The Shadow Court

Flashback 1

"Harley, Get up! It's ten o'clock!"

That's weird. I never slept in this late. Oh well!

I leapt out of bed and was met with a horrifying sight. My reflection. A tumbling mass of blonde curls covered my head, accompanied by a pair of childish hazel eyes and a splash of freckles across the nose. Something needed to be done about the hair.

"Jesus." I heard a voice at my door. "Someone's a heavy sleeper today."

Joel leant against the doorway with a bored expression. His short brown bowl cut covered his forehead and a pair of forest green eyes looked me up and down. "You need a shower. And for the love of God, get dressed."

I looked down and realised that I wasn't wearing pants. "Woops. Guess I just got too tired from last night's mission and forgot to put pyjamas on!"

"As long as you're wearing something, we're about to have a meeting." Joel said, looking out into the kitchen.

Yes, we had a kitchen in a treehouse. Also a semi-decent bathroom with a faulty shower pipe. Obviously we didn't build the thing by ourselves. Joel and I, plus Wills, our leader, had our parents help us put it in a big old oak tree. It was easily the biggest tree in the bush next to our home and we could visit whenever we wanted. However, that's not why it was built.

Our neighbourhood, and pretty much all the surrounding neighbourhoods and suburbs, were riddled with crime. Education was hard to come by, and even a good night's sleep was sometimes impossible. The police, if any, were supposed to be keeping things in order, but the person who ran things around here was a selfish man.

I chucked on a white singlet and a pair of grey shorts, which pretty much summed up my costume on the job. Which, believe it or not, was a thief.

My eyes brushed past the calendar hanging next to my door on the way out. July, 2012, some day that I didn't keep track of. I did, however, notice the bright yellow square that I'd highlighted to represent my birthday on the eighteenth. Not that we'd really be celebrating it...

The kitchen was pretty much spotless, something that wouldn't have been possible a couple of weeks ago. Wills was raiding the pantry for food, which didn't come easily these days. He had his back to me, but I could tell he was tense from the tightness in his shoulders.

"Don't you touch my milo." I warned, taking a seat at the small round table that separated the kitchen and the living room.

Wills shut the pantry door forcefully, a noodle cup in one hand and a knife in the other. "As if I'd have milo first thing in the morning."

Wills had this vibe of leadership about him, like a preschool teacher. Whenever he asked you to do something, it just seemed like the right thing to obey him. Add a short mop of blonde hair, serious blue eyes and fighting skills way beyond the average twelve year old, and there you had Wills: the leader and co-creator of The Crime Lords.

I put my head down on the table, still trying to wake myself up fully. "How did last night go? By your standards."

"Fine." He said, pouring hot water from a crappy tap into his cup. The whole plumbing system in the treehouse would've given us a one star rating. "No casualties, but no real victory either. We lost the element of surprise." His voice was rough, and deep, meaning he didn't get much sleep either.

"Well," came a familiar female voice from the hallway behind me. "I don't know about you boys, but I killed that recon task."

I expected to turn around and see my girlfriend in pyjamas with her hair all over the place, but boy was I wrong. Her tumbling wave of dark brown hair was brushed and straightened until it reached her waist. In the sunlight from a gap in the wooden wall, I could make out her streaks of light brown like caramel swirls in a chocolate cake. The light also did justice for her crystal blue eyes, which shimmered like diamonds. She wore little make-up, not that she really needed to or could find the time to obtain, but a thin layer of foundation glittered marvelously across her freckled nose. To enhance the appearance, she had already showered and gotten dressed, which was obvious from the make-up. Her clothing choice was a blue tank top and denim shorts that brought out the length of her legs. Overall, she looked stunning. And best of all, she was mine.