Torm and Jude had a short conversation with their parents, it sounded like they had gotten chewed out royally.
After they hung up, the two looked a shade paler and with a type of terror resting in their eyes.
None of the group dared to ask what had happened during their phone call, but Bell was next on the list to make a phone call. She walked up to the archaic phone on the wall and dialed her mother's number.
It rung thrice before her mother picked the phone up.
[Hello, Sarah Finley speaking.]
"Hey Mom, I'm in jail." Bell started bluntly.
She heard a chuckle in the back of the room, and a gasp from over the phone line.
[You're what!?]
Bell recoiled slightly from the yelling in her ear.
"I said that I'm in jail! I got arrested!" Bell clarified.
After a slight pause, her mother replied.
[Oh my gods, I have to tell your dad about this! What happened?!]
Bell smiled and explained, "I got into a fight in a shawarma shop."
[Oh, never mind, I'm still going to tell your dad, but don't worry, we'll get in contact with the jail your in. By the way, what jail are you in?]
Bell turned around and asked the question her mother asked, "What jail are we in?"
Pyralis answered before anyone else could get a word in, "We're in the Vatican City jailhouse."
Bell nodded with understanding and repeated Pyralis's words, "Were in the Vatican City jailhouse."
[The Vatican City Jailhouse?! Not a random one? The city jailhouse?! What am I supposed to do?!]
Bell's mother was properly freaking out at this point, and so was someone else's parent on the other side of the concrete wall. Bell was surprised that she was able to hear something across a concrete wall, especially with her own mother yelling in her ear.
[Was the shawarma worth it? Bellona Finley? Was it?! Oh my gods... you're stuck in there! We can't help!]
Bell nodded with an understanding smile and said, "Alrighty, Mom, I'm gonna figure something out after hanging up. I love and miss you, Mom!"
[Yeah, I love n miss you too, Bell. Stay safe.]
Bell then hung the phone up on the wall and let the four Erikson's call their parents.
The Erikson's looked even paler than Jude and Torm were earlier after hanging up from a very short call.
"We're screwed." Michael stated.
"Unbelievably so, Mikey." Hilia replied.
Bell really wanted to know what was going on, and how they could look like that only after a few moments on the phone with their parents. Actually, did they even call their parents?
'Nothing to worry about.' Bell reminded herself as she worried about herself.
'What am I gonna do, actually go to jail? How can I not do that?' Bell pondered. She sat down on a bed and started ruminating on their options.
Of which, there were two. They could either take their case to court like law-abiding citizens, or they could make a huge escape to the Bullet Train. Both were extremely enticing to Bell, and she seriously considered an escape plan.
However, none of Bell's plans of escape seemed to work, even in her mental calculations. They were too high up, the outside wall was sleek polished concrete. That all wasn't even considering the fact that the wardens and officers that were swarming the jailhouse.
'I guess we're just going to have to go to prison, huh?' Bell wondered.
She then twisted around in the bed and got a bit more comfortable, it looked like it was going to be a long night. The reason being the fact that Bell was simply so hungry. She hadn't been able to eat the wrap that she had paid for, considering their collective arrest.
An enforcer walked by the cell, glancing in and grumbling something before passing through the hallway. Law Enforcers were police officers who had been promoted a few times, and had the strength and deductive skills to handle entire bundles of cases on their own.
Enforcers also didn't look to be required to wear the police officer uniform and the masks.
The group hadn't been stripped of their personal belongings by the officers, Bell guessed that the police and enforcers were confident of their abilities. She wouldn't make an argument against the law's power, and she certainly wouldn't make an argument in favor of her and her friend's strength.
A single officer would probably be powerful enough to handle three or four of Bell's group in combat. Bell calculated that there would only need to be three or four officers to hold them all in combat. Whereas a single enforcer would be enough, hell, an enforcer might be overkill.
Bell's mind wandered over time, her train of thought wandering through various types of food that Bell would want to eat in Vatican City.
'I wonder how the shopkeeper guy is doing?' Bell pondered. 'I mean, he took a pretty hard fall and took a few cuts from glass.'
"Hey, Hilia." Bell spoke.
Hilia turned to face Bell from her current hushed conversation with her siblings, "Yeah?"
"How was the shopkeeper guy doing when we all got caught up in this?" Bell asked. "It'd be pretty bad if he died."
Hilia leaned to the side on her bunk and said, "He was stable after I fixed him up, he should have gotten healed further by a hospital or something nearby."
Bell nodded, "Alrighty, as long as he lived."
After turning around on the bed, Bell tried to get a few winks of sleep, quietly and swiftly falling into the embrace of sleep.
This micro-nap wouldn't be graced with a dream, as Bell was practically partially awake the entire time. What broke Bell out of this trance-like state was a plethora of various footsteps entering the hallways.
They grew closer and closer until reaching the jail cells where her group and the other guys were being held in. The officers were following Teacher Brutus, who looked slightly displeased, well, he actually looked extremely angry.
"Hi, students. Why are you all in here?" He said with a strangely calm voice and a wide, unnaturally toothy smile.
Bell didn't want to answer, and it didn't look like any of the other students wanted to answer, either.
The voice of a boy rang out from the other cell, "They hurt the shawarma shop guy!"
Teacher Brutus crossed his arms and faced Bell's group, "Is that so?"
Bell wasn't going to tolerate the lies and slander that they boy spoke.
"We were just eating when the shopkeeper slipped on something and fell," Bell explained. "They just attacked us out of nowhere!"
Teacher Brutus closed his eyes and tried to visualize the scene. Bell didn't know if he was actually doing that, but it was nice to imagine some things from time to time.
"Let them all out." He ordered one of the officers.
