BY SEHANA VALLE

STAFF WRITER

Volleyball is a pretty important sport here at MSA. The Dragons have some amazing volleyball teams. There are three volleyball teams. We have a Varsity, Junior Varsity and C team. I decided to interview Amira Aryal from the Varsity Volleyball team. I have asked her what she thinks about the team, how she feels about the sport itself, and anything else she has to say. 

Continue reading “Volleyball: From a Players Perspective” →

BY SAMUEL ELLINGSON

STAFF WRITER

Time Travel. It seems fictional, like some intangible concept that has mind-boggled us in many forms of fictional entertainment. But what if it was genuinely possible to achieve in real life? Although our current technology is not up for the task, time travel is possible. There are three main ways that it could be done.

Continue reading “How to Time Travel (In Real Life)” →

BY LOGAN SCHLOSSER

WEBMASTER

For nostalgia’s sake, and because I couldn’t think of anything else to write about, I’ve decided to write another good ol’ game review. Not really expanding my horizons, but they do say “do what you love!” Anyways, The game of choice today will be one you can absolutely just zone out to. With simple concepts, yet an underlying complexity, this game will leave you entertained for hours. Plus, there’s an active modding community, and free DLC being released fairly often! All of these traits I feel as though keep a game, and it’s community, alive. This game in question today is House Flipper. With that out of the way, let’s get right into it!

Continue reading “House Flipper: A Review” →

BY ALICE FONTANESI

STAFF WRITER

If quarantine hasn’t reduced you to half a brain cell then writing a story is a good way to keep yourself busy. Here are a few tips to improve your plot, writing processes, and characters. But I want to say before I start that these tips might not apply to you because all of this is based on what I have learned over the years. I am not a professional writer, but I don’t consider myself an amatuer. Try and survive this word vomit I have created. Also, no none of this will help your vocabulary or grammar because I suck at that also.

Continue reading “Tips To Improve Your Narrative Writing” →

 BY LYNNE INOUYE AND SYDNEY WESCHCKE  

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF IN TRAINING AND STAFF WRITER

During the next three years, twenty-two new series are set to be released exclusively on Disney Plus. Ten of these series will be Star Wars related, and twelve will be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Disney announced this on their Instagram and Twitter on December 10, and other posts included previews of the content. All this has many fans excited, so today we’ll look at what interesting content is being released.

Continue reading “New Content Announced on Disney Plus” →

BY ROWAN RAVERTY

STAFF WRITER

Dear Quinn Percy,

We like to congratulate you on making it into Luxywing Academy as a new Mixwing! Your knowledge of magic didn’t come as a surprise, as your mother was at the top of her year when she attended. She surely would be proud to know her half-blood daughter made it into the first class for half-blood witches.

Your classes will look a lot different then the four other wings. That is because we are still working out all the kinks of how to teach you, Being you all are only half witches, some witch teaching tactics might not work. We want to make sure everyone is learning at the same pace as well as they are comfortable with our teaching.

Your Wing Keeper will be Mr. Owlvox. He was one of our Duel Class Professor’s before volunteering to be your keeper. He has a half blood child himself you’ll be learning with.

Your common room is in the basement of the school. It was the only safe place we could find for you. Don’t worry, everything in the room shall be clean by the time you arrive. We would hate it if a student got a dirty room and felt uncomfortable. We want your common room to feel as safe as possible. 

And since this is the first time we’ll have Mixwings, you guys will not have your own Hexball team. There won’t be enough students to make a full team. But don’t worry, the Wishwings are letting you try out for their team! Since they are a low class like you, I hope you all get along.

Now, I won’t promise you’ll get along with everyone. The Starwings might bully you, it’s just what they do. We’ll try our best to make sure it won’t happen, but we can’t change their minds about not liking you. Their families are just blind sometimes. Some of the teachers might be wary of you too. For some of them, they haven’t experienced some species you half bloods are related to.

I hope this cleared some things up for you. We wanted to give you as much knowledge as we could about the school before you came. Don’t be afraid to contact us if you have any more questions!  

Sincerely, The School Board

BY MARKOS YIANGOU

STAFF WRITER

“Imagine that life is just a dream, and when you die, you just wake up and can re-enter right back in. Well that is our goal here at Infinite. We believe that this is possible through our WhirlPool program. With our new program we can simulate anything. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you came here for business . let’s say that you need to make a plan for battle, but you don’t know if something will go wrong. All you have to do is simulate all the possibilities of the battle so you can pick the best option,” said Director Simon.

