Sunday 10 November 2013

Chapter 4

I landed with a thud and kept on running. As I jumped over to the next building, I looked down at the hustle and bustle of the streets below.
It rules being a hunter, you just go straight over the normal people, no one pushing you around to places and you get places way quicker.
Land, run, jump, land, run, jump, land, run, jump.
With Robin, Bow and Arrow right behind me, we reached Darling Quarter in no time. Unfortunately we couldn’t just waltz through because they were checking everybody’s bags. If they looked through any of our bags we would probably be arrested. I noticed that Arrow was breathing heavily so I decided to think about the problem for a few minutes on our perch on the Entertainment Theatre.
“Why are we stopping?” asked Robin.
I answered him with a condescending tone, “Well how do you think we are going to get past them or get through that big crowd without being notice, four kids wearing dark colours and walking through a really crowd place like that everyone would think we were up to something –”
“Ah, but we are up to something” Robin cut me off.
I just gave him a death stare; he’s unfortunately immune to being scolded.
“And any of those people could be a Poacher,” I continued, “You guys see if you can find a way around.”
I went and talked to Arrow who was taking a breather.
“You OK?” I asked, as I got her water bottle out of her bag and gave it to her
“Yeah, just a little bit tired,” she replied before taking a sip.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have run so quickly, but the boys think they can out run me,” I apologised as I sat down next to her.
She muttered something under her breath that I didn’t quite catch.
“What?” I questioned.
“I said sometimes I don’t feel like I can contribute anything to the group,” she sighed, “I mean Saffron is so kind to her friends, but would send an arrow right through someone’s eyes if anyone was mean to any of us. Robin always looks on the bright side of everything and makes everyone laugh. Bow is like the best brother you could have, and you… You are an all-rounder and the best at pretty much everything.”
“That is so not true, you can offer heaps of things to the group,” I whispered to her, “like your brains because I’m pretty sure the boys are finding it hard to find a way to get in,” I said as we got up and went over to the boys.
And true to word, Arrow spotted a way to get in straight away.
“We just have to follow the monorail, and then when we get to the bridge we have to get underneath the bridge,” she said like it was the easiest thing to come up with.
“Well… Wouldn’t our faces get smashed to pieces if we jumped from the bridge?” said Robin.
“Does ‘get underneath’ mean we jump?” replied Arrow, “we just need to get a closer look, and then I will find out how to get underneath.”

We made it to the bridge without any dilemma. We went the way Arrow suggested, with Arrow at the front. Robin and I were keeping watch, while Arrow and Bow are trying to find a way to get to the beams underneath.
“The police are coming this way,” Robin said though the com-link.
I signalled for Arrow and Bow to blend in with the crowd and Robin stayed out of the police line of sight. While I blended in with the crowd like Bow and Arrow, the police with their blue uniforms went right past me.
I was just about to contact the rest of the gang, when I felt someone watching me. I turned to see everyone in their colourful summer clothes talking, walking and watching the concert on the stage, (it’s probably nothing) I turned back to try and find Arrow and Bow to see if they have found a way to get underneath the bridge.
The whole time I kept on thinking that someone was following me.
I found my team five minutes later, Robin was already there and they were arguing about something.
Arrow spotted me and argued, “I think Arty should do it.”
“What exactly am I doing?” I said, freaking the boys out.
“Don’t do that!” Bow cried while spinning around to face me, just to see me laughing along with Arrow.
“So what am I doing?” I said between laughs.
“You are going to jump of the bridge backwards and shoot a rope arrow so it attaches to the underneath and then the rest of us will use the rope to get under,” Robin said with a cheeky smile.

“I’m doing what now?” I said; my smile suddenly not there anymore.

Artemis

Saffron

Saffron

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Arrow

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Chapter 3

That whole week we tried to avoid Jack and his gang. It was pretty easy though because they had detention for pretty much every day, but they still found us the day before Australia Day… it was all Robin’s fault!

He decided to try to take them on (don’t ask me what he was thinking because I have no idea) and that brings us up to where we were now;

We were running as fast as we could through this maze of identical corridors without getting lost (but I think we already were). After me and Robin, Arrow, Saffron and Bow followed, they came to help save Robin’s butt from getting whipped.

We made a wrong turn and ended up at the end of a corridor. We were trying to find a way out of there when Saffron spotted an air vent on the roof, she pointed at it and everyone got the idea. We opened it and I gave Arrow, Saffron, Bow and Robin a leg up.

I could hear them coming closer as Bow gave me a hand as I jumped and grasped the sides of the air vent and pulled myself up. I was halfway up when Jack and his gang came around the corner.

