Chapter 9

March 31, 1995

Coralis was beyond exhausted. For the past few months, she’s been spending all of her time between classes, flyball, additional classes and the library. She felt like she had no free time for herself, even if in fact, she considered flyball practices and games as fun times. She missed the shenanigans with the Fullemon brothers or with Victoria.

She wanted to end it with Lord Meozo. She hadn’t received any random letters for over a year, but she remembered them well and didn’t want to receive any more of them. She was tired of it all: of the looming threat hanging above her head, the uneasy feeling of something watching her and waiting for it to concretize, the overloaded extra-curriculum activities, and all of those people who thought she would start worshipping Lord Meozo just because her parents did.

At 19:00, she was sitting in the library, once again, trying to research what had been tried before to destroy the type of creature that Lord Meozo was. As far as she knew, from all the stories she read and heard from her teachers and friends, he was born an earth elemental mage, but always sought to be more.

Like her, he was an orphan, but not because his parents died when he was a baby: he made himself an orphan. She couldn’t figure out why. Now that she was surrounded by people who actually grew up surrounded by a loving family and got to experience it, she couldn’t fathom why someone would want to be without that. Since she started at the GES, she began to understand a lot of the things that Ms. Lenoir and Ms. Henrien, two of her social workers, had tried to explain, and why they pushed for a trial, even if it was clear that they were going to lose.

He never was happy with what he had and started chasing the wrong demon to make himself feel more powerful, to be above it all. Over the years, he became cursed. Not only was he chasing powers of all kind, but he was also chasing immortality. As if he wanted to become a god. Coralis began to realize that beneath all that, he was a scared little boy, who was seeking the approval of his mother, but she couldn’t accept what he was becoming and what he stood for. He felt like he never was good enough and wanted to feel like he was above her: he wanted her to worship him. In the end, he got addicted to the sense of adoration he got from his followers, to the idea that his supporters would do anything to please him, that he became like his own mother in a way, but he couldn’t see it.

Coralis struggled to stay awake, but she kept fighting with herself. This was important. She had to find a way to end Lord Meozo. Based on everything she read, she was wondering what the EBEE and the CMMA were thinking. Merely dissolving his body from within a summoning circle would never have kept him away forever. Maybe they just wanted to buy themselves some time. She found some occurrences of similar situations and began to read about what was done to end those cursed creatures.

Victoria was next to her. Unlike Coralis, she wasn’t struggling to stay awake and enjoyed just sitting at the library to research. Like her friend, however, she was growing frustrated and angry with the whole situation. Victoria hated that her friend was continually in danger, making herself in danger too. She wasn’t regretting becoming friends with Coralis, but wished that her own life wouldn’t be in danger just because she was close to her. Like Coralis, she just wanted to find a way to end Lord Meozo.

“Ms. Golmar,” the librarian whispered. Coralis jumped on her seat, she didn’t see him walking up to her, “the principal wants to see you now.”

“Oh ok, thanks, I’ll go see him now.”

Coralis got up and pushed the book she was reading toward Victoria.

“I have to go see the principal. It better not be for a detention, I’ve had literally no time to get into any sort of trouble.”

“Well… I can think of something… and I hope it’s not because of that. Those two are helping to keep us alive and the principal isn’t.”

What Principal Arthuro told her was the last thing she was expecting or needed to hear. Her cousin Nadilla killed herself the night before. She couldn’t believe it. ‘No, Nadilla wouldn’t do that. There is no way. Neither of us were happy with our situation… but she also made good friends at school… did she lie on that?’ She stood in front of the principal without listening, lost in her own thoughts. Until he clapped his hands less than a centimeter from her nose. Startled, she looked at him staring at her. Remembering what he had just told her, she bolted out of his office.

The first window she saw, she spelled it to open, grabbed her flying stick keychain from her robe and jumped off. She turned her keychain into a flying stick within a second and rode it. She went into such a rage that she conjured up a storm without realizing it. The sky filled with lightnings and thunder. She was angry at herself. She should have been there for her. The last few years, she was so set on spending her summers with the Fullemons, trying to get a glimpse of what life with a happy family was truly like, that she completely neglected the one family member that she actually had.

She felt guilty. She then started thinking about the last few letters that Nadilla had sent her. She was happy at her school. Like her, one of her friend’s family was trying to adopt her, but was drowned into a seemingly impossible mountain of paperwork to go through. Maybe she was tired of it all, of never being able to entertain hope of happiness.

Something didn’t add up and she had to find out what really happened. She would need to go to the funerals. She didn’t know if she could: she didn’t listen to anything the Principal Arthurio had said after he told her the news about her cousin, so she would need to talk to Martha. She had to go to the funeral and was willing to get expelled over it.

