*~ ~*~ ~*
The Sixth Line of Defense
Book One of the Forgotten Children Series
By Shiva Winters
Copyright 2012 Shiva Winters
*~ ~*~ ~*
Chapter One: Cloudy Skies
It was a fairly typical classroom, at a fairly typical high school, and it was fairly typical day at a place that could be considered to be a common every day sight. Set in the middle of the dense urban tangle of buildings, store fronts, and slums. It was not a very nice neighborhood, filled with gangs, prostitutes, drug dealers, junkies and users. Ninety-nine percent of the homes, apartments, and buildings had once been or soon would be the scene of a crime, murder, robbery, or sexual assault. It was the heart of a culture of self destruction, violence, and death, and it was fully and completely reflected in the high school and the young adults that had grown up in those very same neighborhoods. And it seemed that they were more than ready to pick up and carry that legacy of pain into the next stage of an endless cycle violence. In terms of the school, she could be all but certain that there were prisons with a less stringent security systems. With weapons detectors on every door, bullet-proof glass in all the windows, a minimum of three cameras in every classrooms, guards patrolling the halls in full riot gear, and bathrooms that wouldn't let more than one person in at a time. She couldn't be sure, but she had a strong suspicion that most of the teachers came to school armed and some few wore bulletproof armor openly. It almost seemed like that school existed solely to prepare its' students for their future roles filling the cells and yards of the world's prisons.
At the approach of four such prime examples of future inmates, Shiva barely needed to look up to know that trouble was shifting in her direction and that she would most likely be in more trouble in the very near future. The class had already ended and the teachers would never put themselves at risk by doing something so stupid as lingering nearby to try enforcing discipline unless they had armored troops to back them up. Most of her classmates had either already escaped out into the halls or were hurrying away before they might get caught up in the trouble that was brewing around her. Shiva, of course, recognized these four in so much as she usually made an effort to know who would possibly cause her trouble in the series of steadily worsening situations that she had found herself enduring during the last two years. In a school filled with future criminals, Uru was in the running to be valedictorian of the class. The leader of one of the local gangs and a vicious individual by most accounts, only the fact that he was not yet 18 had kept the courts from letting him graduate to become someone's 'girlfriend' in a big boy prison. The fact that he was said to have left a trail of bodies along his path to glory and fame didn't seem to give him the confidence he needed to confront even one girl half his size, all by himself. The fact that their were four of them was honestly of little concern to Shiva, in truth she didn't even care enough to pretend that she noticed that she was being surrounded by the much larger boys.
"Hey!" Shiva looked on with supreme unconcern as Uru swept his arm across the desk and sent her school books and notepads spilling across on the floor. "Listen here new girl!" He barked as the room quickly and quietly emptied of the last people still lingering near the fringes. "This is how it works, you live on my turf, you gotta pay me for my protection one way.." He leered at her and his cronies gave a cruel set of laughter while Shiva picked up those items that she could reach without having to move closer to anyone of them. Uru slammed his palm down on top of the partially reassembled stack pinning to the books to the top of the desk. ".. or another." He finished much to the delight of the other insects that looked to him for leadership. "Otherwise you don't get to see the next morning, do you get me new girl?"
"I hate to burst your bubbles, boys, but I'm no one's pet." Shiva murmured back to him able to see that once again she was going to be given only two choices, to either defend herself or to roll over and let bad things happen to her. Uru's hand came up and began the long sharp motion of a back handed slap, and Shiva watched it coming and wished just once that every school experience wasn't nearly the same as this one. She wished that just once she would be allowed to live peacefully and quietly through the days, and that she would not have to be surrounded by the stupid and the violent. In some part of her mind she wondered if the human race was even capable of anything else. The blow landed across the right side of her face, blurring her vision for just a moment as an easily ignored pain blossomed across her sharp senses. Uru seemed quite pleased with himself as he saw the results of his many ringed fingers making contact with her face, but as Shiva's eyes came up he knew all at once that he had just made a mistake that he would regret in the very near future.
Shiva's movement was far faster, and many times more accurate, aimed for the soft spot of Uru's throat just above the place where his collar bones met. Almost wishing she could use the kind of force she knew herself to be capable of, she nevertheless held back and used just enough force to produce the desired effects without crushing his wind pipe and sentencing him to a well deserved slow choking death. Barely able to lift his arms with two shattered collar bones Uru nonetheless tried to clutch at his throat as his throat muscles were temporarily paralyzed by the blow and he slowly began to asphyxiate and stumble backwards out of the fight. It took the other three teen criminals a total of 30 seconds to realize that she had done something to put their boss out of commission before they were turning on her as a group. The first to react was the boy that was behind her and to the left, with the odds three to one, Shiva decided that punch he aimed at the back of her head was well deserving of a little education. The fingers of her left hand snatched up the thick math book on the top of the stack, spun and planted the spine of the book across the right cheek of the much larger boy's face. The sound of breaking bone and shattering teeth accompanied the softer sounds of the crony being spun violently away to strike a nearby desk on his way to the floor.
