• Michael led them out through the door they came, but instead of leading them to the right and back towards the front door, they turned left towards a spiral staircase. It extended both up and down from their current story. Celica had expected them to go up to see Amos, but instead, Peter and Michael started descending.

    She began wondering what Jumper training would be like. If she had enough strength to practice, wouldn't she just Jump back home? "Micha- Kunalo?"

    As though he had read her mind, Peter elaborated. "You don't need to teleport between worlds. That's the most strenous of all kinds. you're also able to move within your present world."

    "Right you are, Peter!" He said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Celica noticed that it was getting considerably darker as they went down, and soon, she couldn't even see the cement stairs as she stepped on them.

    "Watch your step," Peter said, and his voice was much too far ahead of her. She picked up her pace to catch up, but in her blindness, she tripped. Hitting Peter hard, they both began to tumbled down the stairs.

    They finally came to a stop at what must have been the bottom of the staircase, because she could no longer feel the stairs, only a smooth, cool stone floor underneath her fingertips. Beneath her, though, there was something else. Considerably softer, and warmer.

    Hundreds of flourescent fixtures came on, filling the room with blinding white light. Celica found herself nose to nose with Peter, and both of their eyes widened. She scrambled off of him at the same time as Peter tried to scramble out, so all that resulted was Celica falling another inch or so closer to Peter's face.

    She rolled off hastily, very throroughly embarrassed, and blushed profusely. Peter was facing the other way, his hands in his jacket pockets.

    "Kevin!" Michael's voice rang out in the large room. "Kevin! Wake up, you lazy-" He cut off his sentence, shooting a quick glance at the kids. "You lazy person. Get up! We've got work to do."

    Celica turned her gaze to where Michael was facing and saw and enormously fat man, balding and wrinkled, occupying the entirety of an enormous, cushioned chair. It looked like a mattress folded in order to be sat in upright, and judging by the mess of cans that surrounded his workspace, it looked like that purpose was not neglected.

    "Wha-?" The man mumbled dully, and then snapped awake. "Oh, hi Mike."

    "Kunalo." Michael glared.

    "Right. Kunalo. Good evening." He seemed utterly confused.

    "It's the morning, Kevin." Michael said with an amused smile.

    Kevin's eyes widened, apparently realizing just how long he had slept. Changing the subject, Michael continued to explain what he had arrived for.

    "So she's the Jumper girl?" Kevin asked, pointing at Celica with a stubby sausage finger. "She's certainly better looking than most of the chumps you bring down here." He winked at her, and she grimaced.

    "Kevin, set up the course. She needs some practice." He walked purposefully across the threshold, and Celica noticed for the first time just how enormous the room was. The ceiling must have been at least fifty feet high, and the room itself was probably about a thousand square feet. Occupying most of the room was an enormous obstacle course that ran around the gym's perimiter, but not the kind that she was used to seeing.

    As Kevin audibly pressed buttons on the control panel that was in front of him, the entire room came to life. On the first stretch of the course, there were several thin cement walls. Then, there was a turn, and there was a large gap in the walkway. A dozen or so floating platforms drifted around the gap lazily, not following a specific pattern.

    On the last stretch, leading back to where they were standing, was a tunnel, the ceiling of which was crashing down to the floor every few seconds. In the center of the course, there was simple another huge gap, depthless and black.

    "Here is your training room." Michael's voice came from a spot a bit too close for Celica's comfort. He was standing directly behind her, a foot or so away. He leaned in an whispered into her ear, "Just focus on where you want to go."

    She turned around and faced him, and the light of the numerous flourescent fixtures, Michael's face seemed contorted into an evil smile. His eyes popped out of his sockets and his mismatched teeth were bared in a gruesome smile.

    She hastily took a step forward before answering him. "Right, thanks." She said quickly.

    "Before you go, you'll need this." He handed her a leather belt with several small loops in it, just big enough for her to fit her pinky finger inside. "There are flags around the obstacle course, you'll need to bring them all back in order to prove that you're ready to go home."

    "Right." She said, scanning the obstacle course and seeing small rectangles of green fluttering at certain points. "Where do I start?" She asked, turning back around to find Michael much too close to her again. She started and took another step back, ending up a bit too close to the chasm in the center of the course.

    "Right there." Peter pointed towards a large green rectangle painted on the floor that read, "START". It was the first time he had spoken since they arrived in the training room.

    "Oh, right. 'START'. That should have been obvious." She mumbled to herself as she walked to her right and stood on the indicated space.

