Summer 2013

DEO PATRIAE AMICIS A Newsletter for Seton High School Students

Photo By Maddie M

“As mariners are guided into port by the shining of a star, so Christians are guided to heaven by Mary.” ~ St Thomas Aquinas

Summer Issue 2013

A Cherry Blossom

by Kate Knighton Sweet and pink and feather-light, And growing on a tree, Blushing in the sun’s glance bright, And smiling gently; Waving to the passerby With tender cheerfulness, Pushing away a gloomy sigh, With quiet loveliness; Softly sending forth your scent To those who breathe the air, Those whose energy is spent, On winter’s dark despair; Those who, without a second thought, Welcome you and spring, And the vitality you’ve wrought, And kindly given wing; With all your beauty, you oppose, The darkening clouds of life; You’re no writer of commonplace prose, With poetry, you fight strife;

With all your splendor you acclaim, The One who is all-awesome; You with simple, pretty name, O gentle cherry blossom.

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God's Light

By Kyra Clark

But I can see it and see it well: The horror that makes you feel like hell, Weighing your soul through the night,

Can you see the light?

Too much horror and too much strife, From the struggles in your life; Giving up and giving in, Is what you do to try to win.

Awakening your every fright.

Can you feel the warmth?

Can you feel the love that burns through the night?

The answer I know breaks my heart,

You can do it; you can go.

I know your emotions; I know your pain,

Embrace the love and lose the woe.

That feeling of having nothing to gain.

Sure it’s hard and sure it’s steep, Such a price, such a leap;

Breaks my soul, Knowing joy from you is cold,

But hold steady and hold true,

Knowing life has killed your smile,

My loving child:

Killed your love, For all this while.

Just keep your eyes set on the prize.

God loves you.

He wants to shield you from all this distress.

Embrace the ones who are wise.

Lose the sorrow, and gain the joy,

Pushing on and pushing true, Through all the things life puts you through, Hiding away all your pain, Not showing how much your heart has waned,

Though such thoughts may seem like lies

The life God wants us all to enjoy.

To give you hope before you die, How can it be love,

Do not tarry in the past,

When there feels like nothing from above?

As the present speeds so fast.

Look towards the resounding light, The very essence of God’s might.

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Photo by Natalie Kellner

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Photo by Mary Schmitt

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Onyx Legacy Part 9

by Mara Ng

“We lost them?” Kate groaned.

“I thought you were supposed to be the one in charge of keeping an eye on them? I’m the one in charge of making sure that no one’s following us!”

Nick clicked his tongue and grumbled. “If you had stayed quiet and stopped being annoying, I wouldn’t have lost them.”

Kate glared at him, but she didn’t have enough energy to start another fight. “Hmm..

Whatever. Can you just figure out where we’re supposed to go now?”

Nick was slightly surprised that Kate didn’t argue, but he was also happy that he didn’t have to waste his energy on another useless fight with his twin.

“Well, it’s a good thing I actually thought of bringing a flashlight.

I think it’ll be easier for us to figure out which corner to turn and stuff if I use it every now and then, but I don’t want to use the light too often or else it’ll be too obvious.”

After walking in the eerie silence with only a pocket flashlight to light their way every couple of minutes, Kate grabbed her brother’s arm. “I think I heard something.”

Nick could feel her trembling and winced as her sharp nails dug into his skin. “Ouch! Let go 5 of me, Kate!”

Kate let go of his arm, but held onto the back of his shirt so tightly that Nick felt like he was about to choke to death.

“Where did the sound come from?”

Kate pointed to their right, letting her brother loosen himself from her iron grip. Nick looked at where Kate pointed and saw an open door in the hallway. He covered his flashlight, letting only a faint, red glow guide them through the darkness. Kate shivered again as Nick whispered that they would go inside the room. As they tiptoed inside and crouched behind a machine—which could’ve been an old copy machine—Nick saw a light flicker further inside the room.

“Someone’s here,” he mouthed.

“Maybe it’s Cassidy.”

“What if it’s not?” Kate asked a bit too loudly.

