๐๐๐ก๐ฅ. ๐, ๐๐๐๐ / / ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ค๐ฅ๐๐ฃ, ๐๐๐ฃ๐ช๐๐๐๐ / / ๐๐๐ฃ๐ช'๐ค ๐๐๐ฃ๐ง๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ค ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ / / ๐๐๐๐
Jonathan rubbed at the crick in his neck, waking up on the stiff mattress of a small-town motel and groaning quietly in protest of the bed's mildewed smell. He had been too tired to care the night before, but now he was appalled he had managed to get any kind of rest in the folds of the stench.
โJon?โ a light male voice called for him and he turned to the door of his motel room to see Nico standing in the small gap of the door he had left ajar the previous night. โWe need to leave soon.โ
He grunted a response and groggily rose from the bed, glad to have a reason with which to argue against his protesting body.
They had terrified most of the small townโs residents away the previous day, and by now word was likely getting back to the Precursors. Between Dreamcatcherโs monsters and Catโs Cradle, the Precursors considered their group to be higher priority and Jonathan had his hands full constantly moving everyone from place to place. If it wasnโt for Nicoโs constant company whenever he needed it, Jonathan was sure he would have abandoned the group long ago. He had no lasting ties to any of them and had only joined out of necessity. Now he was with them for eternity, the way public knowledge forced his hand.
โNico,โ he called out as the pale young man turned to leave. Nico stopped and looked back. โI still need a bit of time. Hands are still hurting from the last teleport.โ
โDo you need me to amplify?โ
Jonathan shook his head, rubbing the calluses on his palms and the insides of his fingers.
โJust need a bit of time for the tingling to fade.โ
โWe can wait.โ
โThanks.โ
Nico left, no doubt heading back to the room he shared with Whisper and Donovan. Jonathan envied the camaraderie between the three of them, distanced as he was from the rest of the group. He did it to himself, really, refusing to interact with most of them and hiding off on his own for most the time. Part of the distance was out of necessity, to avoid getting caught in any unexpected crossfire before they could safely escape through his portals, and part was because he wanted people to dig deeper into him without putting in any effort himself.
If he had to describe it, heโd place himself somewhere between a narcissist and loner. That he required external validation of his self-worth was just another footnote to add to his otherwise insipid personality. Jonathan had never made much of an effort to progress in his life until the day he woke up with the X on his throat. Before that, he had simply been going through the motions of existing in a world ravaged by fairy tale creatures and subnaturalsโmages, he corrected mentally. That he saw no point in attempting to improve himself when a fantasy creature could obliterate his entire future in a blink just added to his apathetic nature.
It was a sweltering morning that had found him as a fresh mage, the visions still blindingly clear in his mind. A portal to paradiseโa world where people somehow understood him without him needing to say a word, and where they cared about him to the point of obsession. In the other, a cozy room in a pocket dimension of his own with a faceless friend who lounged lazily on a sofa with him, talking about anything and everything while a gentle rain pattered against the windows. Soft and warm. A place he wanted to go toโand he wanted more than anything that kind of dear friend. But he had terrified himself in that vision, thinking that it was just a dream. That there was no way that kind of deep connection could exist for him who didnโt even have a personality to cultivate for it.
So he had chosen the other vision, hoping for that reality instead, where he didnโt have to do anything and where he didnโt have to worry about maintaining connections. He could just be there and people would be there in return for him.
Selfish.
The tingling in his hands had finally faded now and Jonathan stood up to stretch, sniffing himself with some disgust as the realization that he had forgotten to shower yesterday in his exhaustion exhibited itself in the form of a rank odor wafting from his armpits, seeping through even the baggy sweatshirt he wore. He didnโt suppose there was any time for showers if Nico had mentioned leaving soon.
Reluctant strides took him from his room and down the hallway coated in blood and viscera. Some of the small townโs local police force had refused to stand down and Tumor had made quick work of them in the narrow confines of the hallway. Jonathan barely blinked at the sight. It was nothing unusual anymore. Once upon a time, they had tried to avoid fights, but just seeing the black Xโs on their throats drove most people into a fearful state that defied any reason the group tried to present.
And this was the result.
He gently shoved the door to Nicoโs room open, finding the groupโs de facto leader rolled up in a makeshift burrito of sheets and blankets on the floor. Donovan was cackling nearby, clearly satisfied with his handiwork while Whisper crouched beside the blanket burrito, patting Nicoโs head sympathetically, but making no move to free the rail-thin mage.
Donovan waved a quick greeting at Jonathan while Whisper nodded a similar form of hello.
โOh, are you ready now?โ Nicoโs tone could have been a casual talk about the weather, if he wasnโt wrapped in at least five layers of sheets for fun while the corpses of a dozen people lay strewn about the hallway.
