KAI

I awoke.

But this morning felt a bit… different from the others. I couldn't describe the feeling, but something felt off. Not right. But I dismissed the feeling as trivial, as I usually woke up with this same feeling most days after having a bad dream. That feeling usually took a while to get rid of, and I always had to conceal it from my friends so they wouldn't get worried.

I got out of bed and rubbed my eyes. But as I was about to walk out of my room, I felt something in the air shift, the hairs on my neck sticking up. Something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was as if there was something that shouldn't be here, or someone. Feeling uneasy, I decided to see if my friends were around. Maybe they felt the same strange presence as me.

"Hey Amethyst, are you there?" I asked, trying to be as loud as I could. There was no response. "Alexander, Rose?"

Once again, there was no response. I took a shaky breath. Okay, maybe they were all upstairs and couldn't hear me. Yeah, it had to be that, right? I just needed to stop being so paranoid and ignore the ominous feeling. I walked over to the bathroom to take a shower and get ready. Maybe doing that would clear my thoughts.

I walked up to the mirror and grabbed my red toothbrush, squeezing way too much toothpaste onto my brush. The excess toothpaste fell onto the marble floor and created a mess. I grabbed a paper towel, reaching over to the towel dispenser and accidentally dropping my toothbrush on the floor.

"Ugh," I groaned.

I sat down on my knees and wiped the toothpaste off the floor with the towel. I then grabbed my toothbrush and was about to throw away the towel when I caught a glimpse of something behind me in the mirror.

I turned around and almost screamed. Standing in front of me was me, as if my own reflection came to life.

Mirror Kai ignited Scorcher, his Scorcher, and held it to the side. His eyes were a fiery red and burned with hatred and anger, mimicking the eyes I had when I was angry. His red jacket flapped around, as if some wind had picked up inside the bathroom.

I could feel my hands go cold. Fear seeped through my bones and my heart was pounding against my chest, going what seemed like three hundred beats per second. I could scarcely breathe and it felt like the walls were collapsing around me.

"W-what do you want?" I asked, my hands now shaking.

Mirror Kai just smirked as he swung his sword at me, fire catching on the shower curtains as the sword made its path to my chest. Instead of jumping out of the way, or even doing something to stop the attack, I just stood, paralyzed. It was like my feet were glued to the ground. I was stuck, and there was nothing I could do about it.

The sword struck me.

A series of events then played out in my mind, like some sort of movie montage. Amongst them were images of a building engulfed in fire as screams emerged from within, a massive thunderbolt spiking the ground from the heavens, and a gigantic presence looming over me inside a mountain.

That's when I felt a searing pain in my head and I was no longer in the vision. I was back in bed and I had just banged my head against the wall. I took a breath of relief as I realized that it was all a dream. I was safe. For now at least.

I got out of bed, feeling off, but not that same, ominous feeling I had felt during my vision. I took a quick shower and got changed, heading to breakfast right afterwards. The BBB flew slowly forwards, the city of Turin faintly disappearing in the background. I guess we didn't move much in the nine hours I slept.

I sat down at the table next to Alexander, Amethyst and Timmy sitting in front of us. I was still a bit shaken up by the dream, so I tried playing it cool, not wanting my friends to pick up on my conflicting feelings, as per usual.

"So, where are we going next?" Geneva asked.

"Well, we need to be going to Athens about now, right?" Rose asked.

Timmy shook his head. "But the issue is that Epimetheus said we need to look for a certain signal before going to Athens, unless we consider being attacked by the GHOSTs and random monsters as a signal."

"I suppose, but what would that signal be?" Amethyst questioned.

Timmy shrugged. "I'm not sure. What I do know is that we shouldn't go to Athens just yet."

"Ok, so where should we go? We can't just stay here waiting for some random sign," Geneva asked.

Alexander rubbed his belly. "Well I say we get some pancakes and eat breakfast 'cause I'm starving! We've been talking for, like, 5 minutes instead of eating breakfast!"

"I second that motion," I said.

Amethyst deliberated for a moment before speaking. "Fine, I guess. We can talk about where to go after we have eaten breakfast and gotten fully woken up."