“Shh!” He warned. When he looked at the light, he saw it was aimed at the wall for a few seconds, and then it suddenly disappeared.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Kate whispered.

Before Nick could decide what to do, a hand shot out from the dark and pulled the two from their hiding place.

“Please don’t hurt us!” They both pleaded with their hands comically covering their eyes.

Their captor sighed and let them down. “You siblings really are alike.”

“Spencer?” Kate asked, with a sudden wave of relief.

“What are you two doing here?” he scolded. “It’s dangerous. Did you two really follow us all the way here? Man! Evelyn will kill me if she finds out that I let you two come here.”

Though he was relieved that it wasn’t an unknown enemy, Nick felt indignant at Spencer’s treatment. Who gave him the right to scold them? He was doing the same thing they were.

“I agree it’s dangerous, so why are you here, Spencer? Cassidy’s here too right? It’s dangerous, so we should all go back. Or you can let us stay so that we won’t run into trouble by trying to go back.”

Spencer frowned. “You Onyxes are a handful.” He sighed again.

“Fine, you can stay. But you have to stick close to me.

Cassidy will kill me if I lose you two.”

“Speaking of my sister,” Nick started, “where is she?”

Spencer was shining his light on some of the old tables and peered through some dusty papers that were still stacked in a neat pile in spite of the long years they’d been untouched.

“We split up a few minutes before you two came here.” He opened the drawer of another table and coughed as dust flew into the air. “We’re both looking for stuff, and they just happened to be in different places.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” Kate asked, already over her agitation. Spencer looked at her with his brows furrowed and hesitated before answering her

question. He smiled shyly. “It’s a little embarrassing, but… Well, I’m not exactly looking for anything in particular. I just... I just want to find something that belonged to my mom. Y’know?”

Kate looked thoughtful for a second, as if she could understand Spencer’s feelings perfectly. “Then we’ll help you!”

Kate offered, and Nick agreed.

“I was thinking the same thing.

Plus it’ll be faster if we help.”

As the three looked through the clutter on tables and the papers all over the room for anything with Spencer’s mother’s name on it, Cassidy was busy finding her way to her father’s private laboratory which he used to call his “Sanctum.”

Cassidy aimed her flashlight at a broken and burned sign which told her that the laboratory wasn’t far. As she turned into another hallway, she grew pensive as she remembered a scene from her childhood. She could remember running through the place to go to her father and tell him that she had gotten the highest grade in one of the sparring sessions in the Lion’s Den after beating Spencer and the other students.

As she continued through the hallway, she found that the area had been more severely damaged by the fire compared to the place where she and Spencer parted. After passing two more rooms, Cassidy finally found what she was looking for. It was a large, metal doorframe with weird buttons and

contraptions to its right. She crawled through a small opening in the ruined door. As she stepped into her father’s Sanctum, Cassidy could feel hot tears in her eyes.

As she explored the room more, she remembered the high ceiling, the large telescope in the middle of the room, the weird machines and several different types of microscopes at one corner, and her father wearing a lab gown as he busied himself with work.

Remembering her mother’s words about Orion’s belt, Cassidy tried to look through the telescope and see if she could find a clue in the stars. After a few minutes of trying to find a way to operate the telescope, she gave up and decided to look around before trying again.

When she went to the middle of the room, she saw a sheet covering something large in one corner. Curious, she went to it and pulled the tarpaulin off with a little difficulty. She looked up at the large mechanism and gasped as she recognized the shape of the machine. It was one of her uncle’s weapons—a Transformer-like robot which could only be operated by someone with one of the microchips. Cassidy breathlessly marveled at the large mech-suit which stood about five feet taller than her. Though it was covered in a layer of dust, Cassidy could still recognize her uncle’s trademark OCD in the detail of the complicated device.

As she looked at the rest of the robot, Cassidy suddenly stopped and let her flashlight stay at one place. She could feel her heart beating as she read the name of the robot on its right arm.

The key is in Orion’s belt.

The blood was pounding in her ears. As if in a dream, Cassidy found a chair a few feet away and placed it in front of the robot.

