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How Not To Become Lunch: 84 - Ask For Help
“I’m telling ya, I don’t think I’ve seen a pred that scared since I was in detention.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah, I mean when he started walking up to the board, his fur bristled so hard that you could see his shirt puff up.”
“Wow, that is bad. So how did he do?”
“…”
“Jack?”
The wolf girl’s words barely registered, as the marked boy started to stare off.
“…Jack?” Fiona repeated. Her head cocked slightly, but she followed his line of sight and soon understood.
“Thanks again for the notes,” came a voice from a distant conversation. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Ozzy,” said the familiar boy down the hall, smiling at the girl. “And don’t mention it, I don’t really need them.”
“Well, I sure do,” she half joked awkwardly. “Thanks, Ozzy,” she repeated, using his name this time and smiling back. “…Well, I have to get to my next period, see you in class tomorrow.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ozzy gave a little wave as she turned away and started walking. He watched for just a moment, not quite able to help himself, but his next period was in the other direction and he knew better than to just stand there, so he got his legs moving, turned himself around- and froze.
They met eyes. Jack watched the look on his friend’s face change, the smile fading like a cloud eclipsing the sun, expression growing harder. The gaze flicked to the side, and the expression took on a hint of fear, as Ozzy laid eyes on the werewolf… A guilty unease took hold of the marked boy’s throat, as well as his limbs. Beside him, Fiona shifted uncomfortably and lowered her muzzle, averting her eyes and drooping her tail.
“Ahhhhh-!”
The shrill scream cut through the air before it was abruptly silenced. Admittedly, such a sound wasn’t too uncommon, but when it was this close by, it caught everyone’s attention.
Past Ozzy, just a few steps further down the hall, stood a rather imposing owl, with a prominent V-shaped plume of feathers on his brow, and an even more prominent set of arms and legs flailing from his beak. All three watched for just a moment, long enough for the feathery gullet to bulge with another swallow, before Ozzy suddenly recognized the poor prey as the girl he’d just been talking to a second ago.
Something triggered in the lone boy, and he snatched his wand off his hip in a blur, aiming it toward the unknown avian. The owl’s large, unreadable eyes met his own.
“Veren-” But the incantation caught in his throat, as a sudden tremor rattled his arm- so unexpected that he nearly dropped his wand.
Jack watched Ozzy look down at his own hand in shock, before quickly looking back up at the feeding predator. The bird took another gulp, eyes fixed on the threatening mage but showing no signs of fear.
“Veren- Verengen- Maga-”
Jack couldn’t believe it any more than Ozzy himself. He was in the advanced magic class, and he was choking in front of a predator- who wasn’t even after him! The frustration in the boy’s voice grew with every syllable he forced out, hand vibrating wildly at the end of an unsteady arm.
The owl flexed his beak a bit and gulped down another maw-full of girl, blank eyes still staring down the mage before him even as his belly swelled and gurgled with his incoming meal. Frustrated and desperate, Ozzy abruptly changed his mind and blurted out a far simpler spell.
“Tirar!”
All he wanted to do was pull the girl free from her gastric fate, but his eyes might have been closed when he finally got the incantation past his lips, and his hand shook so violently… A discarded textbook from down the hall suddenly flew up off the floor and launched itself, sailing in right past the owl and knocking straight into the flustered mage’s hand.
Jack might have rushed in to help if he wasn’t so stunned, and apparently Ozzy was just the same, watching the wand fly from his hand and clatter to the ground along with the errant book. Those big eyes left him now, as the feathered head pitched upward. Several quick gulps pulsed down the plush neck, as it bulged with the size of its wriggling meal.
Ozzy stared in horror and disbelief. Helpless. The gut before him bulged and bulged until it was full, all traces of the girl he’d just met disappearing from the world, hidden behind shifting fabric, feathers and fat.
Those large eyes lowered back onto him, unmoved and unblinking. The owl’s expression said about as much as his voice, and yet somehow Ozzy couldn’t help but read the silent confirmation that this lone, trembling mage had been every bit as useless and ignorable as predicted.
Without a word, the owl simply turned and walked away.