I stood up and walked over to the minibar with Alexander, opening the fridge to get ingredients so that we could make some pancakes. But when I looked inside, there was nothing but expired yogurt and a couple soda cans.

"Kai, there's no ingredients to make pancakes in the fridge," Alexander said, half gasping.

"Yeah, I can see that," I said with annoyance.

Alexander grabbed the yogurt and shut the fridge. "Well, maybe there's something in the pantry to eat."

I opened up the pantry, with there being practically nothing other than soup cans, a bag of Doritos, and pickles.

"Who did this?" I demanded. "How could we run out of food so quickly?"

Alexander said, with bits of fruit spilling out of his lips and yogurt sloshing around his mouth, "Yeah, who did this?!"

Geneva, Amethyst, Rose, and Timmy glared at each other accusingly.

Oman, who was nearby steering the ship, awkwardly chuckled. "Yeah, couldn't be me."

"You know Oman, when you say things like that, it makes it seem like it was actually you," I explained.

Oman sighed. "Sorry y'all. I've been, ah, overeatin' a bit."

Ordinally I would've been mad, but considering what Oman has done for us and how hard he's worked to help us complete our quest, I calmed down and said, "It's fine. We can just land at the city closest to us and pick up some food there."

"Thanks Kai," Oman said. "Bologna is the closest to us right now, so we can land there to get food. We should get there in about ten minutes, so buckle up kiddos!"

We sat back down on the couches and to pass the time, we talked about the food we would want to get from Bologna, making a sort of grocery list. After a couple minutes, we landed in an empty grass field a few miles away from the city of Bologna.

Bologna was truly a sight to behold, further solidifying how beautiful the country of Italy was. The city gave off old, medieval vibes, with its brick houses and red-tiled roofs, and it was abuzz with activity, the plazas crowded with people.

"Alright y'all, we've arrived in Bologna," Oman said.

Amethyst nodded. "Ok, good. So, who's going to go to the market?"

"Why don't we all just go? That way, we all get what we want and get our food quicker," Geneva countered.

"But we don't want to risk too much attention by staying together as a large group," Rose said. "Remember, we're all fugitives and it's not worth risking our safety over going to the market."

"The fact that we're even debating about this is just plain sad," I said. "Back in the day, we were free to do as we please. We didn't have to coordinate over who was going to buy some groceries."

Amethyst furrowed her brow. "Yeah, but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about."

"I know, I was just saying," I mumbled.

Just as Rose opened her mouth to speak, heavy footsteps echoed on the upper deck and I could hear rapid steps as something or someone went down the stairs to the lower deck.

"What the hell was that?" Timmy asked.

Amethyst shook her head. "I don't know. Let's go check it out."

We exited Oman's cabin and hustled downstairs, trying to see what the commotion was about. We first searched Amethyst's room, as it was the first one in the long hallway of rooms. When we entered her cabin, I couldn't help but wonder what creature could make such a mess in such a quick time.

Torn up clothes were all over the ground and Amethyst's library was extremely disorganized, books knocked down and out of order. The sheets on her bed had disappeared and her pillows were ripped up into mountains of fluff that covered the entirety of her bed. But the worst part was the graffiti and drawings painted on her wall, making it look as if a toddler drew on the walls. Her jewelry box was also gone, spelling out two motives for the perpetrators; mess up things and steal things.

"Holy crap, who did this?" Rose asked, her face filled with shock.

Amethyst shook her head, brewing with anger. "I don't know but whoever it is, they're going to pay. Let's go see what they did to the other rooms."

Unfortunately, the rest of our cabins were ransacked just as badly as Amethyst's had been. Alexander's cabin was covered with toilet paper and he was missing his shields while mine was burned to shreds and had taken my prized pun book and also Scorcher. Geneva's entire makeup area had been destroyed and much of her jewelry was gone. Rose's fridge was knocked over, and her daggers had vanished. The one constant in all of the cabins that were ransacked was that we were all missing prized jewelry or possessions.

We then ran over to Timmy's jail cell, where we caught our jewelry-stealing culprits red handed.

