August 21, 2023

The alarm blared and I fell out.

I rolled off, and fell onto the ground, and let out a tired, "Owwwwww."

"Lauren, seriously? I had to leave the alarm on for 10 minutes in order for you to wake up." Isla asserted, frustrated.

You did it again, Lauren.

"It's not my fault I'm a deep sleeper." I argued, crossing my arms like a 4-year-old.

"I know, but it's still annoying." Isla let out.

"Well, I'd say that it can get annoying that Isabel wakes up at 5 even on the weekends." I contended, defiantly, "I'm not the only one who causes a problem."

So now you're playing the blame game?

"Hey! I can't help but wake up early! And it's not like Isla is any better, she's on her phone all night practically." Isabel confessed shyly.

"Well, yeah. You are the only one who can prevent their problem." I declared, trying not to cause a fight.

Again with the blaming.

"Whatever, let's get down to breakfast. I'm hungry." Isla mumbled.

YES, FOOD!

"Yeah." I declared, "School starts in two hours."

We trudged downstairs to the dining hall, where no one else was awake.

There was a long wooden table for all of us to eat at, and a bunch of wooden chairs to go with it.

"Looks like no one's up yet." I mumbled.

Just then a voice behind me said, "Hello?"

AH-JEEZ!

"Oh, Camden. You're up." Isabel explained.

Camden hadn't seemed to have gotten any less shy around us, excluding Luke. I guess because they roomed together, they had gotten closer, but Camden also seemed to be warming up to Parker. As for the rest of the household, some people, I didn't know the name of, also hadn't gotten any less awkward. Excepting most of the girls and Luke, I didn't know the others.

"Oh, hey. I- um. yeah." Camden whispered quietly, walking away from us.

Well, that was weird.

"Bagels, anyone?" Isabel announced to me.

BAGELS BAGELS BAGELS BAGELS BAGELS BAGELS

I jumped up in excitement, "Bagels, please!"

Isla laughed at me and declared, "I'm having cereal."

"Party pooper..." Isabel mumbled.

She's got the right. I mean, cereal?

We all sleepily walked to the kitchen and made our breakfasts, and walked back out to the dining room

We all sat down at chairs next to each other and silently ate our breakfasts, as Isla and I were tired, and Isabel knew this.

No one else came to the dining room whilst we were eating, but by the time we had left, everyone was having breakfast.

Isabel, Isla, and I all walked back to our room after a boring breakfast.

We got changed, and laid down on the couch sleepily and watched TV.

Isla turned on the news, as she was obsessed with uncovering stories and mysteries and proving the information they broadcast to be fake.

A newswoman showed up on the screen and announced, "This just in: All hikers that hiked Campbell Mountain yesterday went missing. An estimated 200 hikers weren't found or seen on any of the trails, and all security cameras were deactivated."

Hikers going missing on Campbell mountain was normal, but that many were kind of scary. My aunt had always told me the dangers of going off the trails when hiking and had always warned me that it could be dangerous. This latest story was something worth checking out, and I hadn't been on a mission in weeks, so I decided that I would go check out the scene later.

________________________________

School couldn't seem to last longer.

I sat all day in Mr. Furish's class and listened to him drone on about the FOF. I could tell that Luke, though, was extremely interested in the subject, and loved to learn. He always was quite the nerd.

Luke sat next to me in class, and whilst he would be taking notes, I would be laying my head on the table, struggling to keep my eyes open.

It might not have helped that I hadn't gotten good sleep lately, and had been awakened every night by nightmares about fires and my father.

Ever since the night at Parker's house, I couldn't stop seeing the shadowy figure in my dreams, and whenever it came, disaster came with it. Most of the time it was fires, some of the time it was floods, others it was earthquakes. But the dreams I dreaded most, were the ones about my father. We never did figure out what happened to him, and the doctors hadn't been able to save him. We were unsure of what to think of the situation. I would always dream that my father said goodnight to me every night again with I love you's. Tonight we were at 1163 trillion. And every time, after my dad would leave the room, it would all go black, and I would be stuck in a short time loop.

I still hadn't talked to Parker about the fact that he knew about my father, and I hadn't met any other charged FOF members except for Fire Lord yet.

It was the middle of the day, right after Study Hall, when the principal stated through the speakers, "Students, we are on lockdown. There have been many children gone missing today unseen by parents or others."

No, not the kidnapping again. Anything but the kidnapping. Please. I want my dad.

Mr. Furish's class looked around at the frightened faces of all of the students and saw that no one knew exactly what to do.

"Sir, should we spread out?" Parker confessed to Mr. Furish confidently.

So Cat Eyes is all of a sudden some battle agent?

"No, but Parker, you should patrol the area." Mr. Furish declared.

Parker gave him a nod and silently walked out of the room.

"Captain, what should the rest of us do?" Isabel confessed in fear.