โYeah,โ Jonathan moved to help Nico out of the blankets before Whisper caught his wrist with a hand.
โWhat?โ he almost snapped at the guy, thinking it was Whisper stepping between any kind of excessive friendliness with Nico. The guy had a habit of doing that with Hashtag, but Jonathan hadnโt thought heโd be on Whisperโs shit list as well.
The sound manipulator let go and extended the index fingers of both his hands towards each other, jabbing the fingers together twice while twisting his hands in opposite directions. The sign for โpain.โ Whisper was looking at him questioningly.
โOh. No, Iโm fine,โ Jonathan replied, abashed as he realized his mistaken assumption. Whisper had been worried his hands were still hurting. โSorry.โ
A dismissive wave of Whisperโs hand signaled everything was fine and Jonathan helped the guy unwrap Nico while Donovan whined in the corner about everyone undoing his hard work all the time. Nico offered a weak thanks to both of them when he finally freed himself from the multitude of thin sheets.
โCan we talk later?โ Jonathan asked as he tore open a large portal in the air in front of them, wincing as the pins and needles in his hands flared back up at the use of his power so soon after the last portal.
โSure,โ Nico responded, motioning to Donovan to gather the others. โWhat do you want me to pry about this time?โ
โMy high school,โ Jonathan said immediately, realizing he had been wanting to talk to someone about all those petty little things that still irritated him to this day.
โThen I'll ask about your friends, first,โ Nico obliged as the rest of the team trudged into the room and marched into the portal, some stretching, some yawning, but most just grumbling. The group was long desensitized to jumping from place to place in a hurry.
๐๐๐ก๐ฅ. ๐, ๐๐๐๐ / / ๐๐๐ธโ๐๐โ ๐ผ๐๐ค๐ฅ / / โ๐ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ โ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฃ ๐๐ / / ๐๐๐๐
As expected, the reactions were a mixed bag ranging from angry outbursts to some measure of acceptance. Then there were the ones who simply remained quiet. She mentally checked through the files she had read earlier, gauging who to keep an eye on. Certainly the boy who could change into a dragon--the one who had opened with nothing but compensatory attitude for the bleak situation.
With the brief signal of eye contact, she allowed Lawrence to answer the question as she continued perusing the information in her mind, thoughts aligning with whichever student her eyes fell upon first.
Hazel Baker was a special case, and she'd certainly need to watch her, but the request from the Department of Defense had specifically noted "socialization" in the testing categories, so Hazel would have to be put with one of the Arbiters. Yes, she knew what those mages got up to in their spare time on Death and Taxes and how they privately categorized themselves. It was useful to have an eye on the forum without their knowledge, and it helped her get a sense of what they were truly thinking. Sufficient to keep her soldiers close and her subnaturals closer.
She glanced at the girl whose file had been forwarded to her by one of the staff. Emma Halwell. Noted suicide risk, but what else was new with Aberrations. There had been no need to caution the Director--she had no intentions of revealing any of their files. Rough estimates of each person's powers had been sent to her by the teams that had captured them, but she found Emma's file most interesting in the breadth of its applications. An jack-of-all-trades sort on a weaker level. Certainly useful on the field for a variety of scenarios.
Next to Emma stood Grant Rotem, whose powers were similar to Kadabra's telekinesis, though the range was far shorter and the conditions much more stringent. Volatile when provoked and seemingly uncomfortable with authority. Not an unusual case in the slightest.
Zoe Fletcher came next in the chained line, spitting out vitriol and sarcasm. Psychological evaluations had pegged her, in short, as the typical unruly 18-year-old, though with the caveat that she possessed the potential to make strong connections with others if given the right opportunity. Except she was more often angry than accommodating.
"An angry Aberration" described almost three-fourths of the roughly 500 students at USARILN East and she had allowed Lawrence free rein up until now because she had been starkly aware of the social dislike for staff mages. Were it not for the girl's volatile nature, Director Zhang would have considered putting her with Lawrence.
Beside her was Sander Lorraine--a vampire, or as close to a vampire as Dreamcatcher had bestowed upon him without the debilitating weakness to sunlight. He offered a meek response to the opening salvo of intimidation from her, and she remembered that the reports had always praised his rather interesting self-control for an Aberration (though they referred to that difference as "the violent X types") even as they noted several occasional incidents. He could be assigned to an Arbiter. And she had known exactly which one during her selection.
Very conveniently, beside him was the boy whose blood could heal, Christmas Halvost. A silly name for a silly boy from a silly family. The file had been somewhat amusing for her to read and she wasn't at all surprised when he offered compliance and little else. People like him were no trouble at all.
The clockwork boy besides Christmas also offered that same acquiescence to the new shackles, having been one of the few in this group who had turned themselves in. Nothing dangerous to note about his personality, yet, and his powers were simple enough that she could kill him before he tried anything, assuming the evals hadn't entirely missed some violent aspect of his personality.
