Late Night Capture by Myra Khanna

                                          

Late Night Capture

By Myra Khanna



Lightning flashed across the sky, quickly followed by thunder. Waiting in a small cloud was a young drafai named Moonstorm, named because of her ability to create lightning under the moon. Moonstorm, or Storm as she preferred to call herself, was writing everything knew hoping to get accepted at Drafai elementary . She wrote, “ I know how to speak Roar, so I know that drafai means dragon fairy. And I also know that Drasin is the continent we live in, I hope you pick me.”

“Yeah, that's good. I hope they pick me as one of the hundred!” Storm decided. She threw the letter out the cloud, letting the wind take it to Drafia elementary.

The next day Storm got a letter that read, “You have been accepted to Drafai Elementary.” Bursting with excitement, Storm put on her shoes, grabbed her backpack, and launched herself out of the clouds, flying towards the ground like a comet zooming towards earth. She flew and flew and flew until she was at Drafai Elementary.

At Drafai Elementary, Storm found a water drafai looking around. “Hi, what's your name? Mine’s Emerald,” the water drafai said.

“Uh, my name is Moonstorm, but please call me Storm,” Storm replied.

“All right!” Emerald shouted as she dragged Storm inside the building. As they entered the building, they met with ten other drafais, plus a teacher who was explaining how the school was going to work.

“Hi, I am Mistress Sun, your teacher. According to the level system, the twelve of you are going to be with me for the first year, and next year, you all will be with a different teacher. For our projects, you will find out what we will be doing soon,” the teacher explained.

They all followed Mistress Sun to a cave with hammocks that each had two scrolls: a name scroll and an introduction scroll. They all plopped down on the hammock with their name scroll and took a look at the introduction scroll. “Hello, class! This year you will be learning many things, including learning Roar, the different types of drafais, and the different regions in Drasin. I hope you enjoy this school year!” As soon as Storm finished reading, Mistress Sun announced, “All right everyone, since today is the first day, I will give you a quiz to see what you already know and what you still need to know.”

The quiz was uncomplicated because all Storm had to do was translate words that were in Roar to Dragon. Storm was able to complete the quiz pretty quickly for a drafai in her first year. After the quiz, they could take a story scroll from the scroll rack and read quietly. When Storm was finished, she chose a fiction story about a young girl named Sunset who went on a quest to save her teacher from the evil McMaster; it was called The Late Night Capture. Storm desperately wanted to finish the story, but Mistress Sun said they had to go explore. “Maybe you will find a good scroll to read at the library,” the mistress told Storm. Mistress Sun seemed to be staring at the scroll The Late Night Capture like it was the most important thing in Drasin. She opened her mouth to say something, but she was interrupted when Emerald bounced over to Storm and said, “Come on, I want to see the library and check if there are any cool adventure stories!”

At the library they found a whole section on famous adventure scrolls. “Whoa!” Storm and Emerald gasped in unison. When Emerald went to explore, Storm noticed the librarian acting a bit twitchy. “Everything okay?” Storm asked him.

“Oh, yup, everything’s okay,” he said. Storm noticed that he seemed a little nervous. However as soon as she blinked, his face was back to an emotionless expression, so she thought she had imagined it.

“Storm! Storm! I found a lot of biographies about Sunset and the evil McMaster!” Emerald said excitedly.

“Wait!!! You’ve read The Late Night Capture?” Storm asked.

“Of course!” Emerald exclaimed. Storm started to read a scroll on what happened to Sunset. “We don’t know what happened to Sunset after she saved her teacher from the evil McMaster, but it is believed that she went and became a teacher at some drafai school,” Storm read.

When they were back in their class cave, they found out that the teacher had expanded their cave. Now, each drafai had a hammock, a scroll rack, and a spot for all their belongings. “Okay everyone, I want you to go to sleep on your hammock, and I will give you more directions tomorrow,” Mistress Sun told them. Emerald was looking at Mistress Sun weirdly.

“Sunset,” she whispered.

“What?” Mistress Sun asked.

“You’re Sunset from The Late Night Capture, aren’t you?” Emerald asked.

Mistress Sun was silent for what seemed like eternity before she replied with a lousy “no.”

At midnight, Storm woke up wanting to do some secret exploring. She looked over

at Emerald, who was sitting on her hammock with an ‘everything is terrible’ face on. “What happened?” Storm asked.

“MistressSunisSunset librarianisTheEvilMcMaster McMastercapturedSunset!” Emerald managed to gasp out speedily.

“Wait what??? You gotta be kidding!” Storm said. Sadly, Emerald shook her head, “Do you know where they went?” Storm asked.

“Follow me,” Emerald whispered.

Storm followed Emerald quietly along the caves, making sure not to wake anyone up. “I followed them to see if I could catch up but I lost them,” Emerald whispered.

Storm could tell she was about to cry, so she said, “That’s okay… I doubt I could have caught up to them either.”

“Let’s just focus on how to get there,” Emerald said, looking ahead.

