Chapter 7

I looked up, confused. Mr. Curota shot up from the chair he had fallen asleep in. "Huh? I wasn't asleep!""

He looked over to me and nodded. "I see you made it to the end. Nice." He looked up. "The alarm is for when there are intruders. I think you should get to the headquarters. Go now! Fly over the course! Be quick!"

My heart trembled, the loud alarm still ringing. In fact, it sounded like it was getting louder. I grabbed the gold crown and looked back. I didn't even stop to pick a path, I just started jumping to the closest open space. I almost laughed with how easy it was to fly over all my obstacles when my friends might be in danger. I swung from bar to platform to pillar, stumbling but getting back up. I saw the end of the course and took a running leap, and grabbed onto the end platform. I scrambled up, ready to run to The Map Room, but all the alarms shut off. Mr. Curota walked toward me with a smile. "Good job, you have completed Gymnastics under pressure."

I stopped for a moment. "You mean- that was a false alarm?"

He nodded. "You're not supposed to ask questions but, yes. It was part of the challenge. Now we learn how to combine magic with it."

I nervously laughed. "Well I'm glad my friends aren't in danger."

He clapped and all of the obstacles disappeared. I handed him the golden crown, and he handed me a stick with a button on it. "This is your Gymnastics Alliance Stick, GAS for short."

I snorted. "Gas? I think I'll just call it Stick. Anything's better than gas."

He chuckled a bit then took it. "You press this button here-" he pointed to the only button "it does this." He pressed it and I gasped.

Two what almost looked like lasers shot out of each side. The span of the weapon was about 5 feet, just enough to handle. "You grip it here-" He motioned toward the stick part of it. "It's meant to be both a weapon and something to help you jump around."

He whistled and a cardboard cutout of a monster popped up in front of him. He slashed at it and a burning hole appeared right where its heart would have been. "You can disable burning to just a knockout weapon if you don't want to kill by tapping it two times on the side."

He did so, then when he slashed at the monster again, all it did was fall over flat. I gaped. "You can also make it solid by pressing the button twice." He demonstrated, and it turned to a- solid laser?

He then did a cartwheel, a backflip, then walked on his hands. He stood back up and looked at my dumbfounded face. "I can do that because I have trained with- Stick."

I gaped. "Will I be able to do that?"

He smiled. "If you practice everyday, yes, I think so."

I gingerly took the weapon from his hands. "How does this help you do cartwheels?" I asked.

Mr. Curota chuckled. "Well, it doesn't exactly help do that, but it does do this..."

He took it back and jumped forward. I gasped and stepped back, wondering if he was going to fall on his face. Instead he pushed Maggie against the ground, and the force of that propelled him up and flung him backward. He did a flip in the air, then landed on his feet.

I gaped. He nodded and handed it back to me. "I can't teach you to use GAS, or as you call it, Stick. You have to learn to use it on your own. Every hero had a different way they use this stick. A unique style of fighting."

I respected him now, forgetting how rude he had been. "Well, t-thank you!"

He nodded, then stepped back. "Lia!" I heard a shout come from a door next to the course, leading out of the building.

I walked over to it, and it flung open. Alex ran out. "Lia, you were amazing! We watched everything you did on a camera!"

"We?" I asked him.

"Me and Trish!" He said smiling. "You did great! I wouldn't be able to complete that course with the amount of ease you had."

I snorted. "Ease? That was anything but."

He reached out and gave me a quick hug. "Come on! I have something to show you!"

I followed him out of the building, and was led into the moving map room. I looked behind me and saw the door disappear behind me. I shook my head. I couldn't figure this place! There are displaced rooms everywhere, some the size of a closet, some as enormous as a theater. Doors came and went at the oddest times. There wasn't even a map of the HQ, as it would have to be updated constantly.

The Fairy Grandmother appeared in a cloud of sparkles next to the map and smiled, walking toward me. "Good job, Lia. You are exceeding my expectations in your progress. You're doing better than any of The Four ever did."

I frowned, knitting my eyebrows together. "But, this isn't as hard as I thought it would be. Sure, I almost died a couple of times, and it took me a long time to complete some of them, but it hasn't been too difficult. In fact, I've been having fun."

She smiled, her purple eyes twinkling. "This is why I chose you to be the leader."

I grinned, about to thank her, then stopped. "Wait. Can I ask you a question?"

She nodded. "You already did, dearie, but go ahead."

"Why aren't your eyes blue? When someone commits them to The Four, their eyes turn blue. Yours are purple."

"I committed myself to helping The Four, I am not a part of them. I am like the big boss, that helps everyone and schedules things. When The Four are on a mission, you will lead them. Since I'm not a real part of The Four, my eyes are purple."

I nodded. "I also want to know. Why do you think the cloak showed up at the warehouse? Trish said The Cloak Keeper had it, so why would he just leave it there, for me to find?"