They were simply just monkeys who were carrying tote bags filled with our stolen jewelry and items. They ran around the room, turning Timmy's 'room' upside down looking for items to steal.

"Hey, stop that!" Amethyst yelled.

The monkeys snickered, dashing between our legs as they made their escape. I remained hot on their tail though, shooting fire ahead of them to block their route out. They swerved around my shot easily, running up the stairs successfully. I could faintly hear Oman yell, "AHH! I told y'all there were monkeys here! They're gettin' away!"

Well, that was when he was pseudo-hallucinating and being weird, so, that doesn't really count.

Rose had managed to catch up with me as we stormed up the stairs and stayed on the monkeys trail. They hopped off the ship and continued running, now heading toward the city, Rose and I struggling to keep up as we jumped onto the ground and landed badly on our feet, stumbling on the rocky floor.

We recovered though and were able to close some of the distance between us and the monkeys. The monkeys must've spotted us as they ran toward a forest area and split off into two different directions. This separation into two different paths tripped up Rose and I, and almost caused us to collide into each other in confusion. These monkeys were some tricky creatures all right.

We regained our balance and split off so we could continue chasing after the both monkeys. The monkey I was following had climbed up a tree and grabbed onto a vine. Somehow, I managed to keep track of the monkey and never leave my sight off of it as it swung toward several batches of trees. Eventually, the monkey swung toward a tree in which the other monkey had also gone, causing Rose and I to regroup and go back to chasing them together.

We exited the forest scene and into the large cityscape of Bologna, which would prove to be a problem considering the amount of people and how large it was. The monkeys led us into a neighborhood of old, red tiled houses, climbing onto the roofs and jumping house to house. Using my fire, I boosted myself up and began flying, following the monkeys as they jumped on the roofs. Rose ran below me, pursuing the monkeys on foot.

After a while of the monkeys going house to house, they jumped down onto the street in an uncomfortable position and Rose was able to gain more distance on them. She thrusted her hands up and a jagged rock pillar jutted out from the ground, the two monkeys clumsily colliding with the pillar and collapsing on the cement street. Just as I was certain that we had caught the monkeys and could get our things back, a group of the neighborhood residents yelled, "Cosa stanno facendo loro due?!"

I wasn't sure what this meant, but the shouting was enough to make Rose and I turn around in confusion to see what the ruckus was about. But in doing this, the monkeys got the opportunity to recover and get around the pillar, continuing their escape into the city. Rose and I quickly realized that we had lost our opportunity to catch the monkeys and jumped over the pillars, catching the monkeys heading towards a declining, muddy slope.

They began sliding down, so Rose and I did the same, making sure not to lose our balance and potentially injure ourselves. As we skidded down the slope, bits of mud flew into our faces and got into my eye, causing me to lose sight.

"Rose, I can't see!" I shouted panickedly.

"Neither can I!" she exclaimed. "Just hold on!"

This situation was not looking good for us. We couldn't see a thing and at this rate, it looked like we would lose the monkeys and all of our stuff. Just when it seemed like we would end up falling off the slope, our feet touched a smooth surface and we were able to open our eyes.

In front of us, there was a metallic door that had just shut close. There was a faint 'click' sound, the door locking. I was able to hit the door down using a fire blast.

Behind the now knocked down door was a medium-length room filled with glittering jewelry, weapons, and all sorts of other items that lit the room up with a dim light. There, the monkeys placed the tote bags onto a desk that stood in front of the pile of items.

Sitting in said desk was a man, wearing a whole suit and outfit of metal. He was wearing worn out jeans, with metal over his kneecaps and regular boots. His torso region was covered by a celestial bronze breastplate, which was coated in grease. His eyes, mouth, and nose were the only areas of his face not covered, as he bore a metal covering on his facial region. The suit the man wore struck me as some prototype outfit inspired by Iron Man's Mark 1 suit, appearing heavy and being quite movement restricting.

"Hello?" I asked. "Who are you?"

"Autolycus," the man responded. "Son of Hermes and a renowned thief amongst men."