Chapter 10: Victoria (Friday, October 28, 1994)
I need a break. Sure the party at Dorter was a nice day of relaxation but I need a break from school and Crystaltina. I half expected something to go wrong the day after the party, but nothing did. It’s been almost a week and nothing has happened. I’m a bit grateful but half anxious as well. At least I have pressure from school to keep me going. However for today, I need a break and I’m taking it. Kyle feels that he has to follow me as well. I’m slightly timid from showing Kyle my private island but no matter what I say, he’s going to follow me anyway.
We’re near the baseball field before the start of class. I already planned this before I left my house this morning so instead of wearing normal jean or khaki shorts, I have on a pair of black swim shorts and a white t-shirt to cover up my blue and black bikini top.
“Up to you if you want to skip school today and follow me,” I say as I teleport away from the high school and to the tiny island that I first teleported to.
I appear at the edge of the beach and I place my feet into the water. It is warm and refreshing. I pull off my white t-shirt and toss it behind me, unaware that it falls on top of Kyle’s head who has just teleported in.
“So are you going to be going into the water with me?” I say, sarcastically, “Never know when a monster may attack while I’m in here.” I really have to joke about how we haven’t gotten attacked yet.
I place my other foot into the water. The calmness of the water is soothing but I haven’t heard anything from Kyle. I turn around and he’s looking straight at me. “You okay?” I ask, placing my hands on my hips.
“Huh, yea, why wouldn’t I be?” he stammers out.
“You’ve been quiet since we got here, I was just wondering.”
“Hey listen,” Kyle calls out, tossing the shirt to the sand. “We might as well head back to school. We can always come back tomorrow.”
“No one is stopping you from heading back, you know,” I say, turning around. Goose bumps begin to appear on my tan skin as a strong gust of wind passes by. “Heh, might as well, right?” I decide to dive into the water, which turns out to be much deeper than one would think. Inches from the shore line, the water is a good fifteen feet deep.
“Awkward,” Kyle says, making his way to the water, thinking about his conversation with Celestria.
Kyle looks down into the water and knows that I should have resurfaced by now. I’m a very good swimmer but as far as holding my breath for a good amount of time, I’m not so good at. Kyle decides to throw off his shirt and dives into the water. Several feet below he spots a cave. Kyle swims towards it, hoping that maybe I saw the same cave and swam in that direction.
His head pops out from under the water and he takes a deep breath in. He scans the cave to see a few items here and there: a computer desk with a computer and some equipment next to it, as well as a bed, a table, a small refrigerator, and a few other items that are covered with a white sheet. He spots me and steps onto the rocky ground. I turn around briefly and notice that he’s taken off his shirt, which makes sense when one is diving into the ocean. His skin is only slightly tanned from the sun since he doesn’t take his shirt off outside that often. Working out and sparring so much has kept Kyle in shape as he sports a muscular physique that doesn’t show well when clothed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kyle calls out, his voice echoing off of the walls.
“I found a cave, wanted to check it out. Sorry that I didn’t ask for your permissions, sir,” I roll her eyes and walk over to the computer, my bare feet slapping against the ground. “I wonder who lives here, and why? I assumed no one lived on a deserted island.”
“I’m serious, you need to be more careful,” Kyle says, his voice lowers. He’s still worried about what was said at the Dorter party and the news Josh had brought over. He really is taking things more seriously now.
“Yea, yea, I get it,” I answer, half paying attention to Kyle. I press a random key on the keyboard and the blank screen vanishes and is replaced by schematics.
“I don’t think we should be here. If this is someone’s home—-”
“It’s a blueprint of the school,” I cut Kyle off.
“What? You mean our high school?”
“Yea, it’s the entire place. And look,” I point at a list on the screen, to the right of the blueprint. It’s a list of several students who attend the high school, including our names. “This can’t be good, right?” I sit in the chair and begin looking around the computer. Still unfamiliar with a computer, I’m not having any luck finding any new information. “Okay, we need someone who’s good with computers…”
“Excuse me?!” A voice is heard behind us, a familiar one.
Kyle and I both look at each other before turning around. In front of us, with short brown hair is my clone. I stand from the chair.
“You can’t be serious,” she says, rolling her eyes. “The one place I try to hide and you just happen to show up.”
“Listen, we don’t have to fight,” Kyle says.
“We didn’t think anyone was here but now that we are, why do you have blueprints of our school?” I ask. It’s odd looking at me, even though she has shorter hair and looks to be a few inches shorter than me as well.
“You think I’m going to tell you two my plans?” she laughs. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re trapped.”