The joker, Marcus Howell, remained true to his psychological reports and threw out a few obligatory quips in exchange for seeming less on edge about having a small team of soldiers point guns at him. She would have to watch his power. Temporal manipulation of any sort had to be carefully studied and controlled should the power extend any further--at least, according to orders from the DOD. Dreamcatcher itself had potentially been a temporal manipulator by some theories, though Director Zhang doubted the far-fetched idea. She had always assumed that, much like Marcus's temporal manipulation, the god-like creature was far more simple than anyone thought.
Then came the girl with the very interesting ability--as useful as Emma Halwell could be on the field, or potentially more, but with a crippling case of delusion that dashed the Director's hopes of effectively employing her in combat. Siena Santana could have been veritable demon in a fight, but without the clarity of mind and depth of thought that Emma put into her facade, she was just another liability.
Several others offered overlapping thoughts, concerns, demands, agreements, and the like, while several more added comments in quick succession to each other, but the Director was more interested in watching Kusari Bloodworth, the effectively immortal girl, tense as if preparing for something. An attack?
Before she could raise her hand to signal for her soldiers to shoot, the girl slipped her cuffs and effectively surrendered. Director Zhang raised an eyebrow, but didn't bother responding to the event if there was no danger. Waste of bullets, that one, especially now that she had slipped from two of the four magical suppression cuffs.
One of the nearby soldiers, however, did not feel that same way.
As the other students clamored and shifted away from Kusari in a chain reaction, the panicked soldier shouted at the sight of the cuffs dropping and tried to aim at the girl, clearly a new soldier and clearly forgetting exactly what her power was. He only readjusted enough to get a better shot at Kusari and raised his gun. The Director shot him in the arm just as he pulled the trigger, the burst of rifle fire catching several of the students, who collapsed to the floor, unconscious and potentially dead. Clicking her tongue in irritation, the Director fired again as the man flailed in pain, catching him square on the side of his head. Her aim was surprisingly accurate. The errant soldier collapsed to the floor with the rest of the injured or dying students, blood pooling around his body from two gunshot wounds. He, for one, was confirmed dead. This didn't seem to surprise the other soldiers, who still maintained careful position around the students, though several had initially adjusted their aim towards the one soldier who had broken the ring.
"An unfortunate casualty while dealing with a large group of subnaturals with powers not yet fully determined," the Director said calmly. The rest of her soldiers, trained and seasoned, neither protested nor reacted. They held their positions and the ones closest to the fresh bodies on the floor kicked them aside to avoid any conflict with movement if the situation called for it.
Train of thought interrupted, the Director gave a quick glance over the rest of them and motioned to yet more soldiers outside the door. She had gone through the usual routine and these were the usual reactions, save for the minor incident with an idiot she had no use for. A shame to potentially lose a few of the new group, but she had read their files and the ones lost weren't particularly noteworthy. More importantly, her commander needed to be more careful when vetting the new soldiers. Most of them only looked good on paper.
Things hadn't quite gone according to plan, but this would do. This new group had potential. Perhaps more than any other until now. There was hope here, as rough and unpolished as it was. She would make sure that hope didn't remain that way.
The new wave of soldiers came in carrying ankle cuffs of the same strange material as the trucks the students had arrived in--more suppression cuffs from Hephaestus, but these were special. They could activate and deactivate at the Director's command and served not only to suppress magic, but also to track and taze the students at the flick of a button. Without bothering to respond to any of their provocations, the Director motioned to the group and the soldiers approached the students, clipping on and locking into place the new cuffs first before removing the previous cuffs and chains.
"Minimal expression of your powers while on campus--suppression cuffs--" the Director nodded at the new cuffs by way of explanation, "and any attempt to force them off will result in a powerful electric shock. Some of you might die from it. Any attempt to deviate too far from commands and schedules will also result in that same shock. Any staff member can also order a shock if they feel endangered. Of course, ordering shocks without good reason will lead to disciplinary action. Weapons, after all, are not effective when heavily damaged. And that is all you are here."
She spared a look towards Padma Majumdar, the shadow walker girl whose comments had been loud enough to hear in the din of Kusari slipping her cuffs and before the chaos of the unfortunate soldier.
"A child means nothing here, Ms. Majumdar."
With that she turned on her heels and left, leaving the task of sorting and management to the tall soldier who had been standing beside her the entire time--her commander, Michael Kardos.
He stepped forward as she left, equally uncaring of the dead soldier nearby (and the potentially dead students as well) while a mousy, brown-haired man in glasses shuffled in soon after the Director's departure, a file folder in hand.
"Ah--ah!" he shouted as he finally caught sight of the bodies. "My God! What--"
A sharp look from Commander Kardos shut him up.
"Proceed, Mr. Greten," the commander rumbled.