Martha told her that she had already arranged it: she and Victoria would fly to Sudbury, where they would meet with Victoria’s parents. From there, they would use elemental transportation to get to Northern Ontario. The school had already agreed to let her attend the funeral, considering Nadilla was the only family member she had. Victoria’s parents had agreed to act as chaperon. Martha had insisted that Coralis would need a close friend with her, to at least balance out her emotions and help to prevent them from escalating out of control. Victoria was a close friend and her family was living in Canada. While the Montreal metropolitan area wasn’t anywhere close to the Northern Ontario school, they were available and in the same country, so the school administrators agreed to that.

At the funeral, Coralis stayed silent the entire time. She couldn’t process anything, but she listened to everything. Nothing made sense. Nadilla was happy, she had no reason to kill herself, but had everything to look up for. She overheard a lot of conversations: Lord Meozo must have been there. One of her friends, Laticia, refused to believe that Nadilla killed herself and was convinced that the school was covering something up, but no one would listen to her. Laticia’s parents were trying to adopt Nadilla, but paperwork wouldn’t go through. To her, she was like a twin sister from a distant relative.

When Coralis got back to her school in Scotland, she refused to talk to anyone for nearly a week. She distanced herself from everyone. She spent her entire time, beside classes, up in the sky on her flying stick, focusing her energy and attention on flyball. She missed her weekly meeting with Martha and Swope, but they understood: she was grieving the only relative she had. She knew that her mother had siblings that were still alive, but that didn’t count: they were dead to her, as she refused to associate with what Lord Meozo was standing for and what he was doing. Coralis was convinced that Lord Meozo was somehow behind her death: her cousin was probably also targeted by him.

Two weeks later, scouts for the British and Canadian national teams were in attendance. Coralis had started to talk to people again, but to a select few. She was still ignoring most people, answering yes or no when she absolutely needed to. She could feel the unbalanced power stirring within her. Flyball was the only way she knew where she could just let go of everything without hurting anyone accidently: it was an aggressive sport after all. Once again, for nearly the entire match, the crowd loudly chanted the name Blue Thunder, but she wasn’t paying attention to them.

The British scouts were impressed, but she was too young. Coralis was only 14-year-old and on her 5th year at school. They decided to wait another year or two, but they signed up Erik and Henry: they were 16-year-old and on their last year at school, despite their numerous detentions.

The Canadian scouts, however, didn’t care and sought to sign Coralis up as a reservist until she was out of school. They remembered the inter-school tournament the previous year: they’ve had their eyes set on her as soon as they found out about her dual-nationality. Coralis was attending a school in Scotland, her mother was born in the United Kingdom, but she was born in Canada and was considered a citizen there, making her eligible for the Canadian team.

Coralis was excited at the opportunity: this was a dream coming true. She wanted to keep playing with Erik and Henry, but at the end, she wanted to play flyball professionally. Plus, she figured that playing against them could actually be fun. The British team wanting to wait meant that it was not a sure thing, so she wanted to sign up with the Canadian team, if they were serious about wanting her, even as a reservist.

Because Coralis was only 14-year-old, her appointed guardian, Martha, had to agree to it. Martha didn’t hesitate and immediately agreed to it without talking to Coralis first. With everything that Coralis went through, especially for the past few weeks, she saw that as something very positive for her, something to look up to. If Coralis wanted it, she would consent: her protegee deserved it. Martha was also very glad to see her excited about something: she was finally getting out of her isolation shell.

Martha told the scouts that given her academic records, she would likely be graduating on her 7th year. She also mentioned to them that although she was considered as a ward of the state to the human government, she was also likely going to be emancipated when she turns 15th near the end of the summer. She gave them one condition however: they had to sign her up under the name of ‘Blue Thunder’. She was a minor under her protection, her identity could not be revealed to the public for her safety.

The following weekend, the national Canadian flyball team officials were there to officially sign Blue Thunder up as a reservist attacker until she graduated from school, after which she would fully become a main attacker. The team officials trusted their scouts, but after hearing the way they spoke of her, they had to see a match for themselves. They understood quickly why she had to be signed up as ‘Blue Thunder’. They didn’t see what the crowd saw when she earned that nickname, but they kept hearing the crowd rooting for that name over and over.

With what they saw, they would have been willing to sign Coralis up under any condition her guardian would have asked for. Her guardian could have asked for more money, but the only condition was that she had to be referred to as ‘Blue Thunder’. Therefore, they would make sure that their new attacker was to be referred to as Blue Thunder.