Ozzy stood there and watched.
Jack stood there and watched the boy watching. Should he have done something? Could he have done something? He probably could have, but he hadn’t expected Ozzy to just… He glanced at Fiona, as if she might have some insight somehow. She had practically retreated into her own fur. Ears and tail down, muzzle tucked in against her chest and pointing decidedly away from it all, too guilty to even lay an eye on the scene.
Jack looked back at Ozzy. He… he had to do something, say something, at least try to offer some comfort for-
“Ozzy? Ozzy, what’s going on?” came a new voice. A boy hastily passed by Jack and Fiona, stopping only to pick up the stray, familiar wand when he noticed it lying on the floor. “What happened?”
“I…” Ozzy blinked, turning toward his friend. He caught Jack and Fiona in the background and flicked to them briefly before refocusing. “…I just got… startled and dropped my wand, sorry Ed.”
The new arrival very quickly clocked the departing owl, as well as the onlooking werewolf he had run past.
“Geeze, Ozzy, you know that’s a really bad move. You’re lucky nothing happened.”
“Yeah…” the dazed mage breathed, happily taking his wand back. “…I can’t let that happen again.” He let Ed guide him by the shoulder, sparing his old friends one last glance as he turned around and the two of them started down the hall.
Jack watched him go, looking once back at the guilt-ridden wolf, then again at his departing friend.
Ozzy… There has to be something I can do…
…
Jack spent a lot of the remaining day trying to answer that question. He asked himself over and over. He tried to ask Fiona as well, but whenever they started talking about Ozzy she almost completely shut down, and he hated seeing her like that. So he spent hours and hours racking his own brain. Until finally, lying in bed on the brink of sleep, it hit him.
That. That was something he could do. Something real. Something that might help.
Except… he didn’t actually know exactly how to do it. And as it turned out, figuring out ‘how’ was starting to seem almost as hard as figuring out ‘what’.
His first impulse, obviously, was to ask his mom for help. He contemplated the idea over breakfast that next morning, but eventually ruled it out. What was he supposed to say when she started asking why Ozzy was upset in the first place? ‘Oh, Fiona, the girl you’re trusting with your son’s life, yeah she just devoured one of our mutual friends right in front of Ozzy and made him watch.’ That would totally freak her out. And if she started asking more questions and eventually dug up what Fiona had done- almost done- to Jack… well, the marked boy didn’t even want to think about what might happen. He couldn’t risk it.
On his way to school, he considered trying to reach out to his aunt for help. She’d probably have the best guidance out of anyone he knew. But he ran into the same problem. Word would definitely get back to his mom somehow. And that would lead to questions. And questions would lead to answers. And answers would lead to-
It was at about that point in the thought process that he wondered how anyone managed to get around with secrets like this. For better or for worse, by that point the school day had also started, and he began to have more immediate, life-or-digestion-type problems to worry about. But still, in the back of his mind, Jack wondered how he could somehow make good on this idea. He owed it to Ozzy and… Ozzy needed it, especially with A.P.E. coming up.
He wondered if any of his teachers could help him. After all, it was literally their job to show him how to do things he didn’t know yet. But this kind of project wasn’t quite in Prof. Boron’s field of expertise. Same problem with his language arts teacher. He certainly wasn’t going to try his luck with the harpy who tried to snatch him up in PE. He would have loved to take this to his magic teacher, but in a bitter twist of irony, she was the least approachable of them all! Still, he was desperate enough that, as he sat in Ms. Caster’s classroom, waiting for the period to start, he wondered if he could somehow get enough guidance out of her to pull it off, without her ‘guiding’ him straight into her gut.
Luckily, as he sat there, he caught sight of the answer to his problems literally appearing out of thin air. Just a few seconds before their class began, a certain schoolmate dropped his invisibility spell, now at the relative safety of his desk. A bolt of hope struck Jack- something that wasn’t at all common for the start of Caster’s class- and he held onto it as the day’s lesson progressed. With help like that, Jack knew he had a shot at actually helping Ozzy, but now he was forced to face yet another new question:
Would the other boy actually say yes?