The key is in Orion’s belt.

Cassidy stood on the chair and looked at Orion’s belt. While scrutinizing it, she found that there was nothing odd about the belt at all. She couldn’t believe that she was wrong, so she tried looking again.

The key is in Orion’s belt.

Feeling even more anxious, Cassidy felt her hand touch the onyx on her necklace. As she did this, her eye spied a small depressionjust a little hole reallyin the belt.

Remembering all the different spy movies she’d ever watched, Cassidy immediately took her necklace off and tried to put the onyx inside. As she inserted it into the slot, she could hear and feel that something was clicking inside the robot. Her heart pounded faster as she realized the gears were turning inside the mechanism.

The key is in Orion’s belt.

Then it opened.

Cassidy held her breath as the robot’s torso opened up to reveal a compartment with a large seat and buttons, levers, and many 6

other controls glowing in a dull bluish light emanating from the machine’s controls.

It’s a cockpit!

Cassidy closed her flashlight, climbed into the seat, and admired the robot’s amazing workmanship. She let her eyes slowly scan the interior of the huge machine until her eyes fell on a glove compartment to her left. Anyone else would’ve disregarded the small storage cabinet, but Cassidy felt it would be best to make sure that nothing in the robot was left unnoticed.

Cassidy tugged on the latch. As she looked inside, she found an instruction manual and a large envelope. Cassidy scanned through the instruction manual first, quickly figuring out how to use the robot, and then she took the envelope out.

Dangling one of her legs out of the robot as she sat lengthwise in the opening of the cockpit, Cassidy examined the envelope.

It was a fairly thick and large manila envelope, and despite the dust and its faded color, it looked fairly neat and in good condition. Cassidy turned it over to read the back of the envelope and nearly fell out of her comfortable seat.

The key is in Orion’s belt.

The envelope was hastily labeled Schlüsselor “key” in German.

“This is it,” Cassidy thought as her heart quickened and skipped beats. She read a hastily written sentence beneath the word. “I’ve found it! I actually found it!”

7 She opened the envelope slowly

and with the utmost care as if it was made of papyrus hundreds of years old. She couldn’t imagine what she would find inside. It could very well be horrifying pictures and diagrams of the various cases of the Korius Disease.

After she gently pulled out the envelope’s contents, Cassidy stared at them, bemused at the sight of the actual “key” her mother told her to find just before she died; the envelope contained pictures of her and her siblings.

Cassidy let out an awkward laugh full of relief and disappointment mingled with anxiety, panic, and horror. Was this it? Did Mom play a trick on me? Are they really alive, and are they really on the enemy’s side?

She flipped through the pictures frantically, hoping that she’d find something about the cure.

As she skimmed through the pictures and her parents’ handwriting on the backs of the pictures, her tears fell uncontrollably. She didn’t know whether or not she should cry because of the loving notes their parents had written on their pictures or because she feared that they had really survived and had abandoned their own children. While flipping through the thick pile of pictures in the midst of her trepidation and despair, she found a small, worn, and wrinkled leather book with her father’s name on it. She stopped burrowing through the

pile of pictures and tried to open the leather journal with her trembling fingers. When she finally opened it, she recognized her father’s neat handwriting.

Running her index finger down a page, she found a passage about Nick and herself. She looked for the beginning of the entry and read: September 21, 20- It’s a disaster. How could we have not seen it? How could we have not even recognized the symptoms in our own flesh and blood? I am a complete failure as a father! There is no one worse than I am! To let my own children—!

But…I cannot lose hope! We will help them! That is the only way to save them now! I will not sleep until I find the cure!

We only realized it a few days ago.

But Cassidy was being peculiar weeks before already. Even Peter’s son, Spencer, thought she was strange. In her mixed-martial-arts class—which I believe she enjoyed too much—, she did not pay attention to the teacher at all. She simply stared at the wall with a curious look on her face. Once he had noticed that she continued this for a couple of weeks, Spencer asked her what she was thinking about. She claimed that she wasn’t daydreaming and was listening to the teacher the whole time. When Spencer told us about it a few days after, we simply dismissed it as a small stage of rebellion or a little tantrum. But when she began talking in her sleep the same night, we felt that there really was something wrong. The next day, she accidentally cut her finger with a

bit of paper she was drawing on and panicked at the sight of her own blood. As we tried to wash our little girls’ finger, Hallie told me that Cassandra’s heart rate was too quick and that she was never afraid of small cuts before. We told her to take a nap and rest so that she would calm down.