    "Just let us know when you're ready." Kevin said from his perch behind the large wall of controls.

    "Ready." She said, getting a bit nervous. Nevertheless, she took her first step forward on the smooth, gray cement towards the cement wall. As she approached it, she concentrated hard on getting to the other side, and closed her eyes tight.

    A rush of wind filled her ears, and when she opened her eyes again, Celica had arrived on the other side. With a rush of pride and triumph, she picked up the flag from it's holder on the floor and ran over to the next wall, Jumping past it with more ease this time, but still closing her eyes for a second or two.

    She made a turn and saw the chasm, the small platforms turning out to be roughly the size of sidewalk slabs. "Here it goes," She said to herself as she approached the edge of the floor.

    She couldn't close her eyes, because she had to follow the platforms' progresses as they drifted around. To her disappointment, all of the platforms, seven of them she counted, had a little green flag on it.

    She concentrated extra hard on the nearest platform and with a sudden, disorienting change of perspective, she was standing on it. It was so sudden, in fact, that she began to fall backwards. She waved her arms to regain her balance, and after a few fleeting moments, she was standing firmly again.

    With a slight sigh of relief, she picked up the flag and put it on her belt. She focused on the next one, made it with less difficulty, and picked up that flag, too. She did this until every last one of the flags was on her belt. She was having such ease that she was getting giddy.

    She turned to Peter and Michael and put her arms up in the air in triumph, beaming widely. Peter waved and gavea thumbs up, but Michael was busy talking to Kevin. The platform made a sudden change in direction however, and she was thrown off the side.

    Bittersweet butterflies tried to burst out of her gut. She flipped backwards in midair, and she caught a few glimpses of the small slabs of concrete above her as she fell. Panicking, she Jumped again. She was standing on the other side of the chasm, well balanced and definitely not hurtling through the air.

    She sighed with relief, leaning against the wall, panting. Jumping was tiring business. She heard Peter and Kevin yelling in their approval, but when she looked over, Michael looked calm, even disappointed. Not taking this to heart, she continued on with the course.

    Making the final turn, Celica arrived at the crushing chamber. There was a green flag in the very center of the tunnel. Waiting for a few rounds of smashing, she counted exactly six seconds in between each. As soon as the large block lifted again, she sprinted in. Her eyes locked onto the flag, she hurtled through the darkening room. She would just grab the flag and Jump out of there, and that was that.

    Running with all her might, her breath becoming ragged and fast, she approached the flag with satisfying speed. As she got withing ten feet of the flag, though, she heard the grinding of cement on cement as the ceiling began to drop again, despite the groans of protest from the walls.

    Celica panicked, totally forgetting how to Jump or even think. She screamed, throwing herself to the floor, and shut her eyes tight.

    The grinding noise stopped, though, and when she opened her eyes, the block was hovering an inch or so above her head, twitching a bit.

    She heard Peter groaning with strain, and she immediately understood what was going on. She crawled back the way she came, frantically flailing her limbs in an effort to escape the wrath of the ten-ton block of cement, lest Peter lose control of it.

    She emerged back outside of the tunnel, and as soon as she did, the whole thing fell again. She sat, panting, stunned, and scared out of her mind. She got to her feet slowly and Jumped to the other side of the tunnel, no longer caring about the flag. She collapsed, and ended up next to the collapsed Peter.

    He was much worse for wear, however. He was gasping for air, and his veins were popping out of his skin, pulsing extremely fast. Peter's hair and face were soaked in sweat.

    "God, Kevin, you couldn't have stopped it? Are you tring to kill us?" He said between his desperate gulps for air.

    "Sorry, Pete," Kevin replied, his mouth full of something. "I thought the whole idea was that she got out herself.

    "He's right, Peter." Michael said as he stomped over towards the pair of them. "This was a test, and you cheated." He stared into each of their eyes in turn, burning them with his vision. "I suppose you can't help what's already done. I'm off to harvest my bamboo. It just grows so fast, you know." Still furious, he stormed back up the stairs.

    "What a nut," Peter said, finally regaining his breath, as the last glint of Michael's green cape disappeared around the corner as he went up the stairs.

    "Yeah," Celica agreed. She didn't want to admit how terrified she was of him.

    "I suppose we'd better tell Amos that you're not ready yet. You're staying with us for a while." Peter said, smiling apologetically.

    "Yeah, I guess we should." She was a bit disappointed that she couldn't go home and assure her worried father that she was safe, but staying her wouldn't be too terrible.

    She got up and followed Peter back towards the staircase and said good-bye to Kevin.