…
“And that’s why prolonged fermentation can lead to increasingly unpredictable effects in potioncraft,” Ms. Caster concluded. And timely as well, because only a few seconds later, a loud *riiing* sounded the end of the period.
Students quickly began rising and funneling out of the room, and while Jack was usually one of the later ones to leave- opting to stick to his desk until Fiona showed up- this time he too was quick to rise. Moving against the flow of students, he came up to a familiar face, just before said face was about to disappear behind another invisibility spell.
“Hey, Arin,” Jack greeted, hints of awkward nerves showing. The other boy lowered his wand and gave a sort of nervous smile.
“Oh, hello, Jack. I was just about to leave for my next class. Did you want to follow me out this time?”
“Uh, no, I… I actually wanted to ask you for a favor.”
“A favor? What kind?”
“There’s a potion I need to make. I’m pretty sure I know all the ingredients, but I’m not really sure I could brew it myself, and well, you seemed pretty good with Caster’s last few assignments.”
“A potion? Together? What kind?” Arin seemed genuinely interested for a moment, maybe even excited, but then his expression changed. “No, where?” the boy interjected before Jack could answer. He seemed to consider his own question intensely for a moment, his face growing more nervous. “…Lingering practically anywhere in school would be a deathtrap. I couldn’t, it would be way too dangerous.”
“We could go to my place, if you want. It’s not too far,” Jack offered.
“Going to a marked prey’s house? I’m sorry, Jack, but there’s no way I’m risking that. Ambushes, break-ins, contamination, it’s all way too statistically likely. I’m sorry, I’d like to help you but… this is all starting to seem really…” Arin trailed off, instinctively biting his lip and gripping his wand.
“I know,” Jack admitted with a touch of guilt. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked. You’ve already stuck your neck out for me enough… I just really need some help with this potion. I have to figure it out.”
“Why? Did Ms. Caster give you some kind of special assignment?”
“No, it’s…” he paused as he tried to decide how much to say and how to say it. “One of my friends… The other week, he… had to watch another friend of ours get eaten. He… wanted to do something to save him, but he couldn’t, and he’s been messed up ever since. …I just want to do something to try and help… before I lose him too.”
“…Predators,” Arin said under his breath. “It’s always predators. Humanity’s unshakable curse.”
Jack tensed slightly at the comment, but he didn’t say anything. It was… understandable. He couldn’t really fault anyone for feeling that way, regardless of his relationship with the predators in his own life.
“You should tell your friend to be more careful,” Arin advised. “He shouldn’t have let himself get so close to a predator in the first place. If you can help him keep his distance, maybe you can help keep him alive that way.”
“…Maybe…” Jack said. He couldn’t help but interpret those words personally. If Ozzy and Zach had just avoided Fiona like any other predator… He shook the thoughts from his head; he’d already been down that dark road too many times. “But he’s got A.P.E. on Friday. He won’t have a choice then.”
“Your friend is in the advanced magic class?” Arin asked, a bit surprised.
“Oh, yeah, just got in recently.”
Arin went silent, thinking intensely for another moment. That class had the strongest mages of the generation. Jack was a brave and powerful mage in his own right, but if he could really help one of them survive too… maybe he could reduce the risk just enough to make it worthwhile?
“…Arin?”
The other boy glanced at the clock, and then around at the quickly emptying classroom.
“My house,” he said finally. “We can’t talk about the details now; we’ve been standing here too long already. You know the bakery by the school?”
“Um, yeah, I know that place.”
“Meet me there exactly two hours after school ends. Don’t be late. Oh, and wear long sleeves.”
“S-sure, yeah. I’ll be there.”
Jack smiled, while Arin gave a rather nervous nod. He raised his wand again to cast his invisibility.
“Hey, um, thank-” Jack reached out in an appreciative gesture, but his classmate recoiled like he’d been bitten by a naga.
“P-Please, not with your mark,” Arin said, suddenly panting lightly. Jack snatched his hand back, eyes darting back and forth between the other boy and anywhere else.
“Right, sorry…”
They held a nervous gaze for another moment.
“Videre celare.”
And with that, Arin quite literally vanished into the departing crowd.