Then poor Nick had an extremely bad headache.

We began to seriously worry when neither of our sleeping children woke up after several hours. We called Dr. Reid and Peter to check on them, begging them to make sure that no one else would know about their findings. We did not want to examine our children ourselves— it would’ve been too heartbreaking too see the results, and we might have been biased in our conclusions. After they finished the tests, we finally discovered that both our children had contracted the Korius Disease. We panicked.

We believed that since contracting the disease was very rare though always extreme, we would not have to worry about others catching the disease. Thus, we panicked. We immediately requested that they test Kate as well, but her tests came back negative. Though we felt we had fallen into a dark hole, at least there was still a little sliver of light shining through. Then we called Simeon. His microchips were the only way to prevent the disease from spreading in their brains. It was strange how the technology and chemicals he used in his microchips were actually effective in preventing the spread of the disease in the brain. Hallie and I first noticed this in one of the soldiers who volunteered to help with Simeon’s work in manufacturing new weapons.

When we told him that he had the Korius Disease, he insisted on continuing his work with Simeon. Then Simeon finished a significant phase in his project: his microchip. This microchip was then placed into the soldier’s brain.

After that, the progression of the disease seemed to have miraculously stopped. Soon after, we realized Simeon’s microchip— originally meant for controlling large robot suits, which are similar to those seen on television—was the cause of this.

We placed microchips in our other patients, and it worked. None of them died as quickly as we expected, and the others only seemed to have reached the amnesia stage.

The microchip effectively stopped the disease from spreading in their brains.

Therefore, we immediately performed a surgery on Cassidy and Nick to put the microchips in them. As we hoped and expected, their symptoms came less often, and the sickness did not worsen.

They’re better now, and they will even be able to control their own robots (Simeon’s gifts even though we will never tell them and Hallie keeps the keys to their robots), but if we were to take the microchips out of their brains, it is almost sure that they would die.

This is why we need to find the cure as soon as possible. We’ve been studying the chemicals down to the last atom, electron, neutron, etc. in order to make a cure. We do not know how long the microchip will last without corroding at some point. I’m sure that we could find the cure soon, but with our lack of equipment and funds, our progress is not improving.

We also continue checking Kate, but she seems fine. Nick was still in the early stages when we noticed his symptoms, but Cassidy, who always tries to be brave and invincible, somehow hid the early symptoms from us.

Hers reached a later stage already, and it has already affected her memory. It will take us a bit of time, but we will definitely find a cure for all those affected by the Korius Disease. Especially our little children…

Cassidy stared at the page. Mom and Dad aren’t with the enemies… And we’re sick. And the cure, or the thing which will help us find the cure, is in our brains… This whole time, it was just in us? In our brains? And I’ve been weird because I’m sick?

She wanted to run around the room and knock things over, or even ride in the robot and blast holes through the walls, but she realized that it must’ve been the disease affecting her brain.

She took a deep breath in. All right, I’ll accept it all, but I won’t tell Nick that he’s sick too.

I’ll let them take the microchip from my brain so they can find the cure and protect my microchip from the enemy. I won’t let them know that Nick has it so that they won’t target him. Mom and Dad made me promise to take care of them, so I will. Even if I die trying.

Immediately after she made her decision, she heard loud footsteps approaching her 8

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father’s sanctum. Spencer, Nick, Kate, and Evelyn came barging in, saying that some field-bots were attacking the old HQ. Cassidy hurriedly stuffed the user’s manual, the pictures, and the journal back into the glove compartment as Spencer and Evelyn barred the door.

None of them seemed to notice Orion.

“What are you all doing here?”

Cassidy asked Evelyn, Nick, and Kate. “And did you say that Zonin is here too?”