The second one attacked and Shiva easily dodged his slow moving punch, even as her right hand came up and around to slam into the point where they boys shoulder connected to his left arm dislodging the joint in a flash of pain as the arm all at once went limp. She took him out of the picture with a vicious stomp to the arch of his right foot that broke bones and quickly had him collapsing to the floor. That movement spun her around to the last boy even as he lunged forward to attack her from behind, with none of his friends able to back him up, Shiva caught his fist and clamped down hard. The sound of cracking bones changed his angry scream into one of pure pain as his eyes glazed over as his knees gave out. As his arm went limp, Shiva slammed his hand backwards planting the back of his wrist into his own face breaking his nose and splitting his lips before his eyes rolled back and his body went limp. Satisfied that she had made her point she gathered her remaining books even as she saw and heard the alarms sounding through the classroom and parts beyond. Shiva was calmly returning her things to her bag when the riot police burst into the room aiming their stun rifles at anyone inside. One was even bold enough to stick his weapon right up in her face as they screamed for her to get on the ground, at least until Shiva's eyes flashed upward to meet his. Whatever it was he saw in her gaze was more than enough to make him step backwards in fear.
Within the hour Shiva was installed in the waiting area of the Principle's office under the careful watch of one of the security guards and under the fearful eyes of the office staff. Amused and annoyed, Shiva sat there silently throughout much of the remaining school day, quietly doing her homework and waiting to be summoned forth so she could be yelled at for the damage she had done to the local gang memb
ers. As the hours ticked past more than a dozen other groups of trouble makers were escorted inside and shown into the inner sanctum, leaving her outside and waiting. It was almost amusing to her that they might be attempting to punish her with boredom as the final bells rang and the school quickly emptied of students. This thought held her quiet for the next hour before the outer door opened and three pairs of highly polished shoes stepped into the room, now knowing what she had been waiting for, that amusement went cold and a high level of resentment and anger replaced it.
"Well, well, well.." That cool condescending drawl came a voice that was guaranteed to ruin any good feelings she might have had the moment that it touched the air, and was accompanied by the sharp strike of his heels as one pair of polished shoes cracked across the floor in slow unhurried steps that brought him across the space to tower above her. "This is a record even for you Shiva, you've been here only a month and they are already talking expulsion." His snide expression fixed upon his overly handsome face ducked down into view as he hunkered down in front of her far too close for her own personal comfort.
"They attacked me first." Shiva hissed at him, already feeling ready to do even worse damage than she already had. As if that was somehow amusing to him here words added a smug sense of self satisfaction to his already pompous face.
"What are we going to do with you?" He sneered back to her, insuring that Shiva would simply no longer care who might overhear their soft conversation.
"Why don't you try sticking me back in a freeze for another 100 years?" She hissed back at him as her anger released her tongue from the reins that would have normally kept it in check. His own anger rolled up to the surface of his face well aware that there were many now watching this little scene quite closely. His arm surged forward to grab at her arm angrily, but Shiva was not in any mood to humor him that day. With a movement far faster than his own, her arm surged upward and her much smaller hand viciously grabbed two of the reaching fingers twisting them almost to the point were the bones would snap under the pressure if given just a little more of a twist. "You forget yourself too easily Hornton.." She growled at him in low dangerous tones as his eyes widened in pain and surprise. ".. maybe I should break two of them this time so you don't forget the rules so quickly in the future." To his credit he made neither a pained sound, a protest, or movement to free himself from her painfully sharp grip.
"Keep this up and they won't have any other choices but to shove you into that freezer once and for all." He hissed back at her angrily, but after two years of being put into the same bad situations over and over again that hardly amounted to much of a threat in her eyes.
"They assaulted me first." Shiva reiterated before shoving his hand away, bruised but otherwise undamaged. He backed away as Shiva shoved angrily out of her seat and crossed the floor towards the outer door of the office.
"I am not done with you yet, young lady." The Principle barked somehow certain that he still had some kind of authority over her as her hand clamped down around the handle.
"Yes, you are." Shiva snapped back at him as she shoved out into the hallway.
"Watch her, Ceasa." Hornton snapped just before the door slammed closed. More angry in that moment than she had been back in the classroom, Shiva's quick steps carried her through the now silent hallways almost too quickly for the one assigned to watch her to follow. She practically lunged outside onto what was laughingly called the 'garden' at the side of the school. It more or less amounted to a swath of concrete walkways scattered with litter and cigarette butts overshadowed by sickly looking trees with tufts of grass growing everywhere except where it supposed to be growing. With a temper that was surging dangerously and a landscape as bleak as just about any other she had seen in the last two years, Shiva dropped down onto a half broken bench with a frustrated noise. In her background the man dressed in a business suit conducted a quiet conversation on his cell phone that was too quiet for her to overhear at a distance.