Hello for the first time in what has been much, much too long, faithful readers!

I have taken initiative to continue my writing career, and it all starts with Ignition Point, which basks in glory before your eyes! Unravel the mystery of Crystal Flakko and the people and crazy things she encounters… before it's too late! XD

So, some clarifiers first. MOST IMPORTANTLY, I am so, so sorry HPE24 for forgetting you in the credits of TPoM for that section for people who have been there for a considerably long amount of time, and whatnot. That was really, really, bad of me to do that, but I'm saying it here so that everyone will see, or else they wouldn't notice if I just changed TPoM. So yeah. Round of applause for her.

Also, this story is officially being beta-ed by FullMoonFlygon herself! It's awesome, so everybody has to give her your awesome well wishes because today is also her birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY FMF YAYAYAYAYAY

I overreacted. A little bit. Anyways, most importantly concerning this story. EVEN IF YOU DON'T NORMALLY READ A/Ns THIS RIGHT HERE IS SUPER IMPORTANT! Okay, so, if you enjoyed the parts of TPoM with all the guns and fighting and stuff, then you are going to LOVE TPoM II because it is a mix of both that and the Minecraftia stuff because it is a lot more important this time around. However, I know that there are also lots of people who don't like how that story is so unique that I'm actually incorporating a non-cliché Earth storyline, so this story is much more mainstream. No Earth, no guns, no awesome scenes where helicopters crash land and Navy SEALs are screaming bloody murder, none of that here. XD So yeah. I encourage you to read both, of course, but I'm just saying.

More stuff on TPoM II: it obviously releases on Saturday this week, three days from the time that I am writing this snazzy author's note. These two stories will update simultaneously, for example, I'll write a chapter of this, and then a chapter of TPoM II. One Shadow Stranger (TPoM II's official title) is going to be the same length as the original, forty chapters and an epilogue. Ignition Point is going to be considerably less, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty chapters. I'm still planning. This is because this story is a little shorter, and also, I want to get to work on my TMD spin-off about Mech, and it is not possible to write that until FMF is done with the actual TMD in the first place. XD So I'll wait on that, because I can't possibly write three stories at once, can I?

That's pretty much it. TPoM II will release early in the morning, most likely around 10 AM Eastern Standard Time. I don't feel like doing the math for you guys who live across the world like Flu and HPE, but I assume that that is the middle of the night for you guys. So just stay frosty once you wake up. It will release with three chapters, and I haven't started the fourth yet. I won't until I finish the second chapter of Ignition Point.

Okay. It's all out. (Takes deep breath) And now, finally, long overdue, LET THE FREAKING STORY COMMENCE!

MechanixAngel's back, baby!

~My friend at school

I

Spruce Arbor

There's something magical about looking out the window the minute that you wake up to see piles of snow. The snow usually came for the first time of the year in October, but it was early this year; it was only September 14th and the grass wasn't visible thanks to the white fluff. The window in my room was frosted to the point that it looked like a wall of ice. Goosebumps popped out along my forearms and thighs. I had worn a simple T-shirt and black shorts to bed, not anticipating any cold weather this early in the year.

I pressed my hand to the glass as I stared out at our backyard. The glass was just as cold as the air inside of my room. I turned away from the window after withdrawing my hand and going to my dresser. Unlike most girls my age, I didn't care what I wore on a daily basis, picking out a black sweater and throwing it on over my thin purple shirt. I also traded out my shorts for black jeans and hooked up my inventory belt. It was powered by redstone and built mostly out of iron, and fit comfortably around my waist.

I opened the wooden door to my room and made my way downstairs. It seemed that my parents were still asleep in their room next to mine upstairs, so I was the only one awake in the house. Once I reached the bottom of the stairs, I turned into the kitchen and got out a bowl and a box of cereal. Pouring the wheat flakes into a bowl with a splash of milk and cocoa beans and setting it down at the table, I took another glance outside. The sky to the west was still orange, so no wonder my parents were still sleeping.

