WAR PLANET: The Phantom

Chapter 1

PRESENT DAY

A binder full of papers rocketed towards the floor along with a couple of worn down textbooks, a grey blur fleeing the scene and pattering down the hall. Ronan shot up out of his covers. Eyes alert for danger and a threateningly fluffy black sock in his right hand— ready for defending if need be. It took a while for him to process the scene before him, and by then it was too late to punish the culprit.

"Jay," he growled, pushing off his mess of white covers and jumping to his feet. His ebony hair was a makeshift bird's nest, the few strands poking in his vision glistening in the sunlight reaching through his window.

With an instinctive glance he inspected the time, it's 7:23.

He groaned, seven minutes of sleep wasted. The day like any other day had begun.

A uniform sat folded on his smooth metal desk, it was unique — to say the least — with its navy blue plaid overcoat and silky black dress pants that flapped madly with the slightest breeze. Ronan threw it on, tiredly scooping his textbooks off the ground and into his schoolbag with a stifled yawn.

As he made his repetitive breakfast of golden pancakes and syrup, he weighed the pros and cons of skipping school, a typical thought that crossed his mind as he stared vacantly at the chandelier above him. White marble tiles paved most of the floor, and six polished, white birch chairs sat evenly around a matching table. The house was like a mansion, not suited for such a small town. Stranger still to the people he grew up with, Ronan lived alone. Spare Jeremy and a caretaker named Rick, who only popped up at random moments to clean everything down to the smallest speck of lint.

Ronan's uncle technically owned the house, but he always seemed to be off 'researching'. He was a strange guy to begin with, rarely dropping by to see his nephew or even say hello. The only reason Ronan knew he was still alive were those once in a blue moon days when he phoned, or came to the door to drop off an intimidatingly large wad of money. It was hardly parenting. Social Services would drool over a case like his. But in his mind, it was better than sitting in an orphanage waiting for a couple of parents crazy enough to swing by and adopt him. He didn't know his parents after all, sent to live with his uncle when he was too young to remember even a flicker of their existence. But it wasn't uncommon, and he had little motivation to look into strangers that left him.

His uncle, who addressed himself as Staz, took care of him for the first six years, teaching him strange hobbies, from weaponising pencils to participating in Iridis' only musical group, four members strong. And then he started 'researching'.

Ronan was so engrossed with vacantly staring into the abyss that a faint cloud of black slithered out from his pancake. He snapped his attention to reality, looking down at his uncle's cat Jeremy, or as he addressed him Jay, with a smirk. "Wanna see a trick?"

The cat stared at him with his frosty blue eyes, watching him hold out the smoking pan and thrust it upwards. But the mission flopped, Ronan trying in vain to catch the sticky pancake before it flipped through the air and Jeremy's vision went black with a doughy splat.

His cat screamed like a murder victim, shuffling backwards with a cringe as he frantically looked left and right before bolting away.

****

Ronan didn't know why he tried to impress his cat of all things.

But now his breakfast had been trekked through the halls, with his cat still backing up into everything and wondering who turned the lights off. It took him a while to get the pancake, and longer still to erase the evidence of his incident, and by then he was running out the door to get to school with a growling stomach.

As he locked the back door, he nonchalantly turned to face Rick at an uncomfortably close distance. Rick was a tall chrome dome built like a German tank, always wearing a black suit with a permanent straight line for a mouth. He could probably stop a semi clocking 100 with one hand, which made Ronan pity any robber who'd try to break in and end up facing him. He liked to imagine them getting thrown out the front door like a sack of potatoes.

The weird thing was, despite all these years, Ronan could never figure out where he lived. Rick had a tendency to suddenly appear, clean something, ask an odd question or two, and then vanish. This made him exceptionally hard to locate, but whenever Ronan needed him he was always there.

Rick looked down at Ronan with his impassive frown, and like usual, Ronan had to crane his neck to meet Rick's gaze and greet him with a good morning.

"You're going to school?" The odd question Ronan had become accustomed to.

Ronan forced a stiff smile. "Yup, I usually do on a weekday."

Rick didn't return the smile, or any signs of emotions for that matter. He simply nodded and unlocked the back door with his own set of keys. However, as he was about to step into the house, he stopped. "Don't stay late." The door closed, once again leaving Ronan unpleasantly confused.

The school's entrance was a wide beige walkway, lined with rusted black rails that would fry a kid's butt like toast on any hot day; a frequent occurrence in Iridis. Along with the rails, there was an abundant supply of thorny, pink rose bushes that sat in a pool of golden brown mulch, lining the front of the school in an attempt to cover up as much of the cracking foundation as possible. The rest of the lot was controlled by a thick carpet of emerald grass, surrounding the school in its dewy blanket.