If this clone is a true copy of me, maybe that’s how I was able to locate her without even trying. I need to try to reason with her, “Why are you against us? We should be working together to stop Ozma.”
“So you found this place by accident?” the clone says, ignoring me.
“Yes.”
“This cave, that’s under the water in a large ocean and you were able to find it by accident?”
“Look, I wanted to go to the beach, away from tourists, so I came here. That’s the truth. I didn’t even know that you were on Earth.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” the clone pulls out a pair of sai that was attached to her back, hidden from our view. She throws one towards my chest with such force and precision.
Kyle pulls back his arm and fires off a bolt to knock the sai away. The shock instead brings him to his knees. With the confrontation, Kyle forgets that he’s still wet from ocean. Luckily, the bolt is still able to push the sai off course and it falls to the floor. However during this quick delay, the clone is already heading towards me with amazing speed. Before I can react, her hands are around my neck and I am pressed against the wall of the cave.
“This is just too easy,” the clone mocks, her back facing Kyle as he stands up. He’s about to rush over but I stop him. I need to try to reach my clone, reason with her. Maybe we can have her help us instead of being against us.
“Stay back,” I yell out.
“Pointless,” the clone says, her other hand reaching for the sai and pointing it to my neck.
“What are you planning?” I ask, ignoring the weapon.
“I don’t think you’re the one in the position to be asking the questions.”
Kyle takes another step forward, ignoring my request, but still taking his time to see where this might lead to.
“What’s your name?” I ask, starting simple.
“What?”
“It seems that you’re nothing like me so you’ve had to create yourself an identity. Or do you want us to call you The Clone?”
“Victoria, but that’s all you need to know.”
“Come with us. She created you but the way she treats you and everyone on Zerron isn’t right and she needs to be stopped.”
“I follow no one,” Victoria says, pressing the sai against my neck, causing blood to drip.
“Listen, I don’t know why you’re against me, and if that’s how it’s going to be, then fine. But if you’re not going to tell us, we’ll just have to figure it out on our own and end up stopping you. And if you come back again with some bullshit scheme, we will stop you again. And if you want to join us, then fine. But for now, I’m not going to be pushed around by some carbon copy.”
This angers Victoria and causes her grip on my neck to tighten, making it harder to breath. All the while, my finger has been pointed at Victoria. It’s hard for me to say anything now and since I can’t reason with Victoria I shoot off a close range fire spell that is strong enough to push Victoria back to the opposite wall, slamming her into it and she falls to the ground, passing out.
I drop to my knees as I try to breath. Kyle rushes over, “Are you alright?”
“Yea,” I say, before being helped to my feet. “We need that computer.”
“What about Victoria?” he asks.
“Leave her here,” I answer, walking over to the computer. I start to unplug the tower.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yea…hopefully we can learn something from her computer.” My head begins to throb as I stand.
Victoria starts to move and slowly gets up. She looks over to us with disgust and tosses down a smoke pellet and vanishes.
“I guess we don’t have a choice now,” Kyle says, wondering why I was willing to leave Victoria behind. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yea, but what about you, I mean, you shocked yourself,” I try not to laugh.
“We don’t have to mention that again, let’s just get to Crystaltina. Zar-Q should have all of his equipment in by tomorrow. Maybe he can check out this computer and find out why she has blueprints on our school.”
“Hey,” I say. “If Victoria isn’t working for Ozma, that means we still have to keep an eye out. We need to have Z do a search on Robby and Ty as well.” I stop speaking as soon as I notice Kyle shivering. “So you get yourself shocked and you’re going to get a cold.” I walk over and hold out both of my palms and ignite a fire to warm and dry off Kyle.
“You know if we teleport back I can get warmed up faster instead of standing in a cold cave,” he slowly says.
I hesitate before speaking, “You’re right….we should go…”
Kyle picks up the computer tower after throwing down the potion. He then steps through the portal. I stand and wait for a few seconds, trying to gather my composure. I hope Kyle didn’t think anything of it when I tried to warm him up. He did have a point in which we’re heading back to the catacombs so why did I find the need to try to help him here? It’s not like he was wounded, save for his pride and a simple cold can be rectified simply. As I am lost in my thoughts, the portal closes.
“Why are you dressed like that…shouldn’t you be in school?” Celestria asks.
Kyle sets down the tower on the table and tells Celestria, “Anya wanted to go to the beach instead and I couldn’t let her go off on her…wait, where is she?”
I appear seconds later, “Hey.” I then walk out of the room and head to my room on Crystaltina to change.
“What happened?” Celestria turns to face Kyle.
“What?” he asks, still feeling cold and in need of warm clothing.
“Get warm clothes on before you get a cold,” Celestria finally says.
