Jian stands in the lunch line in the school's cafeteria. Lera is next to him, holding the school's list of lunch items in her hand. She is stroking her chin with her left hand while she examines the menu. “Hmm.” she finally lets out. She turns her head and looks at Jian. “What do you think I should order? The Udon noodles with lemon sauce or the Teriyaki steak?”
Jian lowers his head into his hands and begins to rub his temples. He let's out a disgruntled sigh and says “I know it's a private school and everything, but why the hell can't we have some normal school food once in a while...?”
“You'd seriously rather have mass-produced hamburgers or pizza over a steak? Wow, I didn't know that your palette was so unrefined....” Lera says jokingly. She knows otherwise, since she has seen Jian eat some very sophisticated foods. Over the entire time she has known him, she has always seen him go back to one particular food type, and that would be the hot and spicy side of the food tree. “Anyway, you're going to be next in a second.”
After hearing Lera's words, Jian turns his head and sees that the guy in front of him has now completed his order and moved out of the lunch line. Jian, unlike Lera, has already chosen his lunch order. He walks up to the vendor window and says to the lunch lady “One order of Udon noodles with lemon sauce please.”
“Alright.” the lunch lady grabs a large glob of Udon noodles from it's metal tray with a ladle and slaps it into the plastic bowl she had grabbed a second earlier. She puts a pair of chopsticks into the bowl and then hands Jian the bowl over top of the visor in between the two of them and says “Here ya go”.
Jian exits the lunch line and then looks around the lunch room for wherever his friends have decided to sit. As he examines, he catches sight of June sitting at a table, alone. It has now been a total of a week since Jian become a target for the Sigil heads. Over that time, he has gotten to know the group that is protecting him. “Raphael Danteo, the leader. June Twara, the co-leader. Miyra Sinnt, the muscle. And Quib Triha, the sniper. “Everything's worked out so far, but I have a feeling that this is going to go on for a while.” Jian thinks before noticing June giving him a slight nod.
Lera appears behind him and slaps him on the back with one hand while holding her tray of teriyaki steak in her other hand. “Are ya having trouble finding everybody, Jian?” she asks him while pointing towards a table to the far right. “Carie and Boz are just over there. Come on.” Lera gives Jian a nudge in between her two sentences and starts walking towards them without Jian after she has finished speaking.
Jian sees Lera leaving and says “Hey, wait up!” before following behind her.
The school's cafeteria is more active then it usually is today. The students in the building usually eat their food inside the cafeteria or in the garden outside and tend to stay in their seats until the lunch bell rings. Today, however, only a few people are sitting. Most of the students are either eating at their table or are up and moving around without their food, talking to one another. Although quite a few of the students are talking about personal things between friends, every now and then Jian can pick up a conversation relating to the eldritch rune cult, or the 'Sigil heads', as Raphael refers to them.
Crap he thinks to himself after hearing the Sigil heads being referred to more then five times by strangers. the Sigil heads are getting more popular... I need to make some more headway towards those riddles. We haven't really discussed them that much, maybe they've given it more thought then I have....
After Jian has finished thinking to himself, he sees a group of teenagers in front of Lera disperse. Behind those teenagers is a table where Carie and Boz are sitting. “Ah, there they are.... Wait, is that...?”
Jian stops himself mid-sentence when he looks to his left. Advancing through the crowd is the master archer of the group defending him, Quib Triha. She saw him moving towards the table out of the corner of her eye and gives him a large smile. She then starts moving a little faster and pulls up a chair at the center of the large table facing towards Jian. She grabs a hold of the chair next to her, pulls it out and gives the seat cushion a light pat.
Over the span of a week, not only has Jian met with the JB task force, but he has also gone on his first date with Quib. They went on a quiet trip to the park in the center of Ignama. The entire trip was rather uneventful, at least where Sigil head activity is concerned. They walked, they talked, neither spent any money on anything. Quib brought her equipment with her, hiding it underneath of her cloak, of course. Around seven o' clock, they decided to leave for the evening and parted ways, but they both became closer because of the time they spent together.
Despite trying to keep it back, Jian can't help but to smile. What Quib had said was true, he had fallen in love. Albeit, not a love as deep as Boz and Lera's, but it is still love nonetheless. He walks up to the seat Quib had pulled out for him with his Udon noodles in hand and sits down in the chair. “Hello, Jian, have you made any advancements in the riddles yet?” Carie asks him while cutting and then eating a large portion of her steak.
“I haven't exactly given them the thought that they deserve, so in other words, no....” Jian says, disheartened. “I was actually hoping that you guys might have had some ideas that I could work off of.”
“I've given it some thought. actually.” says Boz, who is sitting on the other side of the table. “Raphael said something about how the place we should start looking at is a main attraction in the city. So I was thinking that it could be some kind of landmark, like maybe the docks or Ignama park in the city's center. But there has to be another clue in that riddle, something that none of us have given much thought....”
“He said something about it looking old, but it's new...” Lera adds while moving to a seat next to Boz. “That could be something along the lines of the museum that was finished a few months ago, or it could be a college that looks like our school.”
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“Wait... just wait a second....” Jian says while holding out his left palm. He begins thinking deeply, connecting the dots that Raphael had shown him. “It's a main attraction... we know it as home, but we were not raised there... old but new.... Wait, I think I got it!”
“Damn, it took you that long to figure out that riddle.... He tried to make the riddles as easy as possible, you know. I'm honestly a little surprised at how long it took you Jian!” Quib says to Jian in astonishment. After which she pulls out a piece of jerky from her satchel and takes a large bite of it.
“Well, Jian, will you tell us what you have found out?” asks Carie while cutting her steak.