Evelyn simply nodded her reply, and Spencer grunted. Nick and Kate apologized quickly as they tried to catch their breaths. “It’s a long story,” Nick informed her.

As the others stood panting by the big telescope in the middle of the room, Cassidy slid down the robot, hesitated, and then spoke in a level, solemn voice, “I know where the cure is.”

Evelyn turned her head sharply.

“What?” she asked in disbelief.

“You found it?” Spencer, Nick, and Kate asked in unison. “You seriously found the cure?”

“Yes, I—” A large explosion just outside of the room prevented Cassidy from finishing. The force was so powerful that Cassidy felt as if her ears were being shattered along with the rest of her body.

She slammed against one wall, then the world went black.

After a few seconds, Cassidy groaned as she raised herself on her elbow, sore and wounded all over after the strong impact.

When she looked around her

through the dust in the air, she found her siblings passed out on the floor. She crawled to reach them and tried to slap them awake, but neither blinked. She hurriedly checked their pulses and was relieved to find that they were alive, but she saw that her younger sister had hit her head as a small pool of blood formed. Cassidy staunched the blood with piece of cloth she’d torn from her jacket and quickly tended to her siblings.

Then she stood, trembling with fear and anger. She limped toward the large robot and steadily climbed into the cockpit, slipping because of her dirt- and blood-covered hands.

Evelyn and Spencer, who had both just gotten up from the ground with bruises and a few wounds, were suddenly amazed at the sight of the robot. When they had entered the room, they did not notice it at all, but now that Cassidy had started it up, it glowed with a startling bluish light that made them simply gawk in amazement. Cassidy, with determined eyes and clinched teeth, brought Orion to life as she started its engine.

“Keep Nick and Kate out of the way so they won’t get hurt,” she told Evelyn and Spencer.

“It’s time to end this.”

Evelyn, who was shocked at the sight of Cassidy operating the robot, was too slow to react, but Spencer carried the twins out of the way before Cassidy charged toward the door with Orion.

“I can’t believe it,” Evelyn

whispered in awe. “It’s shocking…”

“I can’t believe it either,” Spencer wiped trickles of blood from his forehead and agreed with a bewildered look in his eyes. Evelyn shook her head.

“No, I don’t think you understand what I mean.” What Evelyn actually meant was that she couldn’t believe that Cassidy could control the robot. She knew that the only way to do so was to have one of Dr. Simeon’s microchips and the specific key to the robot. So that onyx on her necklace is the key to that robot…and she has one of the chips…so she was sick too…but why didn’t she tell anyone…all this time, has the enemy been hunting her? Is she the reason why the new HQ was attacked and why they’re here now?

Although she wanted to ask Cassidy what was really happening, she realized that they needed all the help they could get. So she did not say a word.

Cassidy blasted a large hole through the already blasted-open door with one of Orion’s plasma guns, making more cement and dust crumble and fall. Then she rammed Orion’s right arm into a swarm of robots, which resembled praying mantes, already entering through the gaping hole of the entrance. The enemy robots shot lasers to counter her vigorous attack. She shifted the control column abruptly to the right to dodge the shots, and then pressed on the glowing red trigger on the yoke.

Orion’s short-range minimissiles blew the enemy robots up. But some of the robots still made their way inside, shooting at Cassidy from behind and threatening to shoot Evelyn, Spencer, Nick, and Kate.

Cassidy swerved to left and made a sharp turn. With uncanny accuracy, she shot each of the robots with a medium laser cannon that emerged from Orion’s shoulder. Then she aimed Orion’s left hand, which contained an auto-cannon, and destroyed the remaining robots at the entrance.

Cassidy lowered Orion’s smoking gun, marveling at the powerful weapons on the robot.

She beat all of the robots with only four of Orion’s weapons.

There were still about 6 weapons she had not used yet. She was amazed at how easy it was for her to control. It was as if it was made for her.

Maybe it was made for me, as Dad wrote in that journal, she thought. Then Evelyn shouted, snapping Cassidy out of her wonder. “I just got a message from Nat. They’ve decided to start the fight early. The battle in the new HQ has already begun!”