She shook her head gravely. "This is what I've been trying to find out for the past few days. I've been thinking that perhaps one of The Keeper's minions is secretly on our side. Or perhaps The Cloak is connected to you in some way. It's a shame that the Keeper got the Cloak back as soon as he did."

At the end of Godmother's speech an idea occurred to me. It was a dark thought, and I didn't want to tell Godmother, not yet at least.

I thanked her for the explanation, and said I was going to my room to think for a while. Instead, I went to the large library where we studied.

Oh please let me be wrong about this.

I flung open the door of the library, and speed-walked in. I looked around for any librarians. "Hello?" I called out.

The library was huge. Even that word doesn't do it justice. Ginormous maybe. Gargantuan. It went straight down as a long corridor, But at the sides were rooms filled with bookshelves, with rooms on top of them filled with more books. (Picture to jog your imagination)

I started walking down the long corridor, wincing internally everytime my footsteps echoed loudly. I couldn't see anyone else in the library, so I was about to leave and come back later. But then an elderly voice called out. "Why are you here child?"

I jumped and turned back around. "Huh? Who's there?"

"Right back here child. Come to the old librarian, tell me what you need." The voice said again.

I was able to pinpoint it farther down the corridor. I went down, looking at both of the sides as I walked. Then suddenly, on my right, I saw a room with a desk inside, and a man sitting behind. He looked to be my grandpa's age, if I even had one. His wrinkles were prominent, and veins showed through his arms. But the most prominent feature was his face. One of his eyes was brown, and the other was a sickly white, with a milky film covering his eye.

I noticed something odd. "How did you know I was here, and how did you know I was a child?"

The man wheezed. It sounded quite disturbing, and I took a step back. "Well child, you may see one of my eyes. Many people think I'm blind in that eye, but in fact it helps me see. I can see things others can't."

I frowned. "So what can you see? What does it show you?"

He wheezed again. It sounded more like coughing this time. "Many things child, many things. Sometimes it gives me headaches, and it's very painful. I gave myself a rule I would never tell anyone."

I gasped. "You can see the future, can't you? Do we get the Cloak back? Do we lose? What happens?"

The librarian shook his head. "You forget my rule, little one. I cannot reveal anything. I have already said too much. But let us come back to things at present, eh? Tell me what you are here for, and perhaps I can help you."

I took a deep breath. "I'm looking for a book about the Cloak Keeper. Do you know where I can find one?"

He stood up slowly, and I almost darted to his side. He looked so fragile, like he could fall at any moment. Then he walked around the desk to me. "I know where you can find many books on him, child, but it's in a forbidden part of the library. Do you have anything you can to make me trust you?"

I nodded. "Does being leader of The Four count?"

He tottered over to my side. "Why yes, it does. Maybe you aren't such a child as I thought you were. Come, dear."

He walked back the way I came to about 5 rooms, and then stopped. He pressed a hidden button on the side of a pillar and some stairs popped out of a bookshelf a little further on. "This way, dear."

We walked up the stairs together, onto a high balcony. He led me through a door into a dusty room. "Is there anything about The Cloak Keeper you would like to research?"

I shook my head, looking around. "I don't think so. Unless.. Do you have any books on his family? And children or spouses?" It didn't have anything to do with the thought circling around my head, but I was curious.

The librarian nodded. "We have a few. I think you're looking for this." He took a book off the bookshelf and handed it to me. It was titled "History of Lite Drager".

I took it and thanked him. "By the way, I never asked your name. I'm Lia."

The old man looked at me with his crinkled eyes and gave me a little smile. "My name is Kai. Have fun researching, dear."

As he walked away, I opened the book to the Table of Contents. They listed "1. Birth. 2. Timeline. 3. Time in Organization. 4. Family Tree". I stopped there. The family tree was what I was looking for. I opened it up to that page, and there was a bit of text before the tree. It read,

This is what is known of Lite Dragers family. All of these names have been comprised from factual research, and people close to Lite. Many of these people are now dead, or missing. Lite has been known to hunt down and kill anyone who knew him before the Cloak era, as he does not want anyone knowing too much about him.

I shivered. Why would anyone want to kill their own family? My eyes moved to the Family Tree. At the top were 8 boxes. In every two were the words "Great Grandfather" and "Great Grandmother". And every pair had a line connecting them to another pair. At the very top, in the first Great Grandparents box, were the names "Drak Gare" and "Sunny Gare". It appeared that Sunny was married to the male of the other set of great grandparents, "Rast Drae" and "Laly Drae". They connected their last names there and that's when they made the last name "Drager". They also made two children. One named "Troy Drager", and the other "Shayla Drager". Then the other 2 pair of grandparents married, and had a child named "Blake Darwin". Shayla and Darwin married, and Darwin changed his last name.

That was when Lite came into play. He was their child. I noticed something else, which surprised me. He had a brother?

Next to his name was another name, "Kai Drager". I gasped. "That's the librarians name!"