The school itself didn't provide an aesthetic appeal, since its colouring job could only be described as horrendous. Contrary to the navy blue the school prided itself in, its outer skin was an impressively large array of greens mixed with white and black, in a colouring arrangement less organised than a pack of leaking markers.

Kids tall enough to touch Leaf's branches, and short enough to hug a toadstool, swarmed around the front entrance. Some loitered, and others sped right in for the only shade. Normally a tree would also shelter a reasonable sum of students with its thick foliage, but Leaf, the only tree, was bare as a skeleton when it came to leaves. A little contradictory to the name. This excluded winter, when the tree would sprout an abundant crown of green and somehow survive.

He stopped at his usual spot beside his half-sized red locker, coming close to defying the common laws of physics as he shoved his bag into the tiny space. When the bag was orderly wedged in, Ronan squeezed his arm into its main flap, removing one of the beaten up textbooks along with a pencil. He then sat down, and madly scribbled to finish his homework.

A girl slowly approached him while he was focused on the last few pages of his science review. She was half a head shorter than him, with stormy blue eyes and long, golden brown hair swept back in a high ponytail.

"Homework?" she chimed, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look.

Without even glancing over his shoulder to see who was talking, Ronan nodded. "Hey Sonya."

She chuckled and sat down beside him, snagging the pencil he was aimlessly tapping against the page. "You got question one and five wrong." She smiled at the heavy sigh that came out of her friend. "You can copy off of my sheet, Mr. Krubs isn't here anyways."

Ronan took her up on her offer, and stuffed his homework back in his locker. Never finishing his work was a routine, and he was lucky his only friend could put up with that. Lucky she came to him first for greetings when she had half the school to hang out with.

The morning bell went off and the duo arrived in social class. The minutes were hours. Everything was review since final exams were around the corner, and most of the information didn't reach Ronan head. If it did, it got shoved in the messy back of his brain where it would likely remain forever.

After an eternity of class time, the four morning blocks were over, and lunch began. The heat was now a visible blur as it hovered above the sidewalk, and Ronan sat outside on a lonely half-shaded bench beside the school entrance, waiting for Sonya to finish up with whatever duty the office had called her for. He checked his phone in boredom, casually watching Ethan and his lackeys trying to squeeze pocket change out of a group of kindergarteners. A teacher would catch him eventually, as they usually did... nothing ever changed though.

"Ronan! Guess what?"

He looked at Sonya as she peeked out of the door, his welcoming smile dropping as he noticed her company. Even though he was wearing a uniform, Ronan hadn't seen the student in his life, and it wasn't just an issue of him never seeing him through the crowds of students. He was taller than the average grade niner, with a posture nearly robotic in nature, and the toned build of an adult. To add to his strange presence, his apparel had him sticking out like a sore thumb, especially the overblown fighter plane goggles messing up his wavy blonde hair.

Sonya caught Ronan's concerned confusion. "This is Red."

He stuck out his hand for Ronan to shake, a flicker of vacancy in his smile, as if his thoughts were distracted by something of a higher importance — or he just didn't know what was going on.

Ronan accepted the handshake. "I'm Ronan..."

"He's an exchange student... I think," Sonya added, mouthing 'I don't think he speaks English.'

Ronan tried to mask his discomfort at how clearly out of place Red was, staring at the emerald green book he'd tucked under one arm. He was a new student, which was like seeing a flamingo in Antarctica. Iridis never got exchange students, let alone ones that looked like that. It was strange, a hiccup in his routine that sat weird.

He distracted himself from the awkward silence Red brought with his presence, doing a double take as he saw Jay across the road, his tail flicking from side to side as he glared at Káel before running off into a bush. It wouldn't have been the first time his cat went on a lengthy adventure across Iridis, sometimes he wouldn't show up for days. After the morning's incident, he didn't expect to see him for at least a week.

Sonya didn't want to waste away in the awkward silence and immediately turned to inspecting Red's book. Whatever it was, it didn't display the English alphabet on it's cover, the squiggly gold letters looked like a warped version of Russian. The cover was equally as strange, with a scaly texture and emerald green colouring, drawing a cautious glare from her.

"So... Whatchya reading?" she asked, pointing at the book.

Red looked at his book a little confused, and then quickly changed his expression to an assured smile. "I'm deciphering a foreign teacup my Aunt gave me." He flashed the strange cover to Sonya. "I thinks it's... err... Ru... Russian? Yes, Russian."

"Teacup?"

Red paused, the gears slowly grinding in his head. "Book!" he blurted "I meant book". Red regained his posture and fixed his already straight tie. "I'm Russian student exchange, you will have to... mercy my not good English."

Ronan nodded, stifling any laughter attempting to escape his mouth. Why an exchange student from Russia would come to such a broken down school just before final exams was beyond him, but he didn't want to come across as rude by ignoring his company, despite the communication handicap. And the little twist in his gut.