantically. I HAD to do something, so I quickly activated a miniature version of the body tempering formation that we trained in every morning.
Summoning my staff, I rushed into the enemies that the formation created for me. Without using any of my abilities to control the weather or create barriers I fell upon them, crushing them with frenzied blows while I continued to manipulate the Lighting Elemental Energy in my body to refine my nervous system.
I have no idea how long I lasted in this state of frenzy, but when I came to myself I was laying on the ground covered in cuts and bruises. I couldn't open my left eye, having taken a punch to the face from a troll. I finally stopped fighting when a War Elephant has stomped me into the ground, breaking several bones. Breathing raggedly, I couldn't help but grin crookedly through my broken jaw. I felt more alive than I'd ever felt in my life, refining your body with Lightning Elemental Energy is dangerous. I'd never felt more alive in my life, my every movement under my complete control. It was an addicting feeling, I can understand why people get hooked on speed or crack if it feels anything like this.
The formation activated, covering my body in a mixture or Light and Water Elemental Energy. Sitting up, I groaned in disgust at the layer of muck that'd been expelled from my body yet again. Taking a moment to examine myself, I realized that I was in top form. Between the formation healing me, and the fact that I'd only fought with my staff techniques I was topped off with Elemental Energy.
"Screw it." I said, turning the thunderstorm formation back on with a grin on my face. There was no reason for me to stop, and I needed to catch up to Connor and Beth. After coming back from whatever happened in those statues they'd both broken through to the 5th level of body refining.