What was it about social turmoil that made a room silence itself like nothing short of a bomb going off? Ajax didn’t know, nor did he care as he walked over to the table of his acquaintance, staring into the mundane brown eyes of the boy wearing a showy hoody, flashing silver and gold as it caught the artificial light of the cafeteria.
“Uh, J?” The kid hissed out in a whisper that Ajax had no doubt everyone in the cafeteria could hear. ‘J’, the blonde haired, blue eyed boy who was dressed in exceptionally nice clothing, turned to look at the hoodie wearing teen before casting his gaze at Ajax.
Ajax had to give him credit where credit was due, most would at least look a little worried if they saw a heavily muscled six-and-a-half-foot Greek man with an axe strapped to his hip walking towards you. J didn’t even flinch, his malicious little smile only deepening on his face.
“What do you want, Undefined?” He said as he stood from his seat, stretching to his full height. J was tall but lacked the few extra inches and at least thirty kilograms of muscle to match with Ajax. Ajax himself didn’t let the snide insult affect him, though he wondered how he’d found out that he was classified as undefined. Maybe someone had overheard his conversation with Dean all those days ago.
“What I would like,” Ajax let his voice rumble out, not so filled with anger to be immediately inflammatory, but like the rumble of a cautious lion, “is that you leave my friend to their meal, and you return to your own table.”
Those simple words of warning made the entire cafeteria cool five degrees. Ajax didn’t care to notice, but every single set of eyes in the room were focused on them in that moment, and all those who were entering the cafeteria from their own rooms were instantly shocked awake by the electrified atmosphere.
“That…” the blonde boy began, his teeth baring themselves behind his smirk, “isn’t going to happen. I’m afraid we’ve commandeered this table for ourselves. We were simply encouraging the young… thing to leave.”
Ajax hadn’t cared one whit when the blonde fuck had insulted him. He couldn’t honestly care less, there was nothing they could use to insult him that would truly offend him. He was confident in that small way. But in that moment, an unbidden fury leap from the depths of his gut, from some place within him he didn’t even know existed.
“I see,” Ajax said quietly, trying with difficulty to keep the immense anger off his features, “then I will have to politely ask you to leave. My friend seems like they would like to be rid of your encouraging.” His voice wasn’t low and rumbling any longer, there was no need for warning when the lion knew that the fight was coming regardless. Instead it was an entirely neutral tone, his eyes boring into those of his blue eyes antagonist. From the corner of his eye he could see his purple acquaintance pull themselves in so tightly that she almost appeared black.
“Well then, it seems we’ve come to an impasse. Maybe a friend of mine could help you with that?” The blonde boy smirked flippantly, leaning back onto the table, as if lounging in predetermined victory. Ajax almost raised an eyebrow in mock questioning when suddenly his entire torso was suddenly being crushed under an immense weight.
No, not being crushed, being squeezed. Ajax felt the air rush out from his lungs as his ribs were forced to compress around his organs, the pressure inside of him only increasing. He could feel the blood struggle to move around his veins as each beat of his heart was more and more pronounced, more laboured.
Ajax’s eyes flitted through the blonde haired boy and the gaudily dressed one beside him, but neither were making real action towards him that could create this. His eyes finally flicked towards the shorter, but far more muscled Asian man standing right next to his purple friend. The man’s entire posture gave it away, tensing his body like he was ready to pounce forwards and tear Ajax limb from limb.
Ajax felt a vague offense towards the boy, using his link on someone so unprotected. In his mind, it was the epitome of bad faith behaviour, especially when whatever he was doing to him was invisible. But that offense truly was vague, because Ajax wasn’t truly unprotected.
Ajax didn’t even bother to tap his axe awake to ask for its power because—of course—it was already awake, silently waiting with bated breath. The moment the sheer magnitude of power rushed forward from his mundane looking fire axe, he knew that this is what it was meant for, what his axe craved so deeply.
To act in protection of others.
Scrunching his face into a moment of exertion Ajax’s muscles pushed against the invisible squeezing, and in just a moment the squeezing became nothing more than that of a deep pool. As Ajax took his first step forwards, clearly unhindered by the squeezing force, the Asian man’s eyes went wide, the pressure against Ajax rising sharply in concert. However, it was barely any different than it was before.
Seeing this, the blonde man—‘J’—snarled something at his other friend, making the gaudily dressed boy stumble forwards with a panicked haste. Ajax disregarded the gaudy boy, deciding instead to look directly at J, his eyes alight with a righteous fury.
But, Ajax’s next step was impeded, and with a flurry of motion he realised that he had been tied up, his arms and legs bound thoroughly with a strange, multicoloured rope.
“H–hey there big guy.” A voice whispered into Ajax’s ear. Ajax whipped his head to the side only to see the beanie cladded head of the gaudy dressed boy. “I’m, like, legit warning you man. You might think you want to pick a fight with Jeremy Baxter, but you really don’t.” Ajax paused for a minute to stare into the boy’s eyes, searching for a lie or mistruth, but found nothing but legitimate honesty.
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Ajax levelled an even stare at the boy, somehow finding a little respect for him, even in being an ally with this Jeremy Baxter, who was undoubtedly a shit-stain. The elongated neck of the boy waggled as his face scrunched in consternation, letting out a heavy sigh.
“Man, I know that look. I hope you know what you’re in for.” The boy whispered almost regretfully, before tightening what Ajax had realised was the boy’s stretched body. The tightening was slow, like a boa constrictor’s, but Ajax just turned his head back to the blonde headed man in front of him.