"O-of course, well--I...yes, yes. I'm the Director's secretary. You may refer to me as Mr. Greten, everybody," he tried for a placating tone, which wasn't quiet working when his eyes kept darting fearfully to the bodies on the ground nearby.
"Rooming! Yes. And setup--I have them. I have them here," he patted the beige folder and opened it, pulling out a single sheet of paper.
"S-so! We have uh..." he trailed off as the commander walked over and snatched the page from his hands.
"White marks and any exceptions first. Violent X's after.
Sander Lorraine--exception, Kusari Bloodworth, Christmas Halvost. Suite 317. Building A.
Hazel Baker--exception, Emma Halwell--exception, Lawrence Ellison. Suite 318. Building A.
Grant Rotem, Padma Majumdar. Suite 330. Building A.
Callan Webb, Marcus Howell, Siena Santana. Suite 430. Building A.
Alexis Hunter, Aaron Erikson, Christopher Francis. Suite 225. Building A.
Lilianna Brandt. Room 200. Building B.
Zoe Fletcher. Room 201. Building B.
Savannah Churchill. Room 203. Building B.
Angรฉlique Lachance. Room 300. Building B.
Allison Revel. Room 301. Building B.
Classes will be assigned to you after preliminary examinations. There will be tests ready in your room. Return them to the registrar's office in Building C when you're done. They're due in three days. Combat assessment tests will take place in four days."
As he finished, each listed group of students was pulled apart, one soldier standing behind each student with a gun aimed at their heads.
"Escorts will lead you," the commander grunted before leaving as well.
The students were herded out in the their respective groups by the second set of soldiers and led to their buildings at gunpoint. Meanwhile, the soldiers who had initially formed the ring around the students were tasked with cleanup duty, checking the bodies left behind for any signs of life before disposing of them.
๐๐๐ก๐ฅ. ๐, ๐๐๐๐ / / ๐๐๐ธโ๐๐โ ๐ผ๐๐ค๐ฅ / / ๐ป๐ ๐ฃ๐ ๐น๐ฆ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ค ๐ธ ๐๐๐ ๐น / / ๐๐๐๐
White marks and exceptions were led to a fashionably modern (and fashionably huge) building decked in glass and polished marble. From a standard perspective, it would have looked like a wide, five-story hotel fit for kings. Every inch of the building was coated in a thin, shimmering mist that clung tightly to its surface, giving off the strange feeling like they were being watched.
The pattern for flooring was readily apparent as the students were taken directly to their suites: 100-130 on floor one, 200-230 on floor two, and so forth.
"Violent X's" who hadn't displayed enough exemplary behavior were taken to a building across the large quad that separated the white marks' apartments from the X's dorms. Similar in architecture, but simpler in design, building B was a less extravagant, but still massive edifice decorated with lacquered wood paneling and quaint arches leading into the main lobby. The floor organization remained the same here, with subsequent numbers denoting rooms beside each other and corresponding floor numbers aligning rooms above and below each other. Here, though, each room was significantly smaller than the large apartments in building A and there were only communal bathrooms, kitchens, and living rooms.
As the guards made sure each student entered their rooms, they also performed a cursory check of neighboring singles. Several were empty, and several more were ignored, while still others only opened their doors a crack in response to the guards before being allowed to retreat once more.
In all the newly prepared rooms were several stacks of placement examinations in calculus, physics, chemistry, english, biology and various request forms for electives, all sitting in precisely ordered piles on their desks. Maps, general information on computer lounges, and permission forms for using a "violent release zone" were sorted into another stack, while an ID card several inches away revealed their student number and government-controlled checking account number on the back, already loaded with 500 USD for the month. A blue sheet at the bottom of the last stack of papers noted carefully in bold print that it was a "Misc. Request Sheet" for anything the Institute wasn't immediately providing, with an italicized disclaimer that not everything could be acquired and that pets were the sole responsibilities of their respective owners.
The lack of concern about potential cheating on the placement examinations was enough of an indicator that education wasn't exactly the main concern of the Institutes. More the farce of pretending to educate. USARILN East wasn't known for shirking in hiring talented teachers like USARILN West was, but it was known for utilizing its students far more effectively. In that vein, any confiscated items had been returned to their respective owners in the form of duffel bags at the foot of their beds.
All rooms and apartments were furnished with a single window facing the surrounding town, soft beds, pillows of varying thicknesses, and enough simple desks and closets to accommodate the number of occupants per setup. The almost imperceptible humming of the tracking cuffs on the students' ankles and the soldiers watching them at gunpoint would be the only indicators that they hadn't simply transferred to another school.
When the students had all been roughly shoved into their rooms, each guard barked out a quick "Weekday curfew at 2300. No curfews on weekends" to their respective student before marching off and leaving the newcomers to their own devices.
1x Laugh