“So you’re saying we don’t have to walk into battle without weighing options,” said General Hopston from the U.S.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, so what do you say?” asked the director. 

“Fine – six hundred million in US dollars but if this doesn’t work like you said I’m sending a squad here, and I’m going to unleash six hundred million dollars worth of anger on you.”

…

“This should pay for the money owed to the families of the subjects who died,” said the director to Dr. Brumen. 

“Sir, remind me how they died?” asked Dr. Brumen.

“They died because their minds couldn’t hold the amount of pain they felt because of their trials. Their organs shut down as their brains thought they were dying. But we are close to finding a way to stop that, so that they last longer. Remember it’s for the greater good,” says the director.

…

Meanwhile, Team Alpha Seven of the organization D.A.G.G.E.R, a bureaucratic organization bent on stopping world threats:

 “The mission is to infiltrate the enemy building aka Infinite operations center. We go undercover and steal the Whirlpool program’s data and get out, simple as that. Don’t get caught; if you do, don’t say a thing to them. lie tell half truths -anything, just don’t give up info. Remember there are innocent lives at stake.”

…

“Do you have that report doctor,” asked the director.

“Yes I do it’s right he-” said Dr. Brumen.

A gun-shot rang out. The director ducked under the desk, already digging in his desk to find his emergency gun. He found it then tapped the emergency button to tell security they were being attacked.

“Search for files, check the computer,” said one of the attackers.

That’s when the director heard the noises – security was coming, hopefully armed and ready. Then, out of nowhere a smoke grenade is thrown in, then gunshots, and then silence. That was the end of it; security lost no one. But the intruders supposedly all died when the security team counter attacked. Although, we all know what happens to intruders in Infinite.

BY MAYA CRANDALL

COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR

Charlotte Flannery stuck out her tongue and tasted the damp, musty night air of Boulder Creek Memorial Park, the cemetery where her grandmother was buried. 

Buried, yes…But not dead. Not in Charlotte’s eyes. 

Her fingers brushed against the cool gravestone, the words CARMEN FLANNERY, BELOVED carved deep into the marbled rock. 

“Hello,” Charlotte whispered. 

Nothing but the wind answered, a sighing breath against her sweat-slicked neck. She was early, so Charlotte was not expecting an answer. Instead, she slid down the gravestone and onto the mossy  ground and pulled out a sketchbook from her worn faux-leather bag—the one with the strap hanging on only by a thread. 

Hanging, hanging, hanging until it would snap, snap, snap. Like wood crackling in a fire, or twigs crunching under a boot. 

Charlotte grabbed her charcoals as well and flipped through the pages. Her eyes caught on black blurs and glimpses of long-forgotten faces she’d drawn too long ago to remember. She flipped and flipped until—she was at the last two blank pages. Her grip tightened around the charcoals. No, how could that be? She couldn’t have filled eighteen pages so quickly. Sure, she fell into a scribbled frenzy as soon as the charcoal hit the page, but—

The charcoals went smashing into an adjacent grave before she realized what, exactly, she had done. In fact, it wasn’t until she saw her extended arm in front of her like a phantom limb that she knew she had chucked them. 

She laughed at the explosion of black dust on the gravestone of TAYLOR BASSETT. 

What a pity, she thought. What a dreadful, dreadful, shame. 

She crawled towards it, not at all worried about the stains of moss and dirt now adorning her baggy white jeans. “To honor you,” she said, kissing Taylor Bassett’s gravestone before rubbing her fingers in the shattered charcoal remnants.

And with said charcoal dust Charlotte Flannery drew a masterpiece. She hummed a tune under her breath, rocking back and forth on her knees in excitement as she crafted something truly dark and deadly on the second to last page in her sketchbook. A replica of the angel statue above Taylor Bassett’s grave, but its wings were shredded and bleeding, it’s mouth curved into a wicked grin instead of a reverent, holy smile. As she drew in the last details of his smile, she could have sworn it moved—just a twitch of one wing. Then the other, back and forth, back and forth until it was taking flight. Charlotte watched as it struggled to fly off the page with broken wings before it swarmed around the angel statue and tapped its shoulder. The statue screamed before shattering into pieces. Charlotte laughed with wicked delight as her dark, broken creation took its place.

