The room had a round table and chairs around it. The table was polished until it reflected the light coming from the one ceiling-high window in the room. The room itself wasn't particularly big, but because of the lack of interior and the simplicity of whatever there was in the room, it appeared bigger than it actually was. The table itself was one made from maple wood with glass fitted upon it. Around it was five chairs with equal spaces between each of them.
Five chairs for the five people entering the room. A round table which signified that in this room, when everyone had sat down, no one person should be higher than the other. They were to be equals.
The last one to enter had a hood and a white mask which covered the top half of their face. The Headmaster of Schole, leader of all Dalta. The person sat at the seat directly in front of the window, casting shadows over their face.
"Shall we begin the meeting?" The hooded figure inquired with a smile. "Samantha has news for us."
"Is it a good one?" The middle-aged man on the figure's right asked. "Please say that it's good news."
"It's both." Samantha replied, standing up. She had an olive green cape which had a gold clip to hold it together over her uniform, just like the others. Her hair was put up in a neat bun and in her hands was a notebook. "My team recently discovered something crucial regarding our gifts, our… abilities to control the elements."
"What is it?"
"It is that our abilities aren't limitless."
Another man brought his palms down to the table and stood up. "That's impossible! You're going against the previous studies!"
"I have to agree with Brian, Samantha." The girl sitting across her frowned. "We're different from the Normals. What you just said indicated that we are essentially the same as them."
"But aren't we?" She lowered her notebook. "We're all humans in the end, Millie."
The first male, Clem, spoke up. "What do you mean by limitations?"
"All of you know this: our abilities aren't godlike. We cannot create it out of thin air, out of nothing. We need something to be able to use them, a starter of some sort. Lighters or matches for the pyro, dirt for the terra, and water for hydro. It is only different for aero, who can find their starter everywhere because they only need air."
"That much we know, Samantha." Millie commented.
"I'm not finished. We also know that we cannot make the elements disappear. We cannot suffocate others by making the air around them vanish, nor can we dehydrate someone by making the water in their body evaporate. You get what I mean."
The second male, Brian, sat back down and crossed his arms. "Yes. So what's the new information?"
Samantha hesitated and glanced over at the Headmaster, who nodded at her. Perhaps she should've brought this up when she had found more evidence, more cases to support her statement to follow. But time was running out for them and their distance to Carcarem's core didn't look like it was going to get smaller anytime soon despite all of their efforts.
The Headmaster looked at her. "It's alright, Samantha. Tell them."
Samantha swallowed. "All this time we thought that our actual abilities are in the way that we can adopt one of the elements and use it, but it doesn't seem like it's the case. A few weeks ago, one of my members went to visit a relative of theirs because they've fallen ill. She thought that her relative was suffering from a high fever or something else, so she nursed them until they were in full health. But afterwards," a pause, "her relative couldn't use their ability anymore."
"… What?"
Millie. "Are you sure it's not because of the illness?"
Brian muttered something under his breath and ran his hand through his hair.
The Headmaster didn't utter a word.
"We've sent a team there and I've went along to confirm it. It's true. Afterwards, we begin to look for others, for Daltas who lost their powers. Through this search, I am quite positive that the illness didn't cause the loss of abilities, for some of them didn't get sick at all. They just… lost it."
The room fell into silence.
She shifted her weight from one foot to another before breaking the thick air that hung over them. "We've checked their health and interviewed them, along with those who were close to them. From all of these cases, I've concluded that our abilities were not to adopt the elements, but rather to fuel the elements. Inside us is like a dam or a hole of some sort which contains all of our ability and each time we use it, we take a portion of it."
Clem shifted in his seat and leaned in towards Samantha. "So you're saying that once we've used all of our ability in the dam…" He trailed off.
Samantha closed her notebook.
"Then that's the end."
He didn't know what he was expecting when he finished his shower, but it certainly wasn't a certain green-haired girl in his room. Stefina was sitting on his study table, flipping through one of the books she had obviously taken from the line of books on his table.
"Get off my desk."
"You shower for a very long time. I was getting bored," she replied without moving an inch. She didn't even look up.
He threw his towel which was on his neck at her. It hit her in the face. "Get off my desk. There's a perfectly good chair just right beside it."
"First of all, /rude/." Stefina huffed, taking the towel and throwing it back at him. Remy caught it with one hand. "Second of all, when's your next mission?"
The male sat on his bed and draped the towel over his head. "Don't know yet. Chief Millie didn't say anything."
"Did you meet her today though?" The girl asked, closing her book and then hopping off the table to walk towards the male who was drying his hair with the towel. "Meline said that her office was locked. That's why I was submitting to the Headmaster directly."
"I met with Chief Clem before and he told me to just hand the report directly to the Headmaster so I didn't bother going to her office at all."
Stefina's eyebrows turned to a slight frown. "Why were you meeting Chief Clem?"
