Marina let out a blood curling scream shrinking back in fear. The ground erupted behind her, water pipes surfacing, sending water on a path toward the robot that defied gravity. Electricity flew free from the robot upon contact with the water sending it stumbling backward.
“FOREIGN OBJECT IN SYSTEM. MALFUNCTION. MALFUNCTION.” The robot said, sparks flying from it’s twitching head.
“W-what’s going on!” Marina asked with tears in her eyes as the water lost its form and fell to the ground. “Did one of you do that?” Her eyes moved from one classmate to the next.
“N-no, I think that was you. Your fear seems to have activated something you didn’t know about. None of us can control the elements!” Leroy exclaimed.
“What!?”
“EXTERNAL DAMAGE TO CENTRAL CORE SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE STARTING IN 5…”
“Oh no. Everyone run!”
“4…”
Jerikai stopped. “Wait, do you guys hear that?” They all strained their ears and continued running, because they weren’t going to be idiots, and soon heard faint screams steadily growing louder.
“3…”
The ceiling broke and three figures fell through.
“Holy!!!” An unknown, boyish voice screamed as the three unidentified falling objects fell on the robot bringing parts of the metal roof along with them.
Pang! Metal hit metal, sending the robot crumbling to the ground in a large dust cloud.
A series of raspy coughs broke through the silent air as the dust started settling. “Ugh, my back.” The oddly boyish voice said in a more feminine tone as a silhouette of a short, long-haired figure waving the dust out of their face. “You guys are lucky, you got cushioned.” The voice said again.
“Yeah, by metal beams.” A young male voice retorted.
“Every bone in my body hurts.” A younger boy’s childish voice complained.
“Every bone in your body hurts!?” The oddly boyish voice cried in annoyance. “Dude, you could've flown to slow your descent!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t think of that!” The young childish voice replied defensively.
Jerikai’s eyes widened in realization. “Wait, that voice… is that?”
The dust cleared revealing a pale skinned teen with long, spiky silver-white hair wearing an ankle long, black sleeveless, hooded zip-up coat reaching up to her neck with a separation at the waist where the zipper ended with a yellow trim around all the edges including her hood. There were long turquoise-green bell sleeves coming out of the coat’s armholes and she had two swords strapped onto her back, one black with bandaged wrapped around the handle and one crystal blue with a brown leather backpack over them.
The teen glowered at two boys lying in the rubble next to her. One, obviously the oldest of the three, had messy white hair and wore a long white bell-sleeved coat with a high collar and red emblems on the sleeves. The other was a young, cinnamon-skinned, boy with sapphire blue hair wearing a sea green t-shirt and light brown cargo shorts.
Jerikai, Leroy, and Ratio ran forward with tears in their eyes, attacking the teen with a tight embrace.
“Tempist!”
Ratio grabbed the teen’s shoulders, looking her in the eye. “Where have you been!? We thought you were dead!”
“And why were you falling from the sky at a speed only possible from high heights?” Leroy added.
“Guys! I - aha! We made it back!” Tempist exclaimed, smiling in response. “But. Gaa! First things first, could you guys let go of me? I’m not too keen on hugs and I can’t breathe and I think my back's about to break.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ratio laughed, backing away.
“Sure.”
“Oh, sorry. Kind of forgot.” Jerikai said nervously, blushing a little.
“As for your questions, after I fell off the cliff a transdimensional portal sucked me up and pooted me out in another world and then another one sucked me and them up and spit us out nearly fifty feet above the ground,” Tempist explained, jabbing her finger at the pitiful duo next to her.
“Just who are they anyway?” Ratio asked skeptically.
“Ratio, why do you always question everything?” Tempist sighed, helping up her fallen comrades. “Well, this one, with the white hair, is my cousin, Yoshinoia.”
“Nice to meet you.” The boy said, bowing.
“And this little rascal,” She ruffled the young boy’s blue hair. “is Po-po.”
“I’m a dragon!!!” He beamed.
“Um, okay. Nice to meet you.” She said slowly, somewhat weirded out by the boy’s statement.
But that’s impossible, dragons don’t exist. Leroy thought to himself.