“Get where? Oh,” Storm said as she looked in the direction where Emerald was staring. There was just a cave, but it was too narrow to fly through, and they couldn't walk because there was no platform to walk on. “Please tell me you have a plan,” Storm pleaded.

Luckily, Emerald nodded and lifted her arm up in the air. Suddenly, water floated in the air. She squeezed her hand into a fist and the water froze into ice, creating a platform. “Let’s go!” Emerald called out to Storm. Emerald expanded the platform farther and farther until they finally reached an open sky and were able to fly towards the island.

“Race you there!” Emerald called to Storm before zooming away and diving into the water.

“Hey! No fair,” Storm yelled, laughing. She flew towards the island with speed that she never knew she had. Before she knew it, she was on the island hiding and waiting for Emerald.

“Hi,” Storm heard a familiar voice whisper.

“Emerald!” Storm whispered back. “Come on, we need to find a way to save Mistress Sun!”

Storm and Emerald slowly tiptoed into the giant castle

“Let’s go,” Emerald whispered to Storm. They weren’t paying attention and bumped into the librarian

“What a pleasant surprise, my daughter with new drafai!” the librarian hissed coldly.

“What?!” Storm said as she turned toward Emerald, “You are his daughter? You lied to me!”

“I’m sorry! I never told you,” Emerald said quietly, “I’ll make it up to you… I’ll show you where Sunset is.” Emerald said something else, but Storm couldn’t hear her.

“Fine! First we have to get past your dad!” Storm said firmly. They were interrupted by the librarian, “You’ll find that extremely difficult. And even if you do defeat me, which you won’t, you’ll never find Sunset!”

“We might,” Storm said.

“I’ll show her where she is,” Emerald said.

“You wouldn’t dare,” the librarian hissed coldly but was smiling evilly.

“Yes I will!” Emerald snapped.

Storm, who was standing innocently on the side, knew what Emerald was doing. With this distraction, instinct took over. Storm gazed at the full moon and felt the power forming in her body. The lightning tingled her fingertips as she made a lightning bolt. Storm waited for Emerald to back away before poking the librarian in the back. The look on the librarian’s face was pure shock as the lightning surrounded his body. Unfortunately, the librarian happened to be a water drafai, so he wrapped water around the lightning and made the water shape into a sword. “Great,” Storm thought, “Now he has a shock sword.”

“By the way, my name is McMaster, but you can call me Shark, not the librarian,” the librarian told them and attempted to hurt them with his new sword. Luckily, Storm and Emerald held their hands up in the stop gesture, squeezed them into fists, and pulled their fists back. Doing so, the lightning separated from the water. Storm couldn’t help but giggle at Shark’s shocked expression. After a minute, Storm was able to control her giggles, which were now roars of laughter. Only after she controlled her laughter, she discovered she had accidentally transformed into a dragon!

“Wow!!!” Emerald exclaimed, obviously shocked about her transformation.

Storm shrinked into her normal form and asked, “Where is Shark?” Apparently, Shark had run away from the sight of Storm’s dragon form.

“Let’s go, I think I know where Sunset is,” Emerald told Storm. She nodded and followed Emerald through the twisting caverns.

Soon, they were at a fork, and Emerald seemed to not know which way to go. “Umm, I think it’s this way,” Emerald said as Storm followed her. It was like this for the next hour until they finally found a dark room and heard someone’s voice.

“Mistress Sun?” Storm said.

“Sunset?” Emerald said.

“Thank goodness you're here. Can you try to free me?” Mistress Sunset asked. Storm and Emerald nodded and set off to work. Storm lit a torch and used lightning to burn the chains while Emerald used water to pick the locks. Soon, Sunset was able to fully stretch her wings. “Come on, we need to leave before Shark gets here!” Storm said. Emerald nodded, looked around, and directed them to follow her through twisting caves until they finally reached open air.

“Did you really think it would be that easy?” a deep voice boomed.

“No! Not now, Dad,” Emerald shouted. With this distraction, Storm looked up at the giant water tornado with Shark sitting at the top, she made a lightning boomerang and threw it at Shark's head, it missed. Shark’s laughter filled the air.

“What did you think that was?” Shark said cruelly.

“A boomerang,” Storm replied. The lightning boomerang flew back and knocked Shark off the tornado. The tornado came crashing down on them. Luckily, Emerald was able to create a giant wave to protect them. In the wave Storm needed a question to be answered. “Sunset, why did Shark capture you?” she asked.

Sunset hesitated before answering, “He thinks I am the most powerful drafai in Drasin, and he wants to extract my power and make it his own.”

Storm nodded but asked, “What do you mean by he ‘thinks’ you are the most powerful drafai?”

Sunset looked at the young drafais in awe. “You two are more powerful than you think,” she said.

“Wait a second… did the great Sunset just call us powerful?!” Emerald asked.

Sunset nodded and said, “We have no time to talk. We need to go now.” Sunset and Emerald took off, hovering above Storm.



“This is like Late Night Capture 2.0,” Storm thought to herself. Smiling, she went to join Sunset and Emerald in the air. The three of them flapped their wings as hard as they could, all the way back to Drafai Elementary.