And began to walk forwards.
The steps started small, fighting against the tying restrictions between his limbs, but each step could be pushed further, the ropey body of the boy was pulling loose from Ajax’s limbs. Before long, the elongated boy retracted himself back into his regular form, placing himself on the ground just behind ajax and helplessly watching as he approached his ringleader.
The few more steps Ajax took were large and imposing, moving a deceptive distance with each stride, placing him standing over the shorter man, looking down on him from a short distance as the boy had stood when Ajax moved closer.
From this distance Ajax could smell the overpowering and surely inordinately expensive cologne the other boy had sprayed himself liberally with. It smelt rancid to Ajax’s nose, but that could easily just be the personality that it overlaid.
“Leave.” Ajax said, his single word loud and powerful, right in Jeremy’s face, “Leave before I crush you.” They stood like that, tension building for a moment, before the boy’s face warped from its serious death-glare into a smile filled with a glee. He looked into Ajax’s eyes with a cold glimmer of sadism, contrasting the overly warm exterior he wore.
“Oh, jolly good show.” He whispered, before turning and strolling away back in the direction of his table, as if the situation had barely registered at all. Soon enough, with the two other teammates, Ajax was left standing next to the table he had fought to conquer over those evil bastards. He looked quickly over towards the purple person he had proclaimed himself a friend of, and let his mind change gears away from the intense anger and feelings of injustice towards that kinder, gentler side of himself that he liked far more.
“I’m sorry about that, I couldn’t watch that happen to you.” He said with a weak smile on his thick and dark lips, only just lighter than his tanned already-dark skin. They let some of their mass loosen, going from an almost black to a dark purple, but they didn’t speak themselves. Ajax let his eyebrows scrunch in worry.
“Are you alright?” There was a long pause between the two trainees, both analysing each other, even though it wasn’t readily obvious that voluminous purple body even had eyes to see with. At least eyes in the conventional sense.
“No, I’m not alright.” A voice said, making Ajax start even if he had asked and expected to receive a reply. The voice was distinctly feminine, though it was distorted oddly, as if the voice were echoing out from within a crystal. The voice was filled with tiny crystalline noises, all orchestrated together to create one recognisable whole. The simple sentence was so complexly built that it took Ajax a moment to process what he had heard.
“Wow,” he said with absentminded wonderment, “your voice is amazing.” Immediately after he had finished speaking, the purple body constricted quickly back into a much darker shade, though not quite the almost black it had been before.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–” Ajax began quickly but was interrupted with the darkened purple easing into a much lighter purple than it had been before. Almost a normal colour for them… her?
“…No, it’s okay. I just haven’t… I mean–” cutting themselves off at every turn, Ajax decided to just nod easily, letting them settle without the stress of explaining themselves to him. There was a momentary quiet before they spoke up quickly before Ajax was able to begin his own conversation.
“I’m Julia. I’m also a girl if, y’know, you weren’t sure or something.” Ajax’s relief must’ve been evident on his face, as the girl, Julia, laughed gently. The laugh caught him off guard, another exceptional sound.
“Sorry,” Ajax grinned wryly with no small amount of genuine apology, “I couldn’t tell before I talked to you, and even then, I didn’t really want to be wrong and hurt you. That would’ve been a bad first impression.” Julia’s crystalline voice thrummed with a deep sigh.
“Yeah, I know, it’s really hard to tell. Who would have known turning into a big purple blob would present so many social barriers?” She said with sarcasm, but Ajax detected a note of honest exasperation within her voice. He grimaced in empathy.
“No-one in my group really have any big physically differences, so I’m afraid I can’t relate.” There was a beautiful snort of laughter as he felt her look his overgrown body up and down, and he graced her with a grin, “But if you ever need anyone to talk about it? I can give it my best crack.” Julia was quiet for a while before the upper section of her body nodded slowly. Ajax beamed with a smile, before he sighted Aaliyah sitting down at their group’s table out of the corner of his eye. Even his meal had arrived while the kerfuffle was in session.
“Oh, sorry I have to go back to my table, team stuff and all. I’m Ajax, by the way,” he gave the voluminous girl his best mock salute, “Floor eight, room one if you ever want to talk!” He turned quickly and started to walk over towards Aaliyah’s already questioning gaze. However, before he could get too far away, Julia’s melodic voice rang out from behind him.
“Uhm, thank you! For before.” He turned to her and smiled widely, not ever requiring the thanks, but appreciating it none the less. Before he turned away from the girl one last time, he put on a pensive expression as he looked at the girl, looking at her now fully light purple form.
“You know, maybe you should try singing?” And then he walked away towards the questioning he’d inevitably receive from Aaliyah.
Julia, however, stared at the massive Greek giant’s back, fixing him with the closest thing to her own pensive expression as she could display with her form.
“Singing?”
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As the group sifted into L006, readying themselves for Tracker’s second lecture, Ajax could feel the heat on the back of his neck from Aaliyah’s burning fury. He didn’t know exactly why she was so downright furious, but when he had mentioned the name ‘Jeremy Baxter’ she had shut her mouth and refused to talk with him for the rest of breakfast. Something about Aaliyah being so angry that she didn’t take the chance to rib him for fighting in the cafeteria deeply concerned the man.
The worry was temporarily put aside when Tracker walked through the doors, stride as graceful and true as it always was. A moment later she was standing in front of the class, wearing a wide, happy grin.
“Good morning class!” She announced cheesily, as if she were teaching young children, “Today, we learn about links and how they work.”