“And where exactly do you think you are going?” a bulky, black hair, brown eyes, tall kid called Birch Forest (one of Jack’s bodyguards) sneered as Jack grabbed my foot.

“Get your ugly hand of my foot!” I said (ok maybe it was a shriek but I am never going to admit that) as I realized I was slowly being pulled down.

I kicked out at Jack’s face.

My foot met its mark and Jack made the weirdest noise, kind of like a frog-croak-cross-pig-squeal thing. He let go of my foot and grabbed his face as I took Bow’s hand and pulled myself up into the dark, damp and dusty air vent. I turned around to look at my handiwork for a minute.

“Oh and by the way I think I am going that way,” I said pointing forward before going after my friends.



Ok, so you would think when we went in to the air vent we would know what we were doing and not get lost or anything like that. Well we were lost very, very lost! So we aimlessly roamed around in the air vents for hours. At one point we even came across the Chief’s office and saw him watching cute cat videos on the internet. We stayed there for a while trying very, very hard not to laugh, until we were so tired that with great risk we dropped back down in to the corridors and found our way to our rooms.

Bow, Arrow and Saffron going left towards their dorms and me and Robin going right towards our dorm.

 Saffron is Arrow and Bow’s neighbour. I live with Robin and the rest of his family. His mum and my mum was best friends, so when my mum died while battling some Poachers and no one knew who my dad was, I ended up living with Robin and his family.

We tried sneaking in to our dorm but Mr and Mrs Hollis and Birdie (Robin’s adorable little sister) were still watching TV because it was a holiday tomorrow and then we get stay up late. Our dorm is like an apartment with a bathroom, living room and four small bed rooms. We always go to the mess hall to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. The dorms are mostly white with silver finishes, green accessories and you can see the hunter’s logo on pretty much everything, a bow with two arrows as an X behind it.
 

After a quick discussion with Robin’s parents about how well our ‘studying’ went. I went to my room (blue like everything else I own), crashed onto my bed and fell into a deep sleep, dreaming about talking animals telling me that there was going to be great danger.

That was surprising the most normal dream I had had the whole year.



When I woke up I remembered that today is Australia day, which means it’s the Australia day fireworks, which means that we have our mission today.

We met up at breakfast and all said a groggy hello to each other, avoided Jack’s gang got our breakfast. We were all angry at Robin but I think most of us thought it was really fun. (Jack sporting a black eye nearly killed me in laughter)

We were all eating breakfast silently when Saffron decided to start a conversation.

“So um… Why exactly did you go after Jack and his gang?” she questioned Robin.

I saw that Robin had clearly heard her but he pretended that he hadn’t.

“Ask him again,” I whispered to Saffron

“Why did you go after Jack and his gang,” this time with more force.

We all were looking at him as he looked back at us. He was starting to turn red in the face.

“I… I um I wanted to…” he started but then the announcements started.

Chief was on the screens scattered around the mess hall. Everyone silenced their neighbours as Chief started his speech.

“Good morning my hunters and huntresses, as you probably know it is a public holiday and that means more perimeter patrols and that everyone has to have their weapon with them at all times, in case of attack,” His voice said as it came though the crackly speakers.

It was always the same every holiday and it was still so boring, “And the people who are going to look over the fireworks, can I meet you at the Dock E at nine o’clock.”

The screens turned off with a pop. I got up and cleaned my dishes the rest of them followed me to the door. We headed to the Docks in silence; everyone probably had a gazillion thoughts in their head. One of my thoughts was ‘Why do they call the Docks the Docks? We don’t even have boats.’

“To bad that you’re not in our group,” Arrow whispered to Saffron.

“Yeah it would be so fun if you came with us, but I’m sure you will have fun with Lupa and Lulu” I whispered over my shoulder.

I rounded the corner and saw all the Docks and headed off to Dock E.

There was already a group of people waiting when Saffron, Arrow and me came, the boys were dawdling and came a few minutes later. Chief wasn’t there yet so we were hanging around for a while.

Chief finally came around the corner with his assistant Lina Kiefer. We waited while he said a good natured hello to some of the older hunters and he showed us all a pile of diverse coloured backpacks (each had it's own colour variation to avoid suspicion) which he said were waterproof and that it had everything we needed for the mission and more. I wasn’t really paying attention we probably didn’t even get to keep it.

“You will get to keep the backpack and anything in it. You have an hour to look through the backpack and get used to anything in it. Be ready to go at ten o’clock am,” Chief announced.

