Lift Off !: Falcon Edition, Book One of the Fire and Flight Series

By Kelly Clous

Lift Off is the ultimate game - a game of strength, speed, strategy, and teamwork! After several intense competitions, a seventh grader, Kyle, earns a position on the Guardian’s Lift Off team. Now Kyle and five other students will go head to head with six members of their rival school, the Protector Academy. Sometimes they will be able to use their supernatural powers. For other contests, they must relay on their non-Enhanced physical and mental skills. It all takes place with the idyllic backdrop of the beautiful Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. At first it seems like just a game. Then things changed and the outcome of the game may make the difference between life and death. Now Kyle must decide exactly how important it is to win. Is winning more important than doing what is right? This is a superhero fiction for the independent reader to young adult (or young at heart) crowd.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribl
• Release date: Jun 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781633480322

Kelly Clous

(This is the profile created by my great husband, who is publishing my books!)

Book preview

Part I: Double Elimination

Chapter 1

I felt the wind rushing past my face as the ground raced towards me. I looked down from about eighty feet up in the sky. I was falling way too fast! With my enhanced vision, I could even distinctly see the blades of grass that were on my collision course. This wasn’t good. But I couldn’t slow down. I was going to crash! Two more seconds, I thought. One second. NOW!

I opened my wings and beat hard. The wind pushed fiercely against my feathers. I still landed with so much impact that terrible pain shot up my legs.

I looked over at my opponent, Julia. She was plummeting to the ground even faster than I had. Her face had a concentrated look and she was waving her hands in front of her trying to break her descent with her psychokinetic power. She couldn’t stop. Julia was rushing towards the ground. She was going to die!

Just six inches from the ground, a shimmering opaque blanket appeared on the ground. Incredibly, Julia bounced harmlessly off the blanket back up high into the air. After repeated bounces, she finally came to rest. She rolled off the shimmering blanket and it disappeared. For the purpose of this contest, though, Julia was considered dead.

I had the chess piece in my mouth and I hobbled as quickly as I could to the goal. I had won this round and took out my opponent’s Queen, her best piece.

It was time to sit down and relax, to become me again. I breathed deeply as the hawk feathers on my head changed into my red brown hair and the remainder of the feathers regressed into my pale skin. My torso enlarged, my legs lengthened. Next, the hawk’s beak was sucked into my face and became much softer as human features filled out around my straight narrow nose. My nose. My face.

That’s me, Kyle. I’m a shape shifter and I can change into the shape and size of any animal I’ve ever seen and touched. Well, just about any animal. But what you need to know right now is that I’m in the middle of a serious competition called ROX. ROX is just one of several competitions I’ve played to qualify for the upcoming Lift Off competition. In ROX, we move pieces on a chess board, but any time one piece attacks another, we have a mini-competition to determine if the challenge is successful. So far, I’ve wiped most of my opponent’s pieces off the board. I was moving in for a victory.

As we walked back indoors from the large open field in which we had just competed, I looked around the small, dull room. It was pretty boring. Four white walls with just a tint of yellow, a bare wooden floor, and a small wooden table holding a surprisingly ornate chess board.

We each made two more moves. I watched with bated breath as she selected the second move. YES! I thought.

Checkmate! I yelled. Julia groaned.

Break to the shielded zone, the official called.

This was it! When one person reached checkmate, the next step was to defeat their opponent in an area where no one could use his powers. If I could win this hand to hand combat, I would win this challenge. I would make it into the final round of Lift Off qualifiers.

I tried to control my breathing as I walked over to the power-free arena. With only a few games going on, I wasn’t surprised to see the arena available. There were several forms of hand to hand combat we could be judged on: judo, wrestling, boxing, tae kwon do, jiu jitsu. The list went on. I was pumped full of excitement as our Martial Arts coach brought out chest protectors with large red dots in the center and blue dots on the side. Tae kwon do was my best form of hand to hand combat. It was more about speed and agility than pure strength.

I donned my head gear, teeth protector, chest guard, and hand and foot gear. After a quick last minute stretch of my legs, I stepped up the line. I shook Julia’s hand, then stepped back with the loudest high spirited Hi Yah that I could yell. My opponent didn’t look impressed. I guess she’d heard the saying his bark is worse than his bite.

Julia came at me with a jab-punch combination, followed by a round house kick. I blocked neatly and returned with my own knee fake and flying round house kick. She was really good at tae kwon do and I found myself quickly out of breath. Then I saw a split second opening and slapped her in the face with a hook kick for two points. She was pretty aggressive and backed me out of the ring. But I was pretty good at sidestepping, so the next time I let her get past me, and then moved back to center ring. She surprised me with an axe kick to my shoulder, bringing the score to two to one, my favor. Just before the final bell rang, I got in one more point on an inside kick with side kick combination. I had won.

The hand to hand win sealed the competition. I stepped forward and shook my opponent’s hand. I took off my gear and walked quickly into the hallway.

My friend Shawn came up and engulfed me in a bear hug from behind.

Congratulations! he hollered. You made it! You made it into the final round!

I blinked my eyes in disbelief. I had won at ROX and now I was in the final round to determine who would be on the Lift Off team!

Chapter 2

Some schools compete in football. Some compete in soccer. Students from other schools go head to head in academic competitions like spelling bees or science fairs. But not my school. The Guardian Academy has a completely different kind of competition. It’s called LIFT OFF. And this competition will rock your world.

I’m Kyle, the first middle school student EVER to make it to the final round of qualifiers for Lift Off. What’s the big deal, you say? Well, Lift Off is the coolest competition you could dream of. It’s not like football or soccer, where the only thing that matters is how fast you are or how strong you are. And it’s not like science fairs where you just need to be smart. For Lift Off, you need to be smart, strong, fast, innovative, and you need to know how to work as a team.

