What would've been a quiet summer turns into a globe-trotting adventure when an incident in Olympian High's campus garden gets the attention of resident Chosens Amelia Kingston and Zeus Olympian. To their surprise, the culprit is none other than the...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Amelia's body was on fire.
Her insides felt like they were all over and out of place, as if a large, foreign object occupied her guts and pushed away her organs from their original place.
So this must be what it felt like to get shot at. To say that it was uncomfortable was an understatement. What Amelia didn't understand though was why she wasn't even screaming. She imagined that the gunshot would make her burst or flail around in pain and panic, but she was thankful it wasn't the case.
Amelia tried to curl her body into a fetal position to somehow reduce the pain, but something—or someone—forced herself straight again. A string of foreign words filled her ears not long after, which oddly sounded like Japanese. Curious, she snapped her eyes open.
A wooden roof was the first thing Amelia saw when her vision adjusted. For a second she thought she was back at Kozan-ji Temple, but when she made a slight attempt of propping her head up, an old woman came to her peripheral view. Subtle creases decorated the lady's kind face, but other than that, she looked pretty young. Amelia couldn't judge by how much, though. She knew that the Japanese were infamous for looking awfully young for their age.
"No move," the woman told her before turning her attention back to her midsection.
"S-Sorry," Amelia said. "Do you know where I am?"
The woman tilted her head, her expression confused. Amelia realized she wasn't probably fluent in English, so she made a gesture of pointing at herself then waving her hand around the place.
The woman seemed to understand, as she answered with an accent, "Home. Mine. No move, please."
Amelia lay back down, sighing. She was in her house, then. It oddly looked like the temple but a bit smaller. How was the woman able to bring her from the temple all the way to her home? And where was her home? The house looked old enough to pass off as an ancient building of sorts, which, like Kozan-ji, would probably be seen far away from any urban area. Maybe Amelia was still in Kozan-ji, or somewhere nearby. The forest did look dense enough to hide a secret house. But then again, she and Raymond should've seen it when they came—
Amelia shot up. "Raymond! Where's Raymond? Have you seen him—"
She immediately froze. The old lady was holding a long, thin stick over her abdomen, which had a bloodied hole on its left. What made Amelia gape was that the stick was on fire—not just the tip. The whole thing was burning, and the woman held it above her wound like it was a paintbrush.
"I said no move!" the woman said angrily. "No sit!"
"W-What are you doing?" Amelia stuttered in disbelief.
"I fix you," she answered. "No look here. Is bad for you."
More like unbelievable. "How are you holding the stick—"