We quickly ran over to the pile of bags and each scooped up the best bag we could see. I picked up the blue and black bag that matched what I was wearing a royal blue top, black leggings with a leather belt that I put my knives in and a black, short, sleeve jacket with a hood and a pair of black combat boots with hidden compartments were I put my other knives.

We opened the multi-coloured bags like little kids open their presents on Christmas, inside was a water bottle, a portable bow and some arrows and some portable arrows, some knives, a jacket, a pair of binoculars, a towel, a com-link that looked like watch and was water proof and some other handy things.

“Wow!” exclaimed Robin

“You said it Hood,” replied Bow as flicked open his arrows and bow and shot only to miss the target that stood ten meters away.

“The bow was tight,” he muttered under his breath, “I am going to switch my bow with someone,” he announced moodily as he walked of.

I flicked my bow open and started shooting the targets on the wall.
 
Twang!
(Not a bullseye sadly, I was getting used to the bow)
Twang!
(Bullseye!)
Twang!
(Bullseye again, me likey this bow)

Sunday 8 September 2013

Chapter 2

 

Twang!
Twang!

Twadonk!
(oh that had to have hurt, good thing it’s a dummy)

Twang!

I was just going to fetch my arrows from the unfortunate dummy’s head, at least I think it was his head it looked more like some net bag over some white stuffing, when Jack Vidar and his gang came in to the training rooms. I had completely forgotten that he always came to the training rooms at five-thirty every day. We moved to the shadows but it was too late he had already spotted us.

“What ya doing Artymissed,” He asked in his most irritating voice.

I tried to come up with a good comeback because I really hated that name. Then I had a crazy brainwave and came up with something. It was pretty risky to say, and he would probably smash me to pieces but I said it any way.

“I am practicing so I can do what I did to the dummy, to you,” I replied back in an annoyed voice.

As Jack eyes widened and his face flashed red, I whispered to Robin, Arrow and Bow, “Sneak around the back and grab the paint ball guns and fire on my signal.”

“So why are you in the shadows, you scared Artymissed” Jack sneered.

 Arrow, Bow and Robin were now at the paint guns and were loading and aiming them.

“So no one will see me destroy you, genius,” I replied with my famous mocking tone, “Fire at will.”

They all had blank faces that looked at me like, “What the hell are you talking about?” until they got splatted with paint balls, then they had pretty colorful faces.

I ran over to the rest of the group, dodging lost paint balls on the way. Jack and his gang had returned to their senses and were thundering after me as I made a last minute decision to head to the rope, knowing that Jack and gang wouldn’t be able to follow.

Hopefully Arrow, Robin and Bow got the idea and follow me or went somewhere else where they couldn’t go. They may seem all tough and mean but they are really video gamers at heart.

I climbed up the rope like a squirrel and they let out shouts of protest as I climbed to the top. I climbed the high rope course that was hanging off the roof of the training room over to where my friends were waiting.

When I got there they handed me a paint gun that they had brought up with them. ‘Boy do I love these things’ I thought as I made sure it was loaded. Sure enough it was thanks to my friends, it even had my favourite colour in loaded, blue.

We started to shoot at them as they moved over to the side to get some paint guns for themselves. They started to fire at us, we split up Arrow and I went to the right and Bow and Robin went to the left.

It was full on war and no one was going to stop us until this was over, good thing these rooms are made for things like this.

I was hanging by one arm, and swinging from rope to rope, while shooting at them, so they now looked like rainbow monsters. Their screams were cut short as they got hit with a blob of fluro pink paint hit them in the mouth, making them look like they did a very bad job of putting lipstick on.

That was when I saw the top of the janitor scruffy brown hair and the red head Saffron, one of my best friends. I quickly swung up and hid out of the janitor’s range of sight but Saffron saw me and gave me a quick smile.

She must have heard us and told the janitor. I saw the janitor start shouting at Jack and his gang, and then they went over to the mops that were laying in the corner with the janitor keeping his eye on them.

Saffron ducked out of the training rooms. I made my way over to Robin, Bow and Arrow who were regrouping and where trying to stifle their laughs.

After a quick discussion about the war we snuck out of the training room (after giving Jack and his friends a sarcastic salute before slipping through the door) and joined Saffron outside and ran all the way to the mess hall, laughing our heads of.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Chapter 1


 

My name is Artemis Amazon and I am a Hunter, a Hunter of the Cities. I am part of the Sydney division but you don’t need to know that, you still won’t see us; no one ever does even when we do great things. Our hideout is underneath the Royal Botanic Gardens that is where we eat, sleep, train and pretty much live our lives. We are assigned a mentor when we are six years old then we are known as apprentice, only when Chief thinks that we are ready will we become a full Hunter. My mentor is Samantha and she really nice. Say we have to shoot 6 dummies while hanging upside-down Samantha would be all like:

“Oh, no Chief, Arty did that yesterday!” or “We did that last week”

Which I probably did do yesterday or we did do that last week. You are probably thinking that this life is the best that exists. But I haven’t told you about the bad guys yet. You know that rule every good guy has at least ten bad guys? Yeah, well our bad guys call themselves The Poachers. Every two months or so The Poachers seem to find one of our many secret ways into our hideout and then we are in big trouble or so they think. Well if you still want to be a Hunter than keep on reading, if you don’t then close the blog instantly.




