Chapter 3 - Kickoff at Ground zero
After getting off the phone with somebody, probably talking about me, Glee starts to drive.
The ride is boring and throughout the entirety I can hear him muttering, he talks about things like fashion, prices being too high, discounts at grocery stores, what he should have for dinner tomorrow, if they even have food at ground zero.
All just random gibberish to me besides random words that pop out.
Through the hour-long car ride my dad messages me saying that Glee should be there soon, guess he didn't know about him already having picked me up.
I also talked a bit with people from school, asking if everybody’s okay and checking up on friends, afterwards I looked up the incident, damages, images of the monster's corpse, there's even a few pictures I'm in.
My heart stops when I get to the list of casualties…
Najima Horimara…
Abino Nori…
Rizu Fujima…
Ken Juzu…
Yashida Hanogara…
Mishimaru Yasuma…
Joshin Akima…
Tayuga Kizuzashi…
Maka Uzuna…
All from my class, the list was longer, I almost felt like throwing up. I didnt know all of them well but ive know Abino and Tayuga since I was like six, people like Maka, Joshin, Najima, Okomaru, Rizu, all of them… they were all good people with lives ahead of them, every last one of them were robbed of a chance because of some stupid fucking overbeast.
I was partially reluctant, i might have had my doubts before now
I may have wavered in my confidence
But now I know more than anything, I will kill every last one of those bastards, not a single overbeast will stand once I'm strong enough to take on anything. I need to get to that level of power though, I will, I have too.
The car finally stopped and so did Glee’s mumbling
“Get out, follow me and don’t run off anywhere, stay close behind me. This is ground zero”
After stepping out I began following him, both of us scanned out cards to open a gate, afterwards there was another security check by some guy, afterwards we ran into a door where somebody was waiting
He was a relatively tall guy, he a white lab coat and a pair of white headphones, underneath it was a black suit with a cool white belt and black hair that at the tips faded to white.
“Yo Glee, how ya been. It's been a while man”
He looked behind Glee and pointed to me
“Hang on, that's Daishi’s kid?”
Glee looked up and responded
“Yes”
The man walked up to me but it was Glee who introduced him
“This guys name is Livid, Livid Garui, he's going to be your main tester”
Before i say anything Livid stretches my arm, pokes at my shoulder, looks in my mouth
I obviously back up
“Hey, what are you doing”
He just hit me with a plain look
“Nothing, just checking a few things”
Glee chimes in next
“Cmon Livid, we don't have all day and your miniature test can wait for the lab”
“Aw fine”
Livid had a toddler like pouting face now as he swiped his card and opened a door
The room was large but riddled with several big machines of variety. There were people in lab coats and also some other people, likely people who recently reached proper overflow capacity.
“It's been a while since I've got to work with an awakened, I truly can't wait”
For some reason he licked his lips
“Livid, you are hopeless”
As soon as he said it Glee went back to sulking while following
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Here we are”
Livid pointed to a machine, it was large, it had like a dome top with a large cable coming out and into the roof, and there was a vast array of buttons with a screen, there was also a white box with a camera lens hanging from the ceiling.
He brings me over
“Need you to stand right here, and now stick your arm in that hole”
He arranged me into proper position, I'm guessing that lensed box thing is a scanner of sorts, there's probably something similar in this thing
After a minute or two he gives me a thumbs up and tells me I'm fine now
“Holy shit!”
Livid looked relatively surprised, he brings me over
“See this?”
He points at a graph-like thing with a bar and some numbers, stuff I can't really understand since it's just a bunch of abbreviations and gibberish. There's like a red box over one of the things and it's like a container.
“Okay, let me show you the readings from the average recently overflowed certified individual, we just call em a ground zero off the name of the facility”
He pulls up another similar looking thing that had a green box where the red one was and this time numbers and things by them I could actually understand, ground zero amountage equates to three hundred modules, the container like thing had a green line at the bottom”
“I don't get it”
He looked at me with a grin like that of a six year old who just got a new toy for Christmas
“You as an overflowed individual have essentially a capacity way above what is normal even by awakened standards, the difference between an average person and your average ground zero is nearly a hundred times smaller than the difference between you and the average ground zero”
I look at him questioningly
“So is that good or bad?”
“Depends, it's a miracle that your body didn't just blow up when you were using any of your overflowed Tsuno, I'm more impressed that you apparently passed out from overuse”
Its at this time Glee comes back, I never noticed him walk off but he came back with coffee in his hands and this time he has his usual hat off, he has dark blue hair that becomes white at the tips
He looks over to the monitor that's now back to my reading
Immediately he drops his cup and looks in shock
“What?”
Livid waves at him and points at the screen
“I know right, I was impressed, his capacity is five times that of even an average awakened”
“How does that happen though?”