She was so entranced that she didn’t notice the eyes. 

The eyes, the eyes, the eyes. Watching, waiting. Waiting, watching.

Someone was behind her. 

And it was not her grandmother. 

—

He knew he came to the wrong place at the wrong time when he saw the girl performing what looked like some sort of…ritual. 

Oh, no, no, no. There was a reason no one went to cemeteries at midnight during October. Or ever. 

Still, Mason Tuscan couldn’t help himself from creeping the slightest bit closer as the girl scribbled in a sketchbook, her dark brow furrowed and sweat-slicked in concentration. She was humming a song he’d heard before—on the radio, perhaps—but she slowed it down a bit. Made it minor instead of major. She transformed it from upbeat to depressing; exciting to…eerie. 

Yes, he should have definitely left by then. His stomach flipped as a manic laugh burst from her lips. But—she was just a kid. His age by the looks of it; no more than seventeen or eighteen. And he could have sworn he had seen her around school before. Her name was…Charlie? Charlotte? He couldn’t recall, but he remembered she was the TA in his Algebra One class last year—remembered the lilt of her handwriting as she wrote D, F, or, if he was lucky, the occasional C on his tests in purple pen. 

She was so different now. Then, she’d been what everyone would call the “popular smart girl.” The one who always took the lead in group projects or sent the homework answers to the entire class in a group chat, no questions asked. Her hair was always shoulder-length and curled, and she used to dye the ends a striking red color. She was at the top of the unique-fashion food chain (Mason knew all this because his best friend at the time had such a huge crush on her, he was borderline stalkerish). But looking at her now…Her mousy brown hair was unkempt and stringing down her back, and she was drowning in her oversized sweater and baggy jeans. 

Mason still thought she was undeniably pretty but…what had happened?

He leaned closer from behind a gravestone, hoping to see more of what she was drawing when—Her head whipped towards him. Mason fell back as he finally saw her entire face. Charcoal smudged her cheek, her eyes wide as she took him in. The dazed smile stretching across her face instantly vanished. 

“What are you doing here?” the girl breathed, chest heaving. 

“Nothing, I—I—”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

Mason adjusted the boxy frames resting on his nose. “Nothing.”

“You have a black eye.” The girl tilted her head, touching her own eye. 

“N-no I don’t,” he said. “It’s just the shadows.”

You and I both know that Mason was, indeed, lying. And he was doing a trash job of it. 

“I’m Charlotte,” she said, holding out a hand. “You’re Mason, right?”

She remembered him? Mason nodded blankly. “Yep.”

“Neato.”

He grabbed her hand to shake it, but she pulled away instantly and wrapped her arms around herself. 

“Th-that’s a cool drawing,” Mason started, gesturing to the discarded sketchbook beside her. It was—a demonic angel with a fanged smile. Fitting. 

Charlotte shrugged, mindlessly rubbing her charcoal-coated hands on her thighs. “Why do your glasses not have a prescription?”

How did she know this stuff? He almost asked her those exact words, but from the gleamed look in her eyes, he didn’t dare test her. He shrugged. “I like the way they look.”

Again, lies. He thought back to the real reason he wore them.

His uncle. A slap to the face. A little more than a slap to the face. 

His parents had died when he was four. He’d been staying with his father’s brother and sister-in-law ever since, and his life hadn’t been…perfect with them, but it was happy. Until the accident that took his aunt’s life. That was when his uncle lost his job, and he started drinking more than just a couple sips, and…it all went downhill from there. 

“Where’ve you been, boy?” His uncle had slurred when he returned home earlier that night. 

Mason adjusted the strap of his backpack. “Friends house. Working on music stuff.”

“I says that you—“ his uncle hiccuped, patting his stomach—“you needs be home by nine.”

He had not said that. In fact, Mason had only seen him passed out that morning on the couch before heading off to school. 

“Sir, I—“

But he never got a chance to finish. He had been blinded by swinging fists, deafened by roars of anger and his own heart throbbing in his ears. 

Thus why he wore the glasses—to blame the bruising on the shadows caused by the frames. And why he let his wild, dark curls tumble haphazardly across his forehead. Mason shook his head, willing away the memories. “So why are you here, Charlotte?”

She smirked as she patted the gravestone beside her. “I am waiting for someone.”

“In a graveyard?”

“Of course. Where else?”

TO BE CONTINUED…