While I spooned some of the food into my mouth, I opened one of my school books. I hadn't finished my homework from the night before, and it was already six in the morning. School started in two hours, and I had to get ready and shovel out the path to our house from the stone brick street that cut through our lawn. Even once the snow was off of it, it would be coated with ice and in turn still be slippery. That was a job for my secret.

My mind getting sidetracked from my homework question (How long does a ball of clay take to be smelted into brick at three hundred degrees?), I held my hand up in front of me and concentrated. There was a small tingling feeling in my palm, and I screwed up my eyebrows. There were a couple of sparks, and a small flame grew in the palm of my hand. It wasn't normal for anyone to be able to do that, but for some reason, I was able to create fire in my hand since I had been old enough to concentrate on anything. Of course, I couldn't tell anybody, because the doctors in our town would probably designate it as some medical condition. I would be detained to some facility, quarantined, who knows what. But it wasn't normal.

I turned back to my homework question. After taking a couple more bites of my cereal, I still couldn't figure it out, so I went to the next question in frustration. How was the Great Peace restored? History at least was easier for me than science. After all, it was much more important anyways. Science was completely pointless to me, considering how simple everything was. Learning about why the world was like it is in a political fashion actually meant something, because you learned what had happened to your ancestors and why the Minecraftian Republic was divided as it is. Science didn't help you with that. Science just let you learn the specifics of things that were common sense, like why did this do that. I didn't care why sand turned into glass. If it did, then it did. What was important was that it did, and not why.

The treaty of the four districts that ended the Overworld War. There had been a war about seventy years ago before that ended up in the four different states grouping together in an armistice resulting in the Minecraftian Republic. The districts remained separate, but were still together as a whole politically. It was just easier to keep the districts separate because they were different biomes. I lived in the Frozen Frontier, a taiga, which was to the north of the capital of the country, Emerald City. To the west was the jungle, the Treetop Territory. South of the capital was the Deserted Dunes, a desert. Finally, on the east were the Sky Straits, a series of tall mountains that generated the country's mining income. They all surrounded the capital perfectly, and on the outside of the territories was a giant ocean. There were probably other continents to be discovered, but right now we lived on a giant island. The biomes were definitely large, with three or four large cities each. Spruce Arbor was the city that was the farthest to the north in the entire country, so we got snow first.

When it got cold this far north, it really got cold. In January and February it dropped to extremely low temperatures, and the snow season could stretch through April sometimes. It wouldn't be too cold today, considering that the season just started, but I still needed long clothes so that I wouldn't freeze to death. That was overdramatic, but it was still cold.

Once I had finished my homework, I scarfed down the rest of my meal and headed upstairs to quickly finish getting ready. My parents were still asleep as the door was closed and it was quiet inside. I opened the door to my room and crossed past my bed to the door into my bathroom, where I turned on the lanterns so I could see the mirror there.

For a sixteen year old I was relatively short, coming in at just five foot eight. My straight blond hair fell past my shoulders on both sides of my head, lighting up my fair skin. I had thin lips and a nose that stuck out a little bit, like a guy's. That embarrassed me sometimes, my friends making fun of my appearance because of it. My best feature, I thought, were my dark green eyes, which stood out around my pupils. They were definitely nothing like Herobrine's, which were just plain white.

The thought of Herobrine shifted my focus a little bit, and I wondered for the hundredth time we were learning about science in school instead of creationism. It was obvious that the Creation Story of Notch and Herobrine creating Minecraftia together, Notch being worshipped by the people of his world and Herobrine forever residing in the inaccessible dimension of the Nether, was true. Everyone believed it anyways, so why were we learning useless science?

