A dark, cold room is suddenly lit up by the front doors being swung open by a scrawny, distraught, hyperventilating man. The light entering the room wakes up many sketchy looking characters who were previously sleeping on couches or piles of boxes, with trash everywhere, and a TV on with no one watching it. The scrawny man looks around, but then remembers his initial reason for coming here. He runs straight forward to a spiral staircase leading up the building. He goes up 5 stories, passing by more and more junkies the higher he goes. He reaches the top, and finds a door with two alien bouncers guarding it. "U-u-u-uhh, I-I-I need to speak to O-o-o-Oppcac. J-just for a minute please.." The two bouncers look at each other, then look back at the scrawny man with one of them saying "Beat it. Don't make us tell you again." The man looks defeated, and starts thinking about what he can do to get past the doors. He suddenly runs to the doors and starts palming and banging on them as hard as he can and as much as he can before the bouncers stop him. The bouncer that originally told him off grabs him and throws him back, hitting the metal pole of the spiral staircase. "I TOLD YOU TO BEAT IT!" The bouncer violently yells as he reaches for an odd looking gun in his holster.
Before the bouncer can do anything further to the man, the door they were guarding opens, and a tall, beige colored man with tusks coming from his cheekbones wearing a robe, with a branding label visible on his chest reveals himself. "Come in. Say what you need to say. Reso, stand down." Reso the bouncer puts the strange gun back in his holster, and lets the man go. The man gleefully waltzes into the room Oppac was in. He looks around and sees a couple women putting on makeup, and awkwardly looking at him as he entered. "U-u-umm sir.. Oppac sir.. I was just w-w-w-w-wondering if you've noticed the new school a couple miles out that was recently built and opened on your territory?" Oppac responds with "Yes, I've noticed..'' in a very patronizing tone. The man continues to talk, twiddling his thumbs and saying "W-w-w-well I was wondering if you could... make the product come faster? It's already slowed down delivery rates, and I've been having...y'know.. withdrawals.." Oppac gets a disgusted look on his face, scoffs and looks away in a grossed out manner. "Roll up your sleeves real quick?" The man slowly and shamefully rolls up his sleeves, revealing needle marks on his elbow. "Ugh, you disgusting junkie. Coming into my house trying to tell me how to do my job?" The man backs up in fear a little bit, murmuring "N-n-n-n-no sir, that's not what I was trying to imply.. I promise!" Oppac looks down on him saying "Well, you did. Reso, you know what to do." The bouncer pulls out the odd looking gun again and gleefully shoots the man in the back of the neck with an evil smile on his face. Starting from his nape where he was shot, a grey rocky texture spreads quickly across his body and clothes, he lets out a horrified scream, but is cut off by the spread of stone covering his entire body. His scream becomes distorted, and hauntingly echoes off the walls of the room, leaving the addicted individual turned to stone with smoke radiating off his body. Oppac grins as he lifts his arm and snaps his fingers twice.
An elevator door opens up from inside the room, and two men with hard hats come rushing in with a stretcher. As the two men are putting the new stone statue on the stretcher, Oppac says "Add him to the stock that's being sold today." the men salute him, and take the stretcher and statue unto the elevator. After a couple moments of silence, Oppac speaks up once more, saying "He was right though. That school that opened up today is gonna hinder the business here." The second bouncer asks "Are you gonna take it out sir? Most of the planet knows about the Quarter-Star Mafia, even our guardians! They've had plenty of warnings." Oppac looks at the school through the window, and just says "No. They know what they've gotten into, they know what territory they're on. They put the school here on purpose. There's plenty of safe cities around the world, much better for children than this dump. I just wanna know why. Why here? They'll make a move, and when they do, I'll throw back what they throw to me tenfold."
We cut back to the school, and the first day of learning is about to end, the sun is setting, and the kids have been having some R&R for the past few hours. For lunch and dinner, Wally popped an "Instant Dinner" package into the oven, which when heated up, molds into a large Thanksgiving size meal for 20. At about 10:30, Wally walks up to Thanian, who's playing some kind of futuristic board game with Eric. "You think the kids should go to sleep in a few minutes? They got up at seven so I think now's a good time." Thanian takes a minute to respond, he's focused on beating Eric in this game that he's surprisingly good at, but not good enough to win. Eventually Thanian wins, and shoves it in Eric's face, yelling "BOOM! Don't even try! 5-0! Hahaha! Never trust the opponent, I think I tricked you about 100 times!" Eric just gives Thanian a poker face look, and walks away as the man-child continues laughing. Thanian looks up at Wally and says "Huh? Oh, nah. These board games are fun." Wally just gives Thanian a look similar to Eric's and utters out "I don't even know why I asked you."
