Are You Serious?

Chapter 18

The next day, I was sitting cross-legged on my bed strumming my acoustic guitar softly, playing random notes.

There was a soft knock at my door. I looked up and stopped strumming.

Too lazy to set my guitar down and open the door, I called “come in!”

After a few seconds, the door opened a little and Dylan looked in.

I immediately smiled once I saw him. “Hey!”

His own smile disappeared though almost as quickly as it came. “Ready to train?” he asked simply and getting to the point.

“Sure!” I hopped off of the bed and in one swift movement, I had the guitar on its stand and was over by the door.

Dylan turned to go down the hallway and I followed.

He led me to the room we had been in yesterday with Stevie while I learned how to fight hand on hand combat.

I looked around the room in a once-over to see if there was anything to indicate what we were going to be doing.

The room looked the same as it had before, simple two tone brown walls, laminate wood floor, one window on the far side, and small-ish table.

“So today you will be learning how to use…uh…anything.”

“Anything?” I looked at Dylan confused.

He picked up a sword off of the table next to him, “this to start out with.”

My eyes grew in size. I hadn’t even noticed the sword next to him! I really need to start paying more attention, I thought. How had I looked at the whole room but missed that?!

“And that,” he nodded to a big pipe on the table. Maybe I just hadn’t looked at the table at all? I’m pretty sure I had though…

“That?” I asked skeptically but picked the pipe up anyway.

Dylan nodded, “you’re going to have the pipe, and I’ll have the sword.”

“How come you get the sword and I get this lousy pipe?”

“Because, quite frankly, in a battle, you will more than likely end up with anything in reaching distance, while your opponent has something like a sword or dagger.”

I nodded and held the pipe up like a sword.

“Okay, now try to hit me.”

I thought for a minute before swinging my pipe at his left side. He moved backwards and out of reach.

Next, I tried to hit him on his right side, and he stepped to the left.

Whichever way I tried to hit him, every single time he easily dogged the impact. Of course, I never tried to hit him very hard though.

“Good, but you need to be a slight bit quicker. Remember the tips Stevie gave you from yesterday.”

I tried again but quicker. I also looked at a different part of his body than I was about to hit in attempt throw him off.

Right before I could hit Dylan, his hands came up, blocking the blow with his sword. It cut right through the pipe, causing the tip of it to fall to the floor with a loud clank. The rest of it, still under the momentum of my swing, barely grazed his shoulder, ripping a small bit of his jacket.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry!” I exclaimed after seeing the rip on his sleeve.

He shrugged looking at it. “It’s fine; this is my old, worn out jacket. That’s why I wore it,” he bent down and picked up the piece of pipe that got cut off.

He smirked and tossed it in the air, “guess I know how sharp this sword is now.”

This caused me to giggle.

“So, uhm,” Dylan started looking down in a nervous manor, “about the-” he was cup off by the door opening again and Spencer walking in.

“So how’s it goin’”?

Really? Couldn’t you have picked a better time than just now?! How am I supposed to know what he was going to say now? I thought frustrated. Now he’ll probably never tell me considering that he barely ever talks and when he does it’s very little. Curiosity is eventually going to kill me.

Dylan shrugged at Spencer and walked back over to the table to set the sword down.

Spencer sighed, “still as anti-social as ever once again.”

I smiled and switched the pipe to my other hand.

“Honestly, I think he has this limited dictionary of words he can use each day. Like if he runs out of words, something bad happens…” Spencer tried to joke around.

“You know I can hear you, right?” Dylan said giving Spencer a flat look.

Spencer smiled back at him, “that was the whole point.”

I laughed and picked up a dagger from the table then held it up, “so when can I use this?”

“Right now,” Dylan and Spencer said simultaneously then looked at each other weird.

Spencer picked up the pipe I had set down and a shield, while Dylan picked up a long block of wood.

The three of us battled against each other until we were out of breath. I set down my weapon with a thud, shortly fallowed by the other two.

“So uh, this is training for a combat battle with Vander, right?” it seemed a little unlikely for me to ever end up fighting with Vander in this sort of way. Maybe he wasn’t even going to strike back at us, maybe he had given up. Once again, highly unlikely, but still possible.

Spencer nodded, “pretty much, yeah. We would help you master you power too, but we don’t know exactly what it is so that would be a little tricky. Plus we don’t have your power so we don’t know how to use it.”

I nodded understanding.

“My power is that I can deflect things and throw them back?” I asked verifying that I had remembered right.

“From what we know. There’s probably even more to that,” Dylan hopped up on the table.

The door opened once again, this time with Riley coming in. “Piper told me to come get you guys for lunch…”

“OH! LUNCH!” Spencer yelled and started off to the door at a brisk pace. Dylan jumped off the table fallowing him.

Riley walked behind me and started pushing on my back, “come on little tiny train, you gotta eat to! Stop gawking at our hotness and think of food for once!”

I could tell he was smiling just by the tone of his voice so I reached back and smacked his arm playfully then started walking faster so he wasn’t still pushing me along anymore.