I brushed my teeth and used mouthwash and then headed downstairs. Making sure that I had all of my school books and homework on my toolbelt, I opened the door outside and got out my stone shovel. The cold air blasted me quickly with a large gust of wind, spreading some stray snowflakes on my shirt and a few inside my house. I got out and closed the door so that nothing else would fly in and stared at the path ahead of me. The path to the road was two blocks wide, completely made out of stone bricks. It was ten blocks long from the street to the door of our house. The snow was deeper in the grass because it stuck better there, coming up to about three inches tall. On the stone path it was just about one inch, though.

Less snow on the path made my job easier. Our family had a rule: whenever snow fell, the first person to leave the house was the one who had to clear the path. Because of school, that unfortunately meant me most of the time. I didn't mind, though. Having something mindless to do before a day full of solving math problems and going over sciences helped me clear my head.

I shoveled the snow aside, piling it on the snow that had already come down on top of the grass. Realizing that I hadn't checked the time since I had gotten breakfast, I took a glance at my watch. It was seven at this point. This usually took about fifteen minutes, but I couldn't say for sure. It had been a couple months since I had had to clear out the snow.

Every small drift of snow that was cleared away exposed some more of the icy stone brick. I was about halfway through the job when I turned back. It would be even easier to walk on it if it wasn't coated in ice, and since I couldn't just build a fireplace right here, I would have to use my special ability. It was too early in the morning for anyone to be walking around anyways, especially with it being snowy outside. Everyone would have to transition to having to clear out their paths to the street from now on, and I was usually one of the first people at school anyways. There would be no difference in the order of people getting there.

Assuring myself this, I concentrated on opening my fists so that the faced the icy surface in front of me, like I was pointing a weapon. All of a sudden, a huge burst of fire shot out of both my hands, instantly melting the ice and making me stumble backwards in surprise. I quickly turned off the fire, and quickly darted my head around to see if anyone had seen. Nobody could shoot fire out of their hands, and it was pretty obvious that I wasn't holding any flint and steel. I surveyed the street, looking for anyone who was there. There was someone, standing at the side of a house across the street on an angle, right next to the corner where he could duck behind it. He was about my age, but I didn't notice that he was there until my eyes had passed, and when I looked back he wasn't there anymore. He must have just been my imagination, but I didn't dare using the fire again.

As I finished clearing out the path, I kept frantically looking around for any sign of the boy again. The more I thought about it, the more weird that it seemed. The house was occupied by an older couple, and that was it. The boy that I had seen had been about my age, I was sure about it. I couldn't remember any of his specific physical features, but that wasn't really important. What was important was that he was there.

Maybe he was going to break into their house. I doubted it. There wasn't any real crime in the Minecraftian Republic except for in the slums in the south of Emerald City. It wasn't called the Great Peace for nothing, I reminded myself. But still, it worried me what the guy would think since I had literally just shot fire out of my hands.

Why was I so worried, I told myself. He was probably just a part of my imagination, triggered by a fear of getting caught by accidentally shooting a huge burst of flame. That was the only reason that I didn't like using the fire all the time; there was no way for me to control how powerful it was once I conjured it. Well, I was sure that there was some way to, but I couldn't exactly go to any random person and ask them, could I?

Once I finished it was already seven fifteen, and I put my shovel back into my toolbelt and walked along the side of the street. It was only a little walk to the school on the left, but I headed right to go to my friend Willow's house. There was no snow falling at the moment, but it was still cold outside; the wind would probably pick up as the day progressed.

Willow's house was a short three houses over from mine. She usually got outside at around seven thirty, and if I reached the house before she got outside I would just wait on the street in front of her house. She was standing outside on the edge of the path this morning, though, the stone bricks already cleared. I raised a hand in greeting.

She was average height, about five foot ten, so a little bit taller than me. She had short black hair that was cut just above her eyebrows and stretched down to her neck in the back, which stood out just like her deep blue eyes. "Hey Crystal," she greeted me as I stopped in front of her. "Guess it's the time of year again to shovel out the snow."

I cracked a smile. "Yeah. Did you have to do it this morning? It wasn't that deep today," I commented as we began to walk back in the direction I had just come.