"Isabel, I want you to head to the bathrooms, and find the piece of equipment we'll need to get these pesky predators out of the building." Mr. Furish asserted.

"Wait, how do you know that they're already in the building?" a boy asked.

"I can sense it. Luke, I need you to go to the roof, and scout the area to be positive of where everyone is." Mr. Furish announced.

"What do the rest of us do?" Isla asked.

"The rest of you hide. I have the assistants necessary for this mission." Mr. Furish proclaimed.

We listened to his orders and hid in the classroom.

It had been forever since he had assigned me to a mission, and he hadn't given me much practice or help either. I had hoped that this would be the sort of thing where he wouldn't play favorites. But he did.

I almost was disappointed that I didn't get chosen, and wanted a chance to prove myself desperately, but I couldn't seem to grab Captain's attention.

_______________________________

Isabel, Luke, and Parker dealt with the predator that was on school grounds, but no one had found the missing students.

It was the end of the day and I was ready to check out Campbell Mountain.

I rode the bus there, as travel like that was a lot safer, and had safely made it to Campbell without any interruptions. The mountain was pretty much empty in terms of people, as everyone was scared away by whatever lurked here yesterday.

Maybe it was an animal, like a mountain lion, or a really bad snake, or a coyote? It seemed unlikely. Yes, most people were told that this trail was pretty much deadly. But that was because of the difficulty. People got lost on the trails for days sometimes, and sometimes they fell, but there wasn't even evidence of bodies being there. They were gone.

I knew that I should check it out on my own terms because it piqued my own interest more than anything. No point bothering the FOF right?

Well, turns out that I didn't have to, Camden followed me all of the ways there.

Obviously, he didn't know it until we got off the bus at the same time, at the same stop.

"Camden? What are you doing here?" I asked him as I stood in front of the head of the trail.

"Oh, well, I-um. Like hiking, actually." Camden explained in spurts.

Really?

"Really? I didn't think you were the sporty type." I confessed awkwardly.

"Oh well, I was actually on the basketball team back at school," Camden explained, with a moment of confidence.

"Oh, well, that's nice." I mumbled, nervously.

We stayed silent for a moment, both trying to avoid the awkward conversation.

It was weird to think of Camden as a sporty boy, but then again, it almost made sense. Camden never wanted to participate in physical trials, and always made excuses for why he couldn't go to gym class. I'd never been in the same mission as him, but I really should've noticed that he was really muscular and strong.

"So." I confessed, "Shall we hike?"

Real smooth, Lauren. Real smooth.

He nodded awkwardly and we began to walk up the trail.

________________________________________________________________________________

We were lost.

Out of every single thing that could happen to us, we were lost.

Camden and I hadn't said a word to each other since we started walking, and had only made it more awkward by looking at each other, then not saying anything, then awkwardly laughing.

You'd think that I would've become fast friends with a person who's this similar to me.

Though he did have more of a mixed atmosphere, Camden was like a ray of positivity. Or so Luke had told me. And I could see that.

But, that's not really what I was thinking about right now.

What I was think was, "OH CRAP! OH CRAP! WHAT DO I DO? DO I TALK TO HIM OR WHAT? OR DO I DIE AND STARVE?

Yep. Real deep stuff.

But I finally got the courage to say, "Hey, Camden?"

"Yeah?" he responded steadily.

"We're lost," I let out quietly.

Well that's one way to tell him.

"Oh no, oh no. What do we do? Do we tell Captain or what? Or do we face the consequences of him being mad at us for not telling him where we were going?" Camden conceded, almost identically to what I was thinking.

Same. Dude. Same.

Camden was obviously very distraught, so I declared, "Come on, we just have to keep trekking forward."

He nodded in agreement.

We walked for 15 minutes, then reached a flat point, with coverage from the sun.

We both sat down and drank some water.

But then, I heard a low growling noise.

What was that?!

"Hey, what was that?" I said, sacredly, standing up from the rock on which I was sitting.

"I don't know," Camden mumbled.

Just then, a large mountain lion pounced from behind me, and I barely managed to dodge the attack.

HOLY CRAP!

I cowered and screamed in fear.

"DON'T WORRY LAUREN!" Camden screamed at me.

What is he-

He pressed the teal jewel on his anklet, and suddenly, his hair turned into a golden blonde, he wore all-black attire, and a shadow formed over his face, which was only complemented by the glow of his orange irises.

He was NOT supposed to reveal his charged form in front of me, but apparently, he didn't care, because the second he put his hand on the cat, it fell to the ground.

I looked up at him in surprise and said, "You weren't supposed to do that, but I can't thank you enough for it."

I was starting to realize why Mr. Furish didn't put me in as many missions, I'm so unlucky that I'm like a damsel in distress constantly.

Which was later to be very true, and very false.