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)