She shook her head. "My dad had to get to work early this morning, so he had the honors of clearing out the first snow of the season," she replied, and then smirked. "Not that it's an honor that I want to have to carry out." Her dad was actually the assistant to the mayor of Spruce Arbor, so he basically carried out exercises when the mayor wasn't available. The job paid pretty well, but I couldn't complain about my own father's job; he was a researcher on topics about history, on how the wars before the Great Peace had carried out and all about Notch. I suppose that this was why history was my favorite subject, but I liked it a lot myself.

We passed my house, and the light in my parents' room was on. They must have woken up now, even though I was already out of the house. They had always been heavy sleepers, but this was an extreme example of it. My mom worked at the same company as my dad as a receptionist, since they didn't need someone to stay home and look after me anymore. Willow's mom had a boy who was in seventh grade and a girl in just third grade. They were large intervals, so her mom had to stay home for much longer in her life than I would have liked to.

There were some other kids on the street now, all of them around our age. Although high school started at eight in the morning, the other kids didn't have to get to class until nine, giving them an extra hour of sleep, plus the chores that the early risers had to do like shoveling snow out of the house path. You get the idea. It was easier for younger kids.

At last we reached the end of Leaf Lane, the street that the two of us lived on, where it intersected with Wooden Walkway. Across from Leaf Lane was the Spruce Arbor High School, standing tall and magnificent in the early morning light. The sun was rising behind us in the east, giving us shadows that outpaced us on the ground in front of Willow and I.

As we walked through the front lawn of the high school, which was littered with random spruce trees, some tall and some quite short, I noticed that many of the kids were getting here at the same time as me. Was I really that late today?

Obviously, it didn't matter who got to school first as long as you got there on time, but I liked being known as one of the people who got there first by the teachers. It made me feel more responsible, in a way. At least I had an excuse today; everyone would have to transition into a different routine starting today. So I could cut myself some slack, for now.

As the two of us reached the doors, I saw the guy again. He was standing next to one of the spruce trees, not too far away from the school's main doors. I stopped momentarily as there was no one immediately behind us, trying to get a better look at him. He had brown hair that hung over one of his eyes in a mop hairstyle. He was wearing a red long sleeved shirt and blue jeans, and he stared out at me, not bothering to hide. This was definitely the same person who might've seen me this morning.

"Crystal? Are you okay?" Willow asked from my left while I stared in the opposite direction, shaking my head to bring me back to reality.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I assured her, starting to walk up to the glass doors again alongside her. "I thought I might have forgotten something for a second." There, that was a pretty good lie. As she pushed open a door I glanced back quickly. The boy wasn't there anymore. It must have been my imagination again, and I desperately tried to convince myself that this time. Nobody would just follow me around…

Then again, there was a perfectly good reason to. I strode through the closing door and slid back into place next to Willow in the main hallway of the high school. The school year had just started, this being the Thursday of the second week of school. Now that I was in eleventh grade, I was sure to expect tougher work that would help me get prepared for a life with an actual job, not a part time one like some kids had. The legal working age in the Minecraftian Republic was fourteen, but I figured I hadn't needed one yet. I was planning to get one by the end of the year, though. Willow didn't have a job either.

The two of us turned to our right and went down the hallway for eleventh graders, there being separate areas of the school to make it as little confusing as possible. Thankfully, Willow and I had the same homeroom together: English, Room 134 with Ms. Brady. We entered together, and once again it pained me to realize that there were already five of the thirty kids in our class already seated in their individual seats. There were five vertical rows that faced the front of the room, where Ms. Brady's desk sat. I was in the second seat of the fourth row of the door, while Willow sat on the opposite side of the room. The two of us parted ways and went to sit down in our seats.

Ms. Brady wasn't here yet, which I realized was a good luck charm that I hadn't seen coming. Since she wasn't here, then she would have no way to know that I hadn't been the first one into class, as usual. I furrowed my eyebrows. Why was I so concerned about this?