The tall boy exited the cell the moment that his door was unlocked.
He leaped towards Teacher Brutus and hugged him, "Thanks, Dad!"
Bell's jaw nearly dropped.
'His Dad?!' Bell screamed internally.
Bell then looked around at her friends and then back at the tall boy. All of her friends also had extremely shocked expressions.
Teacher Brutus released his son, "Little Brutus," as Bell would call him for the time being, and looked at the rest of the students.
"We're going to the bullet train, you four are doing D-class commissions for the next month," Teacher Brutus said to the other group. "I'm going to make sure that the staff knows of this."
He then faced Bell's group and said, "Since you're not students yet, there is no punishment, but the staff will also know of this."
Bell then realized something, 'Are they going to know about us fighting that dragon guy?'
She then asked Teacher Brutus, "Do they also know about the dragon guy?"
Teacher Brutus's eyes widened slightly, he then fake coughed into a closed fist.
"Yeah, totally," Teacher Brutus replied. "That was the first thing I'll make sure everyone knows."
Bell looked at him with a suspicious eye, but chose to ignore the matter. After all, he had just gotten them out of prison. However, the reason of which they were in jail evaded Bell entirely.
'Can't people just have a bit of fun?' She thought. The small brawl in the shawarma shop only really had a single casualty, and he was fine less than ten minutes later!
"Follow me," Teacher Brutus said as he started down the various hallways. "We're going in an ATV."
Bell and the eleven other students formed a small group and quickly and wordlessly followed. Over the course of the next few minutes and an uncountable number of turns, the large group reached a large chamber.
Bell nearly expected planes to be flying to and fro with the size of the hangar, but as it turned out, it was only a whole bunch of bicycles, motorbikes, and a few cars. Bell had no doubt in her mind that each and every individual vehicle in the hangar could shift its form into something that allowed flight. After all, the hangar entrance was several stories over the ground.
They wandered through the hangar to find a large ATV, where most looked like simple cars, this one looked like a giant jeep. From a quick glance, Bell saw around twenty-four seats in the giant flying vehicle.
"All aboard," Teacher Brutus said to the group of children. "Destination; Bullet Train."
The groups all loaded into the giant car with various oo's and aa's. The seats were comfortable, and Bell started to wonder if this vehicle was a modified bus or something of the like.
Bell decided to stay a bit silent, seeing as how she was just in a jail cell a mere few minutes ago. If she said anything, she might anger Teacher Brutus, and she didn't want to see him even slightly annoyed.
'He fought a dragon alone. He fought it with his fists!" Bell reasoned, her hand slightly trembling at the memory.
Despite having fought the dragon herself, she was also aided by a cohort of other students as well as Teacher Brutus. Even then, Bell was struggling heavily with the restrained dragon.
It powered up and Teacher Brutus fought the damned thing alone!
Either way, the ATVs engine hummed to life quietly, and then lurched into the air calmly. Teacher Brutus didn't bother to fly all the way into the sky, electing to fly just above the tens of thousands of buildings.
He was flooring it, and Bell's car sickness kicked in full mere moments later. To distract herself, Bell started to look around the sky and city.
The sun was starting to dip just below the horizon, which painted the skyline of Vatican City in the most vibrant of purples, pinks, and oranges. However, on the other side of the horizon, Bell saw the moon enter the sky and the stars dot the dark space around it.
As she looked around, she quickly found that her temporary distraction failed, as her stomach was swirling at the speed of a blender. Bell shot glances at Hilia, praying that
'He didn't look too happy that we were in jail...' Bell thought nervously, a bead of sweat slipping down her brow..
After all, they were explicitly told to avoid trouble at all costs. The thing was, Bell's group and Little Brutus's group immediately got into a fight, one of the groups was established Terrarium students, while the other were a group of future Terrarium students.
Bell could only imagine the shame that their actions had brought The Heart's Terrarium.
After a few minutes of silent, yet quick flying, they all reached the train station. Teacher Brutus didn't park in the parking lot, however. Instead, he chose to slowly descend into the station and land on an open spot on the rooftop of their train car.
He then took the keys out of the ignition and turned around, "All of you, get out of here. I'm going to park this further down."
The students did as ordered with the concept of laziness and slowness being completely void from their minds and actions.
Teacher Brutus waved before hovering and flying a few cars down, entering an open gap in the rooftop which closed soon after he entered.
Bell followed her friends in the train car through the ladder-hatch. They all went to the cafeteria just in time for it to end, leaving them hungry for the night.
Bell groaned while a few of the others simply sighed.
"Actually, where are we supposed to sleep?" The boy that wielded flames on his fists asked.
Bell shrugged and offered an idea, "There's a lounge downstairs, there's probably enough couches for you all."
The boy then shrugged with a smile, probably thinking something like 'Well, it beats simply sleeping on the floor!'
"Does anyone have a spare blanket or four?" The girl in the floral sundress asked the group. Bell hadn't noticed her before, but she certainly did now.
The girl was nearly breathtaking, and Bell would have offered the girl her own blanket. However, Bell's better rational thinking kicked in before she blindly offered it.
'Why would I give them my only blanket?' Bell thought.
None of the others in the group offered a blanket. As they walked through the various hallways, carrying light conversation about their shared regret of being unable to eat the food at the shop from earlier in the day.
Bell decided that it was time to fall alseep, so she headed into her room. She bid farewell to her friends and previous adversaries, soon heading to the elevators. Her eyes were growing heavy and her body growing more fatigued by the second.
Bell reached her room, pushing the strange key into the keyhole, the lock flashed green, then the door opened. Bell simply walked into the room, taking off her blazer and shoes, it didn't take long for Bell to fall into the gentle embrace of sleep.