There are only two teams in the game. My school, the Guardian Academy, is the best school ever. Our school is dedicated to training up the finest heroes in existence. Our competition is the Protector Academy. You guessed it… their school is in the business of teaching villains. I’m afraid they do a pretty good job too. In fact, they have won Lift Off for the past three years. But that is only because they cheated. I guess that’s okay if you’re planning on being a villain. It just means we need to be better, smarter, stronger, and faster. And we are. Yeah, you get the picture. Because of great teamwork, we did win six times over the last decade.

So I was about to enter the semi-final rounds of the competition for the Guardian Academy. You see, each school is only allowed to have six members on their team. Since everyone in the school wants to be part of the action, we have a contest every year to determine who’s included on the Lift Off team.

Our school uses double elimination. That means that each competitor must lose two separate events before being dropped out of the contest. For the most part, only the high school students get to enter the rounds. Every year, though, the middle school has its own smaller competition, and gets to pick out the six most promising students to compete in the double elimination. This year, my best friend Shawn and I both made it to the competition. He lost out after the third round and all of the other middle school students were gone by the end of round four.

Except for me. Now, out of over 400 kids, there were only twelve people left. All of us had lost at least one competition. Except for Zane. Zane Halliday is a senior at the Guardian Academy and he has taken part in Lift Off for the past three years, since he was a freshman in high school. Everyone knew he would be back this year. Everyone was counting on him to be team captain.

Now back to me. If I could win just one more challenge, I would be the first middle school kid ever to take part in Lift Off. Now how cool would that be?

For each of the challenges, there is always a power zone and a shielded zone. That means that for part of the challenge, you can use your powers or gifts. But for the remainder of the challenge, you must rely on your normal skills. You know - speed, power, intelligence, and so on. It’s done that way because the real game of Lift Off has some parts…

Kyle, earth to Kyle. Hey what ‘chu thinking about, Buddy? asked my best pal Shawn. I don’t know how long he had been waving his hand in front on my face before I noticed.

Sorry, I blinked several times, I was deep in concentration… just mentally preparing myself for the next challenge.

You better win, Shawn replied, You know the entire middle school is rooting for you. Especially Heather."

Heather… my heart fluttered. A vision of her beautiful smile with her long light brown hair flickered in front of me. But no time to think of Heather now.

I just had to win. Not only because it would be super awesome to travel with the team for the best competition ever, but also because I really thought I could help the team win.

My Dad thinks so too. He’s one of the best heroes ever and he says I’m following closely behind in his footsteps.

So far, I had won at ROX, Zorcon, and Triple Bounce. The only competition I had lost was Cross Challenge, and that’s because, well, Rebecca was able to animate the ball and make it roll right into her goal in two seconds. But that’s another story.

I sat down, crossed my legs, and took in several deep breaths. God, I prayed, please let me do my very best. It’s cool with me if I don’t win. I know that’s up to you. I just want my friends and family to be proud of me. Thanks, God. Amen.

I waited with racing heart, as the announcer began calling out the last round of competitions. Stephen Perelli and Reina Smith, report to Arena Three.

Kyle Holmes and Zane Halliday, report to Arena Four. No!!! I inwardly groaned. I had been lucky so far. Well, if I believed in luck. So far, I hadn’t been called to compete against Zane. But now the game was over. Zane was unstoppable. There was no way I would beat him. The competition was over for me.

Chapter 3

I did my best to remind myself that it didn’t matter. My brain kept trying to remind me that I’ve come so far. I just need to do my best. Winning’s not the most important thing.

Arena Four was an outdoor terrain, comprising of a walled-in wooded area with a stream and some rocky paths. It was the largest arena and the one closest to the true competition of Lift Off. It was a great environment for me to compete in. If I was up against anyone else, I would be confident of winning. But not against Zane. Everyone knew he was the champ.

I walked to the center of the staging area. I’m pretty tall for my age, but Zane was a senior, and stood a full head taller than me. His raven black thick hair contrasted with my longish red brown hair. His Hershey chocolate colored skin made my pale skin look even lighter. Did I mention he was really tall?

Zane, I nodded and offered my hand to shake hands with him. But instead of the usual grasp, he curled my fingers up into the ball of my hand and gave me a fist bump. As he made a fist, I could not help but noticing how his arm muscles expanded. He was wearing a black muscle shirt and had plenty of muscles to make the shirt‘s name appropriate.

Kyle, the mid man, great to meet you. Zane responded with a smile. He had a funny kind of lopsided smile where only the right half of his face was smiling. Wow, I’m impressed. This is the farthest a middle school kid has ever made it in the preliminaries. Now he turned to look directly into my eyes.

Are you ready to go down? he asked.

As rude as it sounded, somehow it didn’t even seem arrogant coming from him.

I’m ready for the toughest competition yet.

I tried to sound bold in my response, even though I was wilting inside. May the best man win. Or the best kid, I thought.

The high school self defense teacher stepped forward, dressed as usual in a black kung fu uniform, his feet bare.

"The challenge is dual seek and capture. You will need to find and capture both of your two flags and return them to your respective bases.

"Kyle, you will have the green base and your flags will have a green central circle. Zane, your flags will have a blue central circle and you will have the blue base.

"You must capture the red flag first. During this part of the challenge, you may use all of your powers. You may not touch your yellow flag until your red flag has been placed at your base. Once you have successfully placed your red flag at the base, you may no longer use your powers.

"For the yellow flag, you will need to use human strength and speed alone. Once a flag is placed at the base, it