As the students filtered in over the next twenty minutes, there was still no teacher behind Ms. Brady's desk. Just five minutes from the bell, with only two seats in the classroom still vacant, a short, stout old woman walked in through the door and ruffled some papers into a pile on Ms. Brady's desk at the front of the room. I heard some groans from the back of the room. Most people didn't like having substitutes in this class, considering that Ms. Brady was really nice. She wasn't strict about anything at all, so her being here opened the door for another teacher that might not expect the class' excessive talking.

The woman didn't seem to notice the groans, or rather, she chose not to. The two last people filtered into the classroom, and when the noteblocks installed in the ceiling of every classroom and the hallways of the school gave their four chimes, she stood up once more and straightened some round glasses that sunk a little on the bridge of her nose.

"Hello everyone. My name is Ms. Greene, and I'll be your teacher today. Ms. Brady is out with the cold because of the sudden weather, and I expect that you all will be on your best behavior for me, correct?" she spoke in a high pitched voice, and we said our approval in polite voices. She nodded curtly and went back to reading the top paper on her large stack. I assumed that it must have been class instruction or something of the sort. "You all had homework due today, please put that on your desk."

I spun around the icons on my toolbelt and picked out the worksheet about diagramming sentences. Personally, I liked reading books and writing essays and stuff, but this kind of homework was just a pain in the neck. Basically, diagramming sentences is when you analyze any given sentence and make some complicated chart of the different parts of speech and what words correspond to others. I did it, but that didn't mean that I understood it.

Luckily, the homework had been a simple five problems of this, and it had taken me just over ten minutes last night. I laid it out on my desk, with my name inscribed neatly in the top right corner: Crystal Flakko. It was a pretty name, I thought, but then again I couldn't judge my own name without realizing that it made me feel a little bit full of myself. It felt weird to do that, as if I was some popular girl who couldn't get enough of herself. In truth, I wasn't all that popular, but Willow was really all I needed. We went together like potatoes and carrots.

I smirked at my own comment as I waited for Ms. Greene to pass around the room and reach my desk. That wasn't that great of a simile, but then again, this was English class and I might learn a better way to express our relationship at any second.

As I assured myself this out of boredom, the substitute teacher curled around the front of the third row and came down my way. She took the paper from the girl in front of me, Beth, and proceeded so that she was on my left. I handed her my worksheet and she took it from me and put it in a little stack of them in her hand. "Thank you, Ms..." she started, adjusting her glasses as she stared down at my name. "Flakko." She continued on as I frowned. Flakko wasn't that hard to pronounce, even though it wasn't that common of a name.

"And where is your homework, young man?" she asked from behind me, staring down at a hulky kid named Charlie who sat directly behind me. His desk was indeed bare except for a black pen that didn't have a cap on.

"My wolf ate it while I was sleeping," he said, trying not to smile apparently. I didn't like Charlie. He was basically the school bully, but no one really called him that. He never did his homework and he never studied for any tests as far as anyone knew, and yet he scraped by every year with a passing score. Barely.

"Well, that's a sorry, made-up excuse, and I think that we both know that," Ms. Greene responded bitterly, marking down a little note on a piece of paper. She continued on past Charlie while I stared back at him, just a little bit too long.

"What do you think you're looking at, girl?" he spat, and I quickly turned back around so that I was facing the front again. I didn't want to get into an argument with anyone, especially not Charlie. He probably had the power to tear my heart out in an instant, and he probably had the guts to do it right here and now, too.

Once Ms. Greene had finished collecting homework, she walked back up behind the desk at the front of the room and set the homework sheets in a small pile, and picked up another sheet. "You guys are lucky. You don't have much on the agenda today. Just finish these worksheets by eight thirty and we'll discuss the answers. You'll move on to second period at nine," she announced, bringing out the sheets and giving the first person in each row six sheets so that we could pass them back to each other, sparing her the extra walking.