“Actually, Carie, you can probably confirm my hypothesis.” Jian answers after eating a large grouping of noodles that he had tied around his chopsticks. “I'm sure that you did some research on which school you should go to before you came here last year, so you would probably know this more than the rest of us. Can you tell me when Unimori was built?”
Carie puts her piece of steak down and looks at Jian with uncertainty. With an odd look in her eyes, she says “It was built twenty seven years ago.... Don't tell me that you're thinking that Unimori is the place that he was referring to...?”
“Unfortunately, yes....” Jian says with both of his elbows on the table and his hands clasped together in the air. “It's the only answer I can think of that would make sense. Unimori is the main focal point of Ignama, and a lot of very powerful and wealthy individuals from inside and outside of the country are at all times trying to enroll their children in this school. Also, we weren't born in Unimori, but we've lived here for the past year in the dorm rooms. All of that put together leads straight back to Unimori.”
“But why? Why would the Guardian be leading us back here? It makes no sense!” Lera asks in confusion, trying to detest the fact that her private school might have something to do with the Sigil heads.
“I don't know, Lera, but the Sigil heads are coming after me, and the Guardian knows more than all of us about the entire situation. All we can do right now is trust what he is telling us and try to decipher his riddles.” Jian says back to Lera with a sense of seriousness in his voice.
Boz finishes the last bites of his steak before saying “These Sigil head dudes seem to be popping up a lot. At least, that's what I've been hearing.”
“Yes, these Sigil heads are appearing around the city more often then the police can stop them.” Carie says while sifting her mind for all of the information she can piece together. “From what I've heard so far, the Sigil heads have started a fight with the police at least twice this week. All be it, the gun fight has only ended with casualties on the Sigil head's side, but the circumstances of the fights are what strike me as the most bizarre. In all the standoffs, it ended with the Sigil heads storming the police with whatever weapons they could find, sometimes without a weapon at all. Although from what I can remember, a Sigil head had a handgun in one of the instances, but he didn't fire it at the cops, he just charged the cops like the others. The police shot him, of course, but when they examined the gun, it was loaded....”
Jian finds the last bit of information as a shock. He looks at Carie with a quirk in his brow before saying “Are you telling me that they've lost their intelligence?”
“If what I am finding out is true, then yes.” Carie says after eating the last piece of her steak. “From what I understand, the Sigil head that had the gun that I told you about earlier was also reported as being one of the people that attacked the hospital a week ago. If what I can figure out is true, then I think that the longer someone is controlled, the worse that becomes.”
“Oh god, this just gets worse and worse....” Jian says, putting his head in his hands.
Quib sees this and recognizes that he needs someone to be there for him right now. “Relax Ji', everything is going to be alright....” Quib says while wrapping her right arm around Jian's back. “This barely has anything to do with you. All it shows is that someone with prolonged exposure will eventually get more rash and brazen. Come on, let's go take a walk around the garden before classes start back up....”
Jian gives Quib a quick confirmation before they both get up and walk out of the cafeteria at a slow pace. “Wow, Jian's taking this kind of hard all of a sudden....” Boz says to the remaining group.
“Yeah, it's almost like he's gotten all depressive... I don't like that....” Lera responds while leaning to her side to wrap her arm around Boz's back. She looks up at him and says “Don't get like that, even if the Sigil heads come after you too, alright?”
Boz chuckles at Lera's concern, since he knows that both of them understand that Boz isn't going to change any time soon. “Don't worry, my love. I'm not going anywhere, and neither is my personality!”
“You know, we should all go out to eat sometime soon. I'm sure that will cheer Jian up.” Carie says while fiddling with her fork.
Boz looks towards the edge of the cafeteria and past a grouping of other students to see June getting up from her seat and walking out of the cafeteria right behind Quib and Jian. “Yeah, that would be a good idea. We need to do something to cheer Jian up.... By the way, I just saw...”
Before Boz can finish his sentence, he sees Miyra come into view from the garden exit, taking her place right where June had been moment's ago. “...nevermind.....” he says, realizing that there is really no need for concern.
“Hey, is something the matter?” Lera asks Boz, seeing as his mind is drifting elsewhere.
“Oh, it's nothing. I just saw June and Miyra changing shifts, that's all. I just thought that something was up...” Boz says to his sweetheart. He gives her a reassuring pat on the head and a smile to let her further know that nothing is wrong.
“Either way, have you heard that they are going to have sushi next week?” Carie asks the rest of the group in an attempt to get their minds off of current matters. “I'm looking forward to it, honestly. I haven't had sushi since last semester!”
“I'm more of a steak man myself, to be honest!” Boz says to Cari. He knows it without a doubt, he likes steak over sushi. He learned a while ago that his taste for steak was probably brought up from the fact that he was born in Japan, where sushi is prevalent and steak is not.
“Ah well, to each their own, I suppose!” Carie declares to both Boz and Lera, but their attention is elsewhere. She looks at both of them with a quirked eyebrow and says “Hey, what are you two thinking about that is so important?”
“Oh, nothin', just wondering about Jian and why the Sigil heads-” Lera stops herself as she sees a large grouping of students near the garden exit suddenly get up and look outside. She also sees Miyra at the other side of the cafeteria suddenly jolt up out of her seat and run across the room toward the exit, shoving students aside because something more important is happening than them. “Wait... Jian is outside in the garden with Quib.... Oh God, we need to get out there!” Lera screams, launching out of her seat and grabbing Boz by his collar and pulling him out of his seat.
Carie is up just as fast, rushing past Lera at a speed that is being fueled by the fact that her friend's life is in danger. Boz, on the other hand, takes a few seconds to get himself accustomed to the situation. Lera practically dragged him eleven feet before he gets his mind adjusted, after which he launches himself up off of the ground and rushes out of the cafeteria right behind Carie with Lera following close behind him.