Wally then walks out the front door and yells out to the students "Alright everyone, come inside, change, and go to sleep. We'll do all this again tomorrow." The students all come into the house, and as they come in Wally mumbles to himself "1..2..3..4.." until he reaches 14, and all the students are now inside. "Okay everyone, just change into your nightgowns from last night. They're all washed and folded on your beds." Besides some of the students casually talking to each other, the students quietly go upstairs to their bedrooms, except for the third step upwards creaking a bit. The entire second floor was a large bedroom, divided by a wall. One side girls, the other side boys. The five staff stay on the first floor, mentally drained from parenting all these kids today.
"Y'know, I WOULD say that I don't want to do this for another 11 years, but these are good kids. I'm glad we got to take care of them instead of the awful foster system." Ruby says to the others. "I don't have to do this every day for 11 years anyway, I have college and another job to worry about. So starting tomorrow I get to leave right after I teach.". Ruby looks shocked, she looks at Thanian and then at Wally and says, "Really? He gets to leave pretty much whenever?". Wally nods and just says, "Yep, we talked it all out before he met you guys.". Alth gets a slight smile, he looks at Thanian and says, "College, huh?". "Haha, yeah. Out in Downtown Osapell." Thanian says. "What college?" Alth presses. "Community University at Osapell… I know, not very prestigious." Alth just smiles and says, "Not bad.. I didn't grow up here on Oxys so I don't know much about the colleges. Me and Wally grew up together on the planet 'Lohamoloak', god I hate the name of that place. You, Ruby?". The staff looks at Ruby, and she says, "Edgole. Pretty tough planet, that's where I learned to fight.". Thanian looks behind him at Tayer and asks, "How about you, Tayer? I know Wally and Alth already know, so that's why they didn't ask you I guess.". "I'm from Sienna. Nothing real special about it. I actually moved away from there when I turned 20, I was a private pilot and I went to Lohamoloak, and found Wally, Alth, and Wally's older brother. All running away from home at the ages of 13. They wouldn't tell me where they were from, and they were complete pains in the ass. I ended up raising them though, and us three went on quite the number of adventures together. Speaking of Samuel, didn't he-" Wally cuts off Tayer before he finishes, not wanting him to finish the sentence out of petty.
The five staff members just stay quiet for a second, looking out the window and staring at the stars. "I'll go now, my plants aren't watered yet." Tayer says as he grabs a ring of keys off the counter. "All right, see you tomorrow. I'm going to go to bed as well." Wally says as he walks up the stairs, with Alth, Ruby, and Thanian following as he says, "You know, I should go to bed earlier. I hate being tired in the mornings." but no one hears him, or cares to respond. Once again. the third step creaks. Tayer leaves the school, goes into his ship, and soars off in the horizon.
A few hours into the night go by quietly and uneventful. Until, in the boys room, James' and Chris' eyes light up, the surface of their eyes look like TV static, with the sound of static going with it. The two boys rise out of their beds, and walk towards the stairs, not making a peep, and not waking up anyone else. Chris walks around the room as if he isn't blind at all. No sudden movements are made by the boys except the occasional glitch causing a slight twitch movement. They first go upstairs, where the entire third floor is for storage. The boys see the same box from earlier that day that has all those sticks taking the place of swords for now. James opens the box, grabs a stick, then Chris walks up and grabs one.
They reverse their steps, going back down where they came, and continue through the floors. They get to the staircase on the first floor, and when going down, James and even Chris purposefully skip the creaky step. They quietly open the front door, go outside, and start practicing sword stances and their sword fighting. They do motions and stances that Wally didn't teach them. The way they were swinging the stick, the foot placement, and even the strength in their grip, everything they were doing was foreign, and nothing Wally had mentioned to them at all. For three hours straight, they were outside practicing by themselves, and getting far ahead in skill compared to the other students. When they were done, they just walked back inside, up the stairs, avoiding the creak once more, going all the way up to the third floor, putting the sticks back, then they go back down to their bed, and are back to sleep as if nothing happened.