Chapter 8: Birds of a Feather

The whole time, Raven had been reading a book. As the teacher called her name, she had glanced over at her would-be teammates, gave them a subtle nod, and went back to her book. Daxston surprisingly didn’t throw a tantrum. In fact, he simply agreed with the decision. “Alright, we’ll take her. Whether she or Spencer joins us won’t affect our results anyway, right Kazen?”

Kazen shrugged. I couldn’t help but imagine Kazen with Raven. The two of them would make a great couple, with their matching personalities. Their names even rhymed.

“Now that that’s settled with, let’s continue with our class. If you could turn to page 15 of your Maths textbook…” Ms Reina rambled.

“Hey, do you think Raven’s gonna be okay?” Kaede whispered, leaning over.

“She didn’t seem to be bothered,” I replied.

“I mean, maybe she’s just trying to act brave?” Kaede suggested.

“Possibly,” I mused. But I doubted it. Her demeanour was very similar to Kazen, like she simply couldn’t be bothered. Yet another interesting character in our class. “I think Spencer might struggle a bit though.”

Spencer was slumped over in his desk, head in his hands. I somewhat felt bad for him. All he had were good intentions but the class had ostracised him, for various reasons. Admittedly, we kind of did too.

But that wasn’t really my problem. I had always hated forming groups, especially if you didn’t belong to a clique. This time however, I was safely in one, with people I seemed to connect with. Perhaps this is what it means to feel a sense of belonging?

I quickly shut that feeling down. One way to avoid feeling disappointment is to avoid having expectations in the first place. I pushed the thought aside and opened my textbook, intending to focus on the lesson.

A couple of hours later, the bell chimed, signalling the end of the day. We packed our items, exchanging casual remarks as we left the classroom. At the cafeteria, we had another quick meal, but this time as a full team of five. Mira, though timid at first, seemed to slowly ease into the group. While it was still shaky, I could slowly get a feel of our team dynamics, and how our different personalities weaved into each other.

Before we separated, Scarlette asked us to leave our plans empty for the evening tomorrow. “Now that we’re a group, we gotta practice as a group right?” she reasoned. I had nothing on the next day, so I agreed. The others readily agreed as well. I recalled Kaede had requested me to help her train, but we hadn’t actually got around to doing it yet. I found it a bit odd that she hadn’t settled a training time with me, but I wasn’t going to complain. Whether she got stronger or stayed the same wouldn’t affect my own performance, but I would still help her if she was adamant about it. She didn’t seem to be that motivated yet though, for whatever reason. I decided to wait until she was ready.

Back in my room, I realized I was settling into this school much easier than I thought. Everything seemed to be smooth sailing so far. There hadn’t been any screw-ups on my end, or anyone posing a threat to me. The only thing that bothered me was the self-repair feature at the Dome. It was a strange thing to be wary of (I was sure everyone else had already forgotten about it), but it really rubbed me the wrong way. The technology on the Island was advanced, but even it couldn’t magically return destroyed objects to their original form. Still, there was nothing I could do about it now, so I washed up and got ready for bed.

The school routine was quite standard. Classes started at 9 AM, with a lunch break from 11 to 12, then more lessons until 4 PM. My classmates were getting acclimated to each other as well. People were generally more friendly and approachable, and there was no further drama compared to the last few days. Daxston was particularly reserved, relatively speaking. He still sometimes teased and acted tough, but he stayed out of trouble. I noticed he was especially quiet whenever I was close to him.

His groupmates, Kazen and Raven, were both living lives of solitude. They kept within their own bubble, still not talking to anyone if they could help it. Spencer was quieter, his usual bubbly self not as apparent as it used to be.

As the bell rang for dismissal, my team gathered and headed off to the cafeteria for dinner. We collected our food and headed to our usual spot.

“Ugh I am starving!” Scarlette opened. It was Japanese cuisine today. The chicken katsu curry was probably the best meal in the school we had so far.

“What happened to not liking District 4 food?” I asked.

“It’s edible,” Scarlette snapped. Then, with a hint of seriousness, she turned to us. “You know how I said we should be practising together? I figured that if we were to do that, trust between us would be important. I’ll tell you guys how me and Cadel met —if you’re okay with that, Cadel?”

I nodded, taking a big bite of chicken.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, don’t be shocked, but I was a District 1 student just a couple of days ago.” My friends were visibly surprised. Still, they patiently waited for her to continue.

“I was flying around on my fire surfboard by the river, the one separating both districts, when I saw Cadel staring at me like the pervert he is. Obviously, I had to teach him a lesson, so I zoomed right up to him. I guess it kinda slipped my mind that I shouldn’t do that…” she continued on, giving a vivid description of the incident, as well as the aftermath.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Geez,” Jonah exhaled, speechless for once.

Mira, who usually doesn’t talk much, continued staying silent.

Kaede looked a bit upset. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I never would’ve thought. You seemed to be coping pretty well.”

Scarlette gave a painful laugh. “I mean, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, as they say.”

I sort of understood why my friends were reacting this way, but I couldn’t say I felt sorry for her. She had brought this upon herself - it was a completely avoidable incident. I wasn’t going to ruin the mood though, so I decided to lighten it up instead. “Hey, at least we have a 5-Star on our team. You’re gonna have to carry us on your back through the camp.”

