Chapter 4: Lost in Adolescence

Mikey's eyes darted around the room. Suddenly, everything seemed to be so interesting. There was a creaking board, a waving chandelier and a small scroll rolling back and forth with the ship; everything had more appeal than the idea of facing the dictator that sat opposite him.

For the past two days, Mikey had spent his time on a couch recovering in the captain's quarters. Gisla had kicked her father out, forcing him to bunk with the first mate, Diana.

This left the dysfunctional pair a generous amount of room - too much room. Diana had agreed to give Mikey some time to recover his bearings, but she was briskly losing her patience.

Diana began tapping her leather boot on the floorboards.

"Stop," Mikey uttered, though not granting her his full attention.

"Are you ever going to get over it puppy? You're young, you'll be fine," she responded as the tapping quickened.

"Your voice is annoying. Hurts my head. Stop talking."

Granting Mikey the privilege of an entire 30 or so seconds, Gisla had then began her pestering once more.

"Yeah alright, how about now?" she asked, bringing her arms up into an impatient fold.

"You had me beat and walking in my own vomit," Mikey scoffed. "Haven't even said sorry."

"Sorry?" Gisla burst out in laughter, though slowed once she noticed the lack of mutuality in the humour. "You're serious?"

Mikey finally looked away from the uninteresting furniture and turned to face Gisla.

"So I apologize and we get straight to work? Alright then puppy; I'm sorry," Gisla said whilst, miraculously but barely, managing to contain her sniggering.

"Yeah and enough with the puppy shit, you're only a year older than me. It's weird. And awkward!" Mikey demanded. His pulse seemed to pick up as he'd begun leading the negotiation.

Gisla rolled her eyes in a lazy gesture of agreement.

"And I want to be paid," Mikey added further, though his confidence had subtly transmuted into sly witticism.

Gisla lifted a brow in disbelief.

"Ten thousand gold pieces!"

"Ten thousand?" Gisla burst into laughter and stood up from the opposing couch, heading for the desk.

'Hm, worth a shot,' he said as he shrugged the matter off and followed her.

A cluttered city of towered book piles, and scrolls forming bridges atop the mess, lay in a methodical madness on Gisla's desk. Mikey tried to make sense of the disorder, but failed to do so on his own.

"Alright Mikhail, first I'll ask what it is you're exactly capable of. There are a few texts that I'd like to decipher, all different from one another," she'd elaborate whilst weaving through and shifting the city blocks she'd amassed before her.

"You mean, like, my magic?" Mikey asked. As he watched carefully, Gisla seemed to stop shuffling through once she'd picked out six books.

"I know you got hit in the head - a few times - but is that really a difficult question?"

Mikey sighed, leaving Gisla's side and seizing a small crystal ball that he'd eyed.

"Don't break it," she'd cautioned Mikey as he swirled the ball between his dexterous fingers.

"One thing I can do is this," Mikey had begun to jibe after having taken six paces out and opposing the front of the desk.

After he made sly eye contact with Gisla, Mikey tossed the brittle artifact toward her. His aim purposefully allowed for the orb to make its descent earlier than Gisla would be able to reach out for it.

Gisla flinched into a reactionary outreach for the falling crystal, though it began to glow just before it shattered on the boards. Hovering over the wooden floor, the crystal floated back through the air and into Mikey’s palm.

“Hm, right, telekinesis,” Gisla responded after the clearing of her throat, trying to suppress her vain panic. Leaning back against her chair, she looked down to her books and sparingly shook her head. “That won’t be too much help here. Anything else?”

Mikey smirked with poorly contained amusement whilst he spun the crystal ball in his palm. Once again he propelled the crystal sphere towards Gisla, this time with a considerable amount of force.

Gisla jerked back in response, her eyes immediately widening with what she thought to be a definite collision. Similarly to before, a glowing aura had appeared around the orb as Mikey stretched out his hand. The orb flashed briefly with light as it seemingly slipped straight through Gisla’s forehead.

“Woah!” Gisla recoiled with haste, her hands flying straight to her head as if to cushion it, though it was too late by that time.

Mikey’s smirk had evolved into a grin and his laughter was now no longer contained at all.

“Alright! You’ve had your fun showing off your party tricks! I think the rest of your abilities can rather fittingly be exhibited at a later date. A verbal description should do just fine in its place,” Gisla protested with a scowl that accompanied a very tight folding of her arms. “Now retrieve the crystal ball and take a seat already; please.”

Mikey kept his smile, though his amusement drained like a gushing sewage pipe.

“You didn’t hear me?”

Mikey leaned to his side, he was guiltily gazing past Gisla towards the draping curtains that block out the windows. Naturally, Gisla followed his lead and turned to see behind herself.

Mikey made his way to the curtains with a subtle amount of urgency. After lifting the veil to his careless mistake Mikey pressed his forehead against the pane.

“What exactly is it that we’re looking for Mikey?” Gisla had asked as she got up from her throne and peered down at the waves beside Mikey.

“Well your crystal ball thingy, the one that’s not worth much at all I’m sure, it doesn’t happen to float does it?”

Gisla spent the next eternity explaining to Mikey just how much of an idiot he was for losing such a valuable artifact. Allegedly the crystal ball was a ‘truth seeker’, an orb capable of bringing out the buried confidence within those that caressed it. Gisla then went on to explain that it was her father’s, Captain Tornstar’s, and unfathomably dear to him.