Before any answer comes he walks off and begins muttering, Livid looks at him and sighs
“Honestly with this alone I would be okay with putting you in grade five on the higher end, not quite at grade six level but I wouldn't be surprised either if your combat brought you to a grade seven”
Hearing this stunned me partially, I've seen what a grade seven looks like on TV, even at that level its incredible power
“I was wondering how you took down a Hino Class monster before hand, I get you were helped by Glee but even then I couldn't make much sense of that but now I have no doubt”
Livid started walking off and told me to follow, after a lot more doors we were in another room, surrounded by a transparent dome, a giant pillar in the middle, he had me go in alone saying he would direct me from the other side of the glass like stuff
“Alrighty, ima need you to take both your hands on that big ol pillar right there, should be little indents where ya need to put your hands”
I walked up to the thing, I wondered what it did. I did has he said and put my hands there
ZAP
A small flash of light from my hands and when I try to move back my hands they won't budge
“Don't worry or panic, would rather not have ya freak out on me, that's supposed to happen”
I calmed down a bit and began to just stand still, out of the corner of my eye I see part of the wall fold out
Out of it comes a massive machine gun
I don't get a chance to do anything before i see shots
My feet, one of my arms, my cheek, and one through the torso
I fell to my knees and began almost choking on the blood coming from the hole in my cheek, I look at the transparent material and through it i see Livid smiling a grim terrifying smile full of nothing but malice
“Get up”
More shots followed
My leg now, my foot was shredded, my shoulder now too
The glass like veil turns full white and the gun now pointed at me once again, this time without even trying my Tsuno releases, not how I wanted though, last thing I saw before I fell unconscious was a massive surge of electricity as well as the entirety of the room I was just in absolutely shatter into nothing but a beautiful display of shards, glass, metal, plastic, everything develop into a veil of bright light,
I woke up in a hospital bed with a splitting headache, my arms and legs were fine now, I still see the holes of the bullets that penetrated
I appeared to be in a pocket of some hallway, the table to my right has nothing, behind it are some chairs, to my left is a curtain with another bed behind it. This setup is almost exactly like when I woke up from the fight with the overbeast.
I lay up now, and walking in from the hall to the right is Livid and Glee
Almost without thinking I launch at Livid, my hand in a fist and electricity coming off of it, my hand enveloped in the lightning
Right before it would have hit his face, he caught it.
Within less than a second I'm slammed into the wall, when i look up i see a smirking Livid whose hair is now fully white, his arms covered in black markings and most of all a shocked Glee
“Fucking moron, AHAHA, you actually though something that weak cheap shot could do jack shit to me, you are hilarious kid, now give me a good ass reason I dont decapitate you here and now?”
A white glow emits from him and black particles surround him
He raises his hand flat behind his head, then swings down
I try to brace for it but nothing happens, I look up and see Glee blocking the shot with this own hand, his hair now a light yellow color, with a glow to him as well as small particles
“LIVID! THAT'S ENOUGH!”
Immediately he looks from me and now to Glee and then back. He sigs and his hair goes back to black with the white tips, Glees returns to blue, and besides the crack in the wall from where he slammed me there was no damage.
“Alright that's my bad, sorry for getting carried away. The dude literally broke an entire nine room quadrant, power was off for hours.
“Maybe you shouldn't have been using the plasma globe on somebody with such a high capacity”
“But I had to know what would happen”
Glee gives me a hand and helps me up
Livid then pats me on the back
“There there, no harm no foul, and besides even if there was an issue, this is ground zero. There are no issues here”
He smiles once again, something I no longer trust
“Follow me, Glee I think you might wanna see this, we got results of the plasma globe before it was completely obliterated”
He continued to talk as we walked down the hall
“So as you know, most people who are overflowed develop it at a young age, usually it's a steady process that happens overtime, and once you overflow even just once you limit the Tsuno production is gone. Some people have the misconception that this means there's no limit however your body can only contain so much, because of this overflow Tsuno seeps into everything and believe it or not majority of Overbeast come from unused Tsuno from Overflowed individuals-”
I cut him off
“What?”
“You are joking right”
There's no way he's saying we are the cause for Overbeast
“No, and by the way, we aren't the direct cause, I'm just saying we unintentionally speed up the process of manifesting Overbeast, they would come on their own anyways. Anyways as I was saying, your body can only hold so much of this and how much your body can physically contain in an overflowed state is your capacity, and usually with having high capacity you also take a long while to recover it all, with this it's also hard to use a lot at once. You somehow can output your massive supply in such a short amount of time and also regenerate it a lot faster, as well as that your Tsuno healing factor also takes a lot less Tsuno than it should”
“Okay so?”
“What I'm getting at is, you kid are a freak of nature”
He begins laughing
“Dont worry, everybody here is”
We finally approach the final door where we enter and inside is a lot of monitors
Livid leads glee to one on the far left
“See what I mean, this is what i was gonna tell you before somebody attempted to knock my teeth out”
Glee once again surprised began staring intently at the monitor
“His capacity and output limits are far beyond what they should be”
“Yes, master Kuzanoha will be happy to receive him”
Livid points at me
“You come with me, we have one more test”
“What is it?
“Combat”
Livid’s devilish smile appears once again and his hair now white, the black marks appear again and this time a black cloak appears as well as a serrated sword in his hand
I look at Glee
“Don't worry, you will be fine, if anything happens ill get you out of there”
“Come”
Livid points to a door using his sword and we both enter, hes no longer smiling, hes still creepy though, the same malice i felt in the plasma globe I was feeling right then and there in that very moment
There was a transparent glass like wall again, the rest of the room was al white and sleek, I could see Glee on the other side of the glass
“Ill be watching and keeping track of you two, Livid dont kill him”
“Oh dont worry, ill just scar the little guy up some more, give him a good souvenir from his time at ground zero”
We now stand face to face, at this time I conjure up one of my electric daggers and point it at him
Livid begins a count off
“3”
“2”
“1”
“GO!”