I must apologize in advance for anything wrong with this chapter. My computer somehow managed to eat my MS word so I am typing this on a wordpad.

Title: Chapter: Beginning

We walked home slowly. Our feet dragged against the sidewalk and rain drizzled from the sky lazily. My eyes drifted to a lone mail truck that was puttering away down the road.
"Today sucked." Kat said from my left.

"I know what you mean, how could we have gotten detention just for practicing on school grounds? Do they want us to get fat and rusty??" Mada replied from my right.

I rolled my eyes at the thought of what had happened a scant hour before. We had been practicing our martial arts like every other day after school in the commons, Kat had been showing us some new combos her dad had taught her when we were accosted by the security guard. He claimed that throughout the year there had been several complaints lodged against us and that we had been warned several times to cease our practice or we would be recieving detention. I was the first to protest, we hadn't been warned even once, but it fell upon deaf ears and I was handed a detention slip. Mada jumped to my defense with Kat not far behind and in short order we were all three landed in detention to be served on Friday of all days! So now we didn't have a choice, it was either go or get a Saturday detention which lasted for six hours; not a fun experience.

"Well, we'll have to go anyway. It's not like we have a choice...we'd better not practice our Kung Fu in the commons anymore either Kat. We could do it at my house, but Mikel would get twitchy." I said.

"That's alright Lina, we'll find somewhere to practice. I would volunteer my house since we have a big room set up like a dojo anyway, but it's across town and none of us can drive just yet." Kat replied.

"Heh, I'm the only one who could legally drive out of the whole lot of us but my aunt can't afford to insure me with her current job. It would be like a house payment every month, and why do you think we don't have a house of our own..." Mada said with a bitter tint to her voice.

Kat and I looked at her sympathetically, that was just her excuse for not driving. The real reason neither she nor her aunt wanted her to drive was because her parents had been killed in a violent car crash three years ago. The two lived in an apartment now and Mada had a part time job that she worked Monday through Thursday every other week to help pay for rent. (Though the two still managed to go on frequent shopping sprees...)

We had walked several blocks by now and the mail truck was parked, the mail woman nowhere in sight as she was presumably delivering a package to someone's door. My hair began to stand on end, but I ignored it in favor of teasing Kat about her crush on my brother. "I can't believe you like him, he's only like, seven years older than you!"

Kat blushed and said, "Shut up, he's hott despite his slight belly flab...and you shouldn't be so mean about it."

I blinked, I hadn't been trying to be mean but Kat's glare could only mean that she had taken my jibe for a true insult so I said, "Relax Kat, I was only kidding."

She huffed but ceased glaring holes through my skull.

The mail truck thrummed to life a few yards behind us and the air gained an ominous thrill to it. The three of us sped up as the truck went on its way towards us, I looked back when I heard it nearing just in time to watch as some sort of temporal rip opened up underneath it. We watched in consternation as the truck was consumed, though the mail woman jumped from the truck just in time it was futile as the rip had an apparent gravity; to our alarm we were being affected by it as well...