Gisla, though she didn’t particularly fear her father, didn’t want to bother with his predictably enraged reaction to the loss of his artifact. Her and Mikey agreed to keep it as an: “undisclosed coincidence.”

“Well, you can explain your other magical talents as you read through one of these tomes,” Gisla commanded whilst she picked one up for herself.

Mikey took the tome into his hands and opened it wide, however he looked back to Gisla with an awkward stare.

“I can’t read,” he had said only just loud enough for Gisla to hear, though part of him yearned for her to ignore him.

“What? Are the pages stained or something?” she then waved for Mikey to show her the book, frowning with uncertainty.

“No, I, uh, can’t read,” Mikey repeated himself as he revealed the opened pages to be fairly untouched.

“What? They didn’t teach you to read in that orphanage? You can make things float, but you can’t read?” Gisla looked at him in disbelief. “Well what in all the lands of Tharix compels me to keep you here?”

She sighed with the shameful burial of her face in her hands; attempting to hide herself from the events of the past days.

“Well, I guess you’re a… lab rat? I don’t know,” she thought to herself with a deep sigh of reluctance. “Go on and tell us your abilities anyway then, just try not to throw any priceless valuables overboard whilst you do.”

Gisla then plopped the book down on her desk and leaned back to give Mikey her full and unhindered attention. She felt she’d spent too long underestimating the disaster he was capable of brewing.

"It began when I was fiv-" Mikey began to recall, looking to the ceiling in an attempt to visualize his past more dramatically.

"We are NOT doing an entire flashback of your shitty life in an orphanage discovering you could steal cookies from the other side of the room. Cut to the core Mikhail," Gisla cut him off with little restraint.

"Like I was saying. It began. When I. Was five..." Mikhail repeated himself, glaring at Gisla as if he had been daring her to interrupt him again.

Gisla's eyes had almost rolled out of their sockets with 'Hurricane Sigh' roaring from the deepest parts of her boredom.

"...I started taking notice of mages in the city. Street performers, wandering scholars - even the occasional baker could spark a flame with his finger tips." Mikey elucidated, looking to the ceiling as he had before and allowing an overemphasized frown to be conjured across his brow. He seemed to have been enjoying the chance to speak so freely.

Gisla couldn't help but briefly glance at the ceiling to make sure nothing priceless was phasing through the boards.

"But shortly after I had taken notice of them all, you wouldn't fucking believe it…" Mikey looked back down to Gisla, his performance just waiting for its audience's input.

"What happened?" she asked mockingly in response, humouring his excitability.

"I could copy them. All of it. It started out with little things, like the finger flames," Mikey said as he pointed his index finger towards the ceiling, lighting his nail like a spark to a bonfire. "But then I could change them, make them better - combine them!" he couldn't help but roar out, as it had been well over four or so years since he last got to unload his gratitude for the ability.

The small flame on the tip of his finger suddenly expanded and flew up into the air. It was a beacon to Mikey's potential.

"So let me get this straight. You've not been taught magic. You didn't have any crazy magical gear on you when we searched you…" Gisla had begun to summarize, her eyes quite studiously locked onto Mikey.

Mikey's eyes also locked onto Gisla, though he lost his sense of excitability and had fallen into a blush.

'She didn't… pat me down or anything did she? Did she take my clothes off?! Have I beaten you to it Lia-" his excitability rapidly came back to the rhythm of his heart beat - pounding tremendously. His bewitched gaze couldn't help but slowly travel up Gisla's dress.

He'd begun to take notice of her figure - she was oddly in shape for a presumed book worm. Open sleeves let him see her untarnished skin, almost glowing from the light of the window behind her.

Even further up and he'd reached her shoulder - soft enough for him to reach out and touch it. His gaze moved inwards, though the skyline of books seemed to block his advance and forced him upwards.

That's when he had realised, in his short burst of uncontrollable emotion, that he was eyeing up the devil herself.

Cringing at the recall of how he'd been treated, Mikey rubbed his face in self-imposed humiliation.

'It's been a long few weeks,' he tried to reason with himself. 'You've just got a bit of a headache still - a few screws loose.’

"Are you fucking listening you idiot?" Gisla questioned, slapping her hand on one of the magic tomes she'd picked out.

"Can you copy something big?"

"Big? Hmmm. We can try," Mikey replied, looking back over his shoulder towards the door.

"But the captain might want to anchor up so he can clear the deck in case I, well, accidentally kill everyone or something," a few exhaling chuckles escaped Mikey's mouth nervously, though Gisla didn't seem to find it funny. "But really."

"Mmm, I'll see what I can do," Gisla stood up from her throne and marched towards the exit, one of the books still in her hand.

'Wow, she's actually leaving her cave?' he thought as he watched the miracle.

About an hour later and the 'Blackjack' swirled into a halt. At this point it was then rocking more than ever, the old galleon bobbling with each rolling wave that had passed.

The deck had been emptied short of Gisla, Mikey, Diana and Captain Tornstar (though the monkey Darzel was likely lurking in the canopy above). Gisla and Mikey had stood side by side facing the water, Gisla's pretty dress flailing uncontrollably in the wind.

"Well then," Captain Tornstar spoke out, leering over Mikey's shoulder. "Show me why I'm out here."