“Then let’s go!” Cassidy exclaimed, full of restlessness and a need to blow up more robots after discovering so many confusing things about her family in the past few days.

Spencer stared and smiled at Cassidy and praised her for her skillful control of the machine and her victory over the swarm

of enemy robots. Then Evelyn outlined her plan as they crudely wrapped their wounds with pieces of cloth from their clothes. She decided that Spencer would drive her car and bring the twins to the safehouse for medical treatment, while she and Cassidy would ride Orion to the battle at the new HQ. She told them that some of the OSRA agents had gone ahead with the weapons they’d found in the safehouse, while the others remained to upgrade other machines before they would arrive a few hours later as backup. “Callum and Nate are with the ones who went ahead, and Cassidy and I are going to help them. This robot should be a big help.”

Spencer and Evelyn carried Kate through the old HQ to the car, and Cassidy used Orion to carry Nick, who was still dizzy though he had already woken up, and to gently help him into the passenger seat.

“Make sure you don’t run into any enemies,” Cassidy warned when they were outside of the building. “Yes. Try your best not to get into a fight, but if you do, just use the car’s weapons.

They’re not much, but they should help.” Spencer nodded his head even though he was reluctant to let them go to the new HQ without him. Since one of the two - Cassidy or Spencer had to take care of Nick and Kate, and since it seemed as if only Cassidy could operate the robot, Spencer had to be the one

to drive away. Once Evelyn’s car was out of sight, Cassidy climbed into Orion’s cockpit, let the door close with a swoosh, and adjusted her seat. “Let’s go,” she told Evelyn as the latter climbed onto Orion’s shoulder.

“Make sure you’ve got those cannons ready,” Evelyn grinned.

“We’ll need them soon.”

Cassidy wore a silver helmet she’d found inside and nodded her head. “I’m ready.” Cassidy pressed a button. Wheels emerged beneath Orion’s feet and on its knees. Then they sped toward the new HQ.

To be continued........

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Sonnet III

By Aug Trembilanse

Photo by Natalie Kellner

Sonnet V: From Ecclesia to Her Beloved

By Aug Trembilanse

Maternal comfort Mary offers Christ, Except for hers there is none to be found: "Remember now the day you sacrificed – Redemption for all men your purpose bound – Your glory four and thirty years ago?

Come here and lay your head upon my breast."

He sadly came and she continued so; "Remember when we walked towards the West?

Inflamed in fire, the sun was sinking gold; Serenely you were telling me of all That you were sent for; of your love so bold.

My Son, have courage!" He said, standing tall: "A love like My Love cannot waste away!"

So finished He, what started Christmas Day.

Beloved, when I saw you first, I knew, As if I had before ne’er truly been Alive, that you had given life anew To me, love; you created me right then.

For I had thought I was condemned to plod Through time, my breast locked up without a key.

I whispered soft as David did, “My God, My God, O why have you forsaken me?”

But when you came to me, I, awestruck, stood There, rooted to the spot. You blazed! You shone!

You flashed! You flamed! All-powerful! Allgood!

Jupiter, Venus, a god upon his throne!

The vision passed. The peace that you impart, I felt. A man, you then unlocked my heart.

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Photo by Mary Schmitt

Photo by Daniel Dikman

Photo by Mary Schmitt

Photo by Daniel Dikman

Photo by Mary Schmitt 12

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Drawing by Daniel Dikman

CREDITS: Manager: Ashley Miller Assistant Manager: Stephanie Miller Editor: Natalie Kellner Assistant Editors: Mara Ng & Anna Spankie Submissions Director: Ellen Black Design: Stephanie Miller

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Thank You to this month’s Contributors: Maddie M

Natalie Kellner

Kate Knighton

Mary Schmitt

Elizabeth Cairnie

Mara Ng

Kyra Clark

Daniel Dikman

Nikolai Brelinsky

Aug Trembilanse

Photo by Natalie Kellner

ŠDeo Patriae Amicis 2013. All rights reserved.