When Beth reached back over her arm and I took one of the sheets and passed the rest back to Charlie, the papers suddenly fell against the floor. Ms. Greene looked up and immediately at me instead of Charlie, who I knew had dropped them on purpose. He had had a firm grip on them when I let go, and I glanced back at him as he bent over to pick up the sheets.

Suddenly, while I watched Charlie pick up the paper sheets innocently, Ms. Greene was standing over my desk. "Ms. Flakko, I will not have disruptions in my class. Please pass back papers in an orderly fashion. It isn't that hard," she scolded me, turning on her heel back to the front of the classroom by her desk.

I looked across the classroom at Willow, who mouthed 'What was that all about?' to me. I shook my head lightly and turned my head back down to the first question on the sheet. There were ten of the diagramming sentences problems on this sheet, compared with the five on the homework, and these sentences were longer. There was no way I could finish this.

The first sentence annoyed me as I stared down at it, trying to figure out the way to break it down in the white space below it. The Minecraftian shot an arrow at the aggressive creeper from ten feet away. As I started writing, I chewed my lip in annoyance. Where in the world could a person use this in life once school was done. I mean, wasn't school supposed to prepare you for life once you were an adult? This wasn't preparing me for anything, this was just nonsense that I had to do when I was a kid that most adults didn't know about.

Something sharp hit me in the back, and I flinched. "Ouch!" I exclaimed under my breath, but Ms. Greene still shot me a look from behind the desk in the front. I realized that she thought it was me being disruptive and quickly got back to work, not even trying to figure out what had caused the sharp poking. That was a mistake.

It happened again, but whatever point the sharp tip was dug deeper into my neck and for a longer duration, in turn increasing the pain. I flinched again, bit my tongue so that I wouldn't express the pain through words, and turned around sharply. Charlie was sitting there with his pen in hand, the tip of it a really thin ballpoint. The sickening smile on his face was enough to tell me that it was him that had been poking me, but there was nothing that I could do about it.

"Excuse me, Ms. Flakko!" a familiar high pitched voice said shrilly from the front of the classroom, "We do not look at other people's papers in this school environment. You have been disruptive enough, if there is one more disturbance from you…" Ms. Greene seemed to falter off, I suppose because she didn't have any sort of proper consequences for me.

I gulped nervously, now really committed to staying quiet so that I could just finish this worksheet and get out of this classroom at nine, on time. The Minecraftian shot an arrow at the aggressive creeper from ten feet away. Well, 'from' was the preposition or something, I think, so that would mean that it would go here, under 'ten feet away'. Right?

There weren't any disturbances for a little bit, and I had made it to the fourth question by eight fifteen when there was another sharp poke in my neck. This time, though, it was really painful. I jumped in my seat and turned around again, not bothering to think what the substitute teacher might think of my behavior. Charlie was still smiling at me, with that sickening grin that only someone with something to hide would carry around on their face with such pride.

"Can I help you?!" I exclaimed a little too loudly, my blood turning to fire. When I realized what was about to happen, I turned back around quickly, leaving my threat at a very awkward position. Oh Notch, don't let me start a fire here, please don't let me start a fire…

I knew that feeling that meant I was about to from out of control anger. I had only done it once before, a couple of years ago, but I had luckily been able to conceal it from the teacher that had made me angry by giving me a bad grade on a report just because she didn't like me as a student for no particular reason. Whenever that feeling washed over again, I had to make an effort to cool down quickly, or suffer the harsh consequences of catching fire in school.

However, this wasn't good enough for Ms. Greene that I had just prevented myself from catching ablaze, because she obviously didn't know that. She strode over above my desk, taking some more notes on her notepad and adjusting her glasses menacingly. I sunk a little lower in my seat, trying to look more innocent and working on the next problem of my sheet. It wasn't fooling anyone, in fact, everyone was shooting me sideways glances every now and then because of the threat I had announced to the class and then just left hanging in the air.