I felt a small kick under the table. I looked in the direction it came from. Kaede looked away, innocently chewing on her food. Currently, only she knew what I was capable of. Scarlette knew I was stronger than I appeared as well, but our interaction was too short for her to gauge where my power level lay.

At the same time, Scarlette chuckled. “If you insist. Don’t worry, you all will be training with me later anyway.”

We finished our meals and left the cafeteria. Scarlette had advised that we shouldn’t be doing anything strenuous right after eating, so we decided to head to the mall first. Thinking about it, I had wanted to explore the mall for some time now, but haven’t yet found the time to do so.

The mall itself was of decent size. While it couldn’t match the sleek, futuristic and almost cyberpunk-ish vibes of the main city district, it was still impressive in its own right. The exterior displayed a mix of long steel beams crisscrossing all over large windows, several stories high. I noted some construction going on at the roof of the mall. They were obviously building something. Whatever they were adding was going to be of significant size though, as it encompassed the entire roof.

The interior featured a large central foyer, its high ceiling giving an airy and open feel. Dashes of greenery dotted the warm ambience of the mall.

As it was still dinner time, the mall was bustling with students fresh out of class. I spotted a variety of shops, ranging from stationery to restaurants, accessory shops, household items, and more. The basement was a large supermarket. There was indeed everything you needed for a sustained life at the school.

We went to check out the cinema on the current top floor. It wasn’t big at all, and featured only 3 theatres, but I was glad we at least had some entertainment. They even offered free screenings. Some action movie was screening right now. It looked interesting, so I made a mental note to check it out if time permitted.

Outside the area, I saw banners of what looked like an arcade. I assumed that was what they were adding to the top floor. The completion date was just a few months away.

After touring the mall for a bit, we decided it was time to head over to the Colosso Dome and get our training underway. The sun was setting, casting its evening glow over the campus as we walked on over.

“You know, some of the food looked pretty good back there,” Scarlette commented. “Maybe we should have dinner there tomorrow?”

I hesitated. Cafeteria food was popular among the students for a reason, and that was because it was covered by school credits, which we had paid for in our initial school fee. The food in the mall was covered by external vendors, the likes of which you could find in a typical shopping mall, so we would have to use real money to purchase those.

My financial situation wasn’t looking good right now, so I would have preferred to continue eating at the cafeteria. Just as I was about to object, Jonah nodded enthusiastically. “Sure! I was just about getting tired of school food!”

Really? We were just a few days into our school life. Besides, wasn’t he the one praising the food on our first day here?

Unfortunately, the group seemed to reach a consensus that we would be eating at the mall tomorrow. Not one to start drama, I decided to go along with their decision.

Finally, we reached the Dome. I was reminded of my fight with Daxston a few nights ago. The memory made my heart race.

“Uh, you guys lead. I’m not too familiar with this place yet,” Scarlette admitted. “I heard that there were specific rooms that had special training equipment right?”

She was right. I had researched on these sorts of rooms on the school website. They were located around the middle of the stadium, between the practice arenas and the open, public one. It was effectively the school gym, except it consisted of many rooms, all of different sizes. This was the most popular place in the stadium, frequented by students honing their skills.

I led the way. The rooms offered a plethora of different equipment. Some had the usual gym equipment, others had obstacles, while some others had mechanized training dummies made of Abizium. The last one was what I was looking for.

We finally found one that wasn’t occupied and set our bags down. After a brief stretch session, we approached one of the robots, which was lodged in a nearby shelf. It was about the size of a large human, bearing scars of use all over its body.

“So uh, how do you turn this thing on?” Scarlette asked. We fiddled around with it for a while, before Jonah pressed a button on the back of its neck. It whirred to life. Its back popped open, revealing a touchscreen.

Boobot Model 3000

Select Mode:

- Easy

- Medium

- Hard (Permitted only for 3-Stars or higher)

- Lethal (Permitted only for 4-Stars or higher)

Please scan your student card in the slot on the right.

Interesting. Seems that this thing was called a Boobot. What a weird name. I also found it funny how they used the word “lethal”. How “lethal” was it really?

“We’ll start off easy for today, alright?” said Scarlette. “They haven’t prepared a student card for me yet, so Cadel, could you do the honours?”

I tapped the easy difficulty and swiped my card.

“To override the Boobot while in combat state, please say “Manual Override” in a loud voice. Pressing start will begin combat sequence in 10 seconds. Are you sure?” the screen read.

“Step back guys,” I said. They did as I asked. It was amusing how careful we were approaching the easy difficulty bot.

I pressed the start button. The Boobot started beeping and closed the lid on its back, beginning its 10-second countdown.

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Administration Notes

School: Waning Crescent Institute

Name: Scarlette Falcon

Gender: Female

Year: First-year

Rank: 5-Star

Division: Combat

Ability: Is a Firemaster. Adept in all things fire-related, with exceptional control of her flames. Use of Ability is flexible, packing impressive offensive power but also capable of defensive utility. One of the best fire espers in recent times.

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