"I was informing the Medic that a certain idiot pyro is coming."
A sigh. "You two are adults now. Stop being so childish."
"I can say the same for you." He stopped drying his hands to reply, then resumed drying his hair, patting it dry.
She sat on the bed beside him and set down the book. "What do you mean? I'm perfectly mature."
"That's," he ran his fingers through his hair to smooth out his dark locks, "exactly what someone who's mature wouldn't say."
She huffed. "At least I'm more mature than you and Malcolm."
He shook his head and adjusted the towel around his neck. He pretended to be deep in thought before turning towards her. "Nah. Malcolm, yes, but certainly not me."
"I'm not childish, Re-"
Her words got cut off when her back hit the mattress. Remy was on top of her, his hands on either side of her. His hair fell from his shoulder, framing his face. Her eyes were wide and she sucked in a quick breath when Remy lowered his face to her neck. Her mind was a mess of thoughts, like multiple string thrown across each other, looping and entwining until it's all one big pile of God-knows-what.
"Re-," her voice came out as a squeak. If her face wasn't red, then it definitely was now. She coughed and tried again, "Remy, what are you doing?"
She didn't need to look at him to hear the mischief in his voice; he must be smiling. "I wonder what."
Her heart was beating too fast, too loud, too much that it felt like it was trying to escape her own ribcage and tear out of her body. Her whole body felt like it was on fire, which technically it was – her ability was the same as Malcolm's. She wasn't sure if she liked the way the burning felt different than usual.
He pulled away and sat back like he did before he pushed her down. A teasing smile was plastered on his face, along with a smug look. "If you're an adult, then you'd know better than to enter the bedroom of a man."
She propped herself up on her elbows and looked confusedly at him.
Remy laughed and patted her head. "It's fun teasing you."
Her eyebrows met in the middle and she punched him on the shoulder. Remy didn't even try to block her. She stood up and threw the book at his lap and turned on her heels.
"Fuck you so much, Rouge!"
"Get in line!" He rubbed the spot where she had hit him, and laughed louder.
Stefina slammed the door shut behind her.
Remy let himself fall back to his bed, his dark hair a contrast with his light grey sheets. He spread out his arms, stretching out his fingers before covering his eyes with them. There was an unexplainable feeling, one of unease in his gut. He knew that a war was coming at them, if it hadn't already did. At the rate this is going, making Carcarem disappear was going to be one hell of a task. But this unease he felt recently was more intense, it felt more… personal. Remy had always had a knack for sensing things before it happened, and he could usually explain it with logic, but he couldn't get his head around it this time no matter how he tried; he only knew that it became better – or worse – whenever Malcolm was around him, that prat.
He only went back to his house to shower and get into clean clothes. He didn't even want to call the small house as 'home'. The word 'home' meant so much more to him than just a place where he could rest and unwind after a long day. 'Home' was the smell of his mother's cooking when he got back, the smiles his neighbors gave him when they passed by each other, it was the rough yet endearing way his father would ruffle his hair or play with him after a day of working on the field. 'Home' was the chatter around the table, the dirt that stuck on the soles of his shoes when he was running with his friends, it was the warm hugs his mother gave him each time he got into an argument with his friends.
It was so much more than just an empty house which was only one-and-a-half floor which meant that there was just one medium-sized living/kitchen/dining room and a small bathroom on the first floor with a bed on the upper floor. It wasn't even originally a house. It was an unused barn, but the owner changed it, partially for him. When he was a student in Schole, he could stay in the dormitory like how the others who were not from the city could, but after he became a full-fledged Dalta, there was no reason for him to stay in the dorms anymore. He had to look for another place to live in. Luckily for him, the owner of the restaurant he frequented had an extra house near the city's border. Malcolm had to walk quite the distance everyday to and fro work because the Schole building for his division was in the center of the city, but he didn't mind. It was good enough to at least have a roof to sleep under everyday.
"Malcolm, you're here again!"
He smiled at the lady behind the counter. "Hi, Auntie Rosie."
"What do you want for dinner? The usual?"
He nodded. "Please. Thanks."
Auntie Rosie was the owner of the family restaurant Liberica, and she was the one who had given her old house to Malcolm for him to stay in. She was a spirited woman, brimming with confidence and loved talking with her patrons. In fact, when Malcolm had just got to the city seven years ago, Rosie was the one who started talking to him.
/"What are you doing alone, little one?"/
/Malcolm looked up from the ground at the woman in front of the restaurant. He had a hood over his head and a backpack on his shoulders./
/"Are you lost?"/
/He didn't know how to answer her. He wasn't lost, not really, but he was certainly not where he wanted to be. The night felt colder than usual and his feet felt sore from walking all day. He looked at the ground again, unsure of what to answer./
/The woman bent down to look at his face. "Where are your parents?" She inquired gently./
/His parents…/
/"They're…" he answered quietly. "They're gone."/