“Not exactly true, Leroy. Dragons may not exist in our world but they sure as heck do where this kid’s from.” Tempist replied, answering Leroy’s thought.
“Hey! Stop reading people’s minds!”
“Oh! Sorry, accidental borrowing.” She apologized, laughing timidly. “Oh yeah. Yoshi, Po-po, this one, in the black, is Jerikai, the one with the foxish hoodie is Ratio, and this normal looking dude is Leroy.”
“What!? Am I really that un- AH!” He slipped on a piece of metal and fell onto Ratio.
“Gaa!!”
“And who’s that?” Yoshinoia motioned to Marina who was still staring, awestruck at the giant metal mess in front of her.
She shook herself out of her trance. “My name is Marina Luna Luna, and how are you alive?”
“Huh? What do you mean?” Po-po asked innocently.
“Tempist just said you guys fell nearly fifty feet and then crashed through a metal roof! You shouldn’t be alive!”
“Ah, that. Well, like Po-po said a couple minutes ago, we’re not exactly human.” Yoshinoia reasoned.
“Yeah, actually, most of us aren’t human,” Jerikai added shyly under his breath with an embarrassed blush.
“What!?”
“It’s true, I’m from another dimension, Jerikai says he’s related to some kind of fairy, and, uh… Leroy is, um, pretty much normal.”
“No! I’ve got the brain of a master inventor.” Leroy said, posing dramatically
“Yeah right, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re human.” Ratio snorted.
“You even have human parents.” Jerikai pointed out.
“Yeah, but for all you know I could’ve been adopted. And besides, there are no baby pictures. You have no way of proving that I’m human anyway.” Leroy said defiantly, crossing his arms.
“You sure about that?” Tempist whipped out a syringe, smiling deviously.
“Eek!” He shrieked, scrambling behind Ratio. “No way!! I hate shots!”
“Well it won’t be a shot, I’ll be drawing blood out of your body with a needle.”
“That’s worse!” He cried.
“Fine.” She sighed with a chuckle, throwing the syringe up, letting it spin in the air then landing it in a small leather pocket strapped to her left thigh. “Anyway, how come you guys never told me you weren’t human?”
“Oh, well after you disappeared we decided to be more open with each other and start keeping less secrets among each other,” Jerikai explained as Ratio tried to pry off Leroy, resorting to flipping him over her back. “Though I’d rather not talk about where I’m from.” He muttered.
“We should probably get out of here before someone comes to check this out,” Yoshinoia advised, looking at the gaping hole they had left in the ceiling.
Clambering down the wreckage pile holding up the tail of her coat to keep the cloth from snagging on the broken metal, Tempist realized that what she was standing on looked like the remnants of some kind of mechanical being. “Hey, guys, just what did we land on?” Tempist asked as a whine escaped the rubble.
“Oh, well it was a trashy robot. Surprisingly well equipped though.” Leroy replied, crouching down to fiddle with some junk at the bottom of the pile.
“Lemme guess, it was a government robot that went crazy.” Tempist replied, catching wind of a glitchy voice.
“D*static*m it! *static* g-a-a-a *static* freaking broken!”
“That’s probably close.” Leroy said, starting towards the door. “But it’s more likely it’s one of those new deep web things that let people control things in real life thinking it’s a game.”
“Ah. In that case, we should probably find its source. I actually found something like that before I was sucked into Inashia.”
“Huh?” Ratio, Marina, and Leroy asked in unison.
“It’s the name of the continent I was sucked into through a transdimensional portal I fell through.” Tempist replied. “They call the planet Riro instead of Earth.”
“By the way, how’d you guys meet Marina? There’s no way she could have found the tree house so how’d you meet?”
Treehouse? Marina thought.
“Oh, yeah. We started school.” Jerikai answered.
“Whaa? How?”
“It’s a public school so anyone can go. We used Leroy’s parents as our guardians.” Ratio explained.
“Huh. Well, I think I might join you.” Tempist said, scowling seriously. “I haven't been to school in years!”
“Oh. Janey,” Yoshinoia called, changing the subject. “Are these the guys you’re always talking about?”
Tempist slapped herself in the face. “Did it really take you that long to figure out?”
“Wait, Janey?”
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