My stomach grumbled as I stared at the clock (it doesn’t even have any numbers how does that qualify as a clock); anyway it was taking forever for the black long minute hand to move to lunch. After lunch every day we have sport with Mr. Elwood, he teaches us lots of cool things like rollerblading (though I doubt that’s ever going to be useful). Except on Fridays, then we get the whole day with our mentors.

I was in the middle of class with my teacher Miss Pine. I looked at the desk in front of me and saw the blonde wavy hair of one of my best friends, Arrow. I took the risk to take a quick side way glance at my other best friend, Robin, he was staring at me strangely but whenever I look at him he would start smiling like it was the last thing he was ever going to do. I was paying more attention to Robin’s strange behavior so I only caught little snippets of whatever Miss Pine was talking about.

The boring beige (really?) classroom wasn’t helping; it complemented Miss Pine’s droning so well that most of the other students were being bored to sleep, or had dropped off already.

Except Albert, he was staring intently at Miss Pine and taking notes at the same time (who takes notes these days, that’s what the internet is for).

Albert is weird.

“The Sydney division is one of the many divisions around the world. Every major city has a division, name any city and it will most likely have a division,” informed Miss Pine (already knew that blahly blah), “In fact that can be your homework, name every city that has a division, it is due on Monday.”

(Wha? But there’s like FIFTY! And that only the ones I can remember)

I groaned inwards, Arrows pencil went flying across the classroom to embed itself into the chalk board, and Robin made a sound similar to dying zombie cat. The rest of the class was more or less reasonable about the homework and didn’t really care… except for Albert who had already started.

Like I said; Albert is weird.

That was when the lunch bell rang; Robin and I went for the door while Arrow went to retrieve her pencil and met us outside in the hallway. The hallway was long Along the mostly silver and somewhat white walls you could see little dents in the wall from previous battles and occasionally some burns.

“I don’t want to do the homework!” complained Arrow.
"It's home work, nobody does," Robin said ruefully. 

The hallway was now filling quite rapidly with other lunch goers. We spotted Bow and waved him over to join us.

“Hey, they put up the list of people that are going to watch over the Australia day fireworks, Chief thinks that the Poachers are going to try something,” He announced as he came over to join us, Bow is Arrow’s twin brother and according to Arrow he is very annoying.

“Why do you think that?” Arrow asked.

“I have my sources,” Bow said with a smirk.
“What sources?”
“Remember that spy fly (it was awesome, Arrow actually made it herself, because she wasn’t feeling too annoyed at Bow) you gave me for my birthday?”

(He said like he was the smartest person on earth which he isn’t, because I can think of heaps of smarter people, one of which is standing right next to me)

(…Wait, wait… He spied on the Chief?! )

Arrow just growled in frustration. These little fights are really common and amusing.

“Well let’s hope they do because we’re on the list,” said Robin who had gone ahead to look at the list and had tuned out of the beginning of one of Bow and Arrow famous arguments.

Robin!” everyone cried together.

Robin put up his hands up as a sign of surrender, “What? I just saying it-”

That was when I decided it cut in, “The Poachers are merciless; they would attack or kill us as soon as they see us, it would not be awesome… Wait, did you say we were on the list?”

I moved over to where everyone was crowding around the list, not even waiting him to answer my question. I took a copy rather than brave the crowd and moved over to where everyone was waiting.

We all stared at the list.

Bow took it out of my hands and read it out loud, “Lupa Rouge, Saffron Sylvia and Lulu Lupita are on the Maritime Time Museum. Javor Jago, Rino Rimo, Tobiah and Tabatha are on the Convention Center,” and last were, “Artemis Amazon, Robin Hollis, Arrow and Bow Quiver are on the bridge,” he finished.

“Apparently the bridge is the best place to be!” Robin exclaimed, “…and how come you get to have so cool names,” he said with a frown.

Everyone just laughed and started to go to the training rooms.
 
 
 
image from http://www.amazon.com/ARCHERY-Clock-target-arrows-bowhunting/dp/B002HEZV9M