"Ms. Flakko, I think that now would be a good time for you to leave this classroom," Ms. Greene said from over me, staring down with notepad in hand. My blood was still simmering, and I breathed slowly as I responded to her.

"You don't understand, Ms., he was insistently poking me in the back while I tried to work…" I began to explain, but she would have none of it, cutting me off.

"I believe that I don't want to hear another word from you, young lady," she scolded me, picking up my paper and walking back to the front of the classroom, staring expectantly at me. I had just been kicked out of class. I shot another glance at Charlie behind me, who was smiling with a wider grin than ever. What a freaking jerk to do this to people who actually cared about getting good grades, I thought.

With that, I stood up and walked up past her desk, glancing at Willow as I passed her row. She gave me an even more confused look than before, and I just shook my head sadly. It was a lost cause to try and fight my side of the conflict anymore.

As I was closing the door now that I was in the hallway on the way to the principal's office, I heard Ms. Greene announce that "Now that we're rid of that nuisance…" The rest of what she said was drowned out by the closing door, and I curled my hands into fists and bit my tongue in an effort to cool down. Me, a nuisance? I don't think so, Ms. Mean!

Twice I had failed myself already this morning. I had shown up to school later than usual, and now I had been kicked out of class before eight twenty. This was shaping up to be a really bad day, and I hadn't even made it out of first period. I kicked the ground in exasperation and annoyance, and then began walking back to the main hallway of the school. The principal's office was opposite from the doors into the school, next to the receptionist's office and clinic. The only people who ever went to the clinic were faking it, I had discovered. It wasn't like anyone had any rotten flesh to chew on, after all.

I couldn't believe how badly I had been framed by Charlie so early in the morning, and there had been absolutely no way for me to protest. There was no telling what kind of punishment that Mr. Arbest, our principal, would enact on me. The teacher hadn't actually told me to go to his office, but where else was I supposed to go once I was kicked out of class during the school day? If there was a better option, I didn't know it.

Except for ditching and just leaving the school for the rest of the day. But I didn't want to do that, truancy was breaking the law.

Twisting the door handle and opening the wooden door to the principal's office, I took a deep breath to try and cool down the apprehension of what was coming. The door opened with my small push and revealed the small room where the principal did his work during the day and corralled kids who had been misbehaving. I had expected no one except for him to be there this early in the morning, but I was proved wrong when I saw his chair facing me from behind his desk and another person in one of the two chairs facing to him, its back to me.

"Well, do you have any school to go to? We're not going to be able to find a place for you to go at the moment if you aren't speaking. Let me call your parents, what is their phone number?" Mr. Arbest said, and then glanced up at me as I entered. His frustrated face became surprised at the sight of me closing the door nervously. "Ms. Flakko? Do you have something to bring to me?" he asked, expecting me to actually be on a mission for a teacher. Like I said, my reputation was slowly going down today in my own eyes, and this wasn't helping.

"No, actually I was sent here by the substitute for Ms. Brady," I croaked out, realizing that my voice had left me and I was really starting to get nervous. I stood with my back against the wooden door, not wanting to take another step into the room, but he beckoned for me to sit in the other seat across from him. I swallowed my fear and walked briskly over.

"I'll be with you in a moment, Ms. Flakko, but right now I'm dealing with a slightly more important issue," he explained, gesturing toward the other person sitting across from him. I couldn't see who it was until I sat down in the wooden chair, and my heart skipped a beat.

It was the boy who had seen me playing with fire.

There you have it guys, I'm finally back after about a month. I hope you all enjoyed, and of course traditionally for a fan fiction: OC contest! I want those babies flying in as soon as this chapter is released, so just make sure that you include their name, physical description, clothes, personality, and age. The age needs to be between ten and eighteen so that I can work out stuff without having creepy relationships. XD Best three win, and it isn't gender specific. So have fun with it, and I'll see you guys in three days, if not sooner.

Mechanix OUT