[Tragedy Strike Countdown: 3 Days]
It's late in the afternoon, Wally, Alth, and Thanian have done their teaching for the day, and Thanian is gone in the city for his other job. It's just another day for them, until a loud *BOOM* is heard in the distance, followed by a shockwave reaching the school. "What was that?!" McJ yells. Wally, Ruby, and Alth run to the front gate, throw open the doors, and are met with another *BOOM* which creates a shockwave yet again. The booms are coming from loud thrusters on a large four-wheeler vehicle, there's an exhaust pipe in the back that when activated, makes a loud boom, and throws the vehicle forward, going faster. The large armored truck speeding down the desert is coming from a tall jungle a large distance from the school. On the side of the truck is a large yellow logo. It's a circle with a half circle going around it, and three spokes coming out of the half circle, and is the same branding logo on Oppac's chest, and is driving right towards Gravelroath. The people inside the truck are shooting at a large ship above them in the sky. A ramp opens up beneath the large ship, and two figures jump out of it. One large, and one small and nimble. The nimble one glides down with cloth wings under his armpits and quickly lands on top of the truck. The large one lands on the ground, shattering rocks around him and making a shockwave of his own. He starts barreling towards the truck and catches up very quick. He grabs onto the exhaust pipe, and lifts up the entire truck by the pipe. Someone inside activates the thruster, and sends immense forces of energy at the large man, but he powers through it, and slams the truck upside down on the ground after the nimble one jumps off and glides back to the ground.
Smoke leaks out of the truck, same as gasoline, and then the people inside crawl out through the broken windows. The big one, a ten foot brolic man with purple skin, visible pink veins wearing a grey chest plate and helmet, picks up the first man to crawl out of the truck. He holds him by his ankles while the nimble one, a six foot Caucasian alien with flat suction cup looking hands and feet wearing monk style clothing and wielding a sword, walks up to him. "What did you take that you were so eager to bring to Gravelroath?" The nimble man says. The man coughs, and says "Doesn't matter, you definitely destroyed them when flipped over the fucking truck." the nimble man looks at the barely visible yellow logo that was on the truck, and says "I assume you're with the Quarter-Star Mafia. Judging by that, whatever you had was either a rich and rare type of drug you were planning on selling, or petrified slaves. Am I right?" "Heh.. Go see for yourself." The nimble one walks to the back of the truck, opens the trunk, to see bruised Quarter-Star Mafia members in the seats near the front, and then the thing that really does it for this man, is seeing stone sculptures in the shapes of shattered and destroyed body parts of alien men, women, and children. Disconnected arms, legs, hands, and facial parts all scattered across dust. The nimble man shuts the trunk, and while holding back the urge to kill these criminals immediately, he says "Pods are coming down, and you'll all be arrested." Three metal pods come floating down, and the big one throws one of the criminals into the first pod to arrive. He then pulls out the two remaining criminals, and throws them into next pods.
Wally sees the two people only 20 feet away, and says to Ruby and Alth "I need to go talk to them real quick." Wally jogs up to the two mysterious people, and before he can say anything the nimble one says "Hey, sorry for this getting near your property, we'll get it cleaned up don't worry." "Actually, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. What did they take that made them so eager to get away?" The mysterious men look at each other, then the nimble one says "We can't disclose that, I'm sorry. We can give you autographs if you want, we can see how curious your students look." Wally looks behind him, and sees all the students looking through the gateway. "Sure, but I don't think they actually know who you guys are, so if you wanna go tell them, go right ahead." Wally says. "They don't? Well allow me." The nimble one says as he and the big one walk to the students. "Who are you?" McJ asks. "Hah! I'm Paki and this is Vierd. We're the guardians of this good ol' planet, Oxys. We go around, stopping criminals like the guys we just did, including some bigger level problems, like people trying to take over the world." Paki explains. "Does stuff like that happen a lot?" Brittain asks. "Yeah, all the time. But we got it under control." Paki explains quite casually. Paki then pulls out a slip of paper, writes something on it with a pen also from his pocket. He passes the paper to Vierd, and then he writes something on it as well. He hands the paper to Wally, and Paki says "There you go. Our autographs. We gotta head out now, we needa get this truck out of here, then head back to the city. See y'all around." Paki then extends out his arms, revealing webbed wing type things under his arms. He's caught by the wind and flies up to the ship, whilst a little platform floats down for Vierd to get onto. The platform lifts up Vierd to the large ship above, and flies off in the direction of the nearest city.
Wally looks off into the distance towards the jungle, silently thinking. "Do you think you know what they got?" Alth asks. "I got an idea. Hey guys, you wanna go on a trip tomorrow?" Wally asks. Most of the students show excitement, and all agree to this sudden idea. Most. The staff walks back inside, with Wally saying "Be ready tomorrow." as he goes through the door. Cyrus, Jacob, Eric, Dex, and McJ go back to what they were doing beforehand. "You guys are thinking what I'm thinking right?" McJ says. "Yeah! I'm down with checking out whatever 'Quarter-Star' is, if we can find a way to go to Gravelroath and do some investigating... If that's what you were thinking." Jacob says. "Should we really? I know we all- I mean most of us got swords yesterday, but we don't know much, if anything about Quarter-Star." Cyrus explains. "We can do research tonight and see what they're about. Maybe Wally or someone has a laptop we can borrow." Eric says. "Do you guys think we can stay here tomorrow instead of going on the trip? We might be missing out on fun, but I can probably convince Wally to let us stay." Dex says. "I'm game, you guys?" Jacob asks. The rest of the boys say yes in synchronous, except Cyrus who hesitates slightly, but says yes after a few seconds.
Meanwhile inside the house, Ruby asks "What do you think those guys took?" Wally is silent for a few seconds as he thinks, and then says "They had petrified slaves, and when the truck was flipped I think the slaves they gathered were killed." "What?! What do you mean? Why do you think that?" Ruby asks. "Kind of a long story, but here. There used to be two primary species who were intelligent enough to run the planet, but over time one outgrew the other, making a majority and minority system. The minority became a race that were slaves because of their physical strength and longer lifespans. The minority's population decreased quickly, and now there are only a few left, which live hidden away in the jungle out there, which I guess isn't hidden anymore. I called for the trip because I want to go check the place out, and I might as well bring the students." "Why didn't you tell us?" Ruby asks. "Because if the existence of that hidden place got out, stuff like what happened today would happen all the time. Tayer knows, but that's it." Wally explains. "Well, anything else you'd like to tell us? You told me you still had secrets but that seemed kind of important!" Ruby asks. "I'm the one that helped build and hide away their current location. Alth, when I was gone for weeks at a time before the school was built, that's what I was doing. I know, keeping secrets like that from you guys is messed up, but there are some things that need to be hidden, and now, there's only like one last important thing I haven't told you guys. Not even you know, Tayer." Wally says.
"I know this is probably useless to ask, but can you tell us? We're a team running this school! It's unfair to us and unfair to the students." Ruby asks. Wally looks down at his right hand, and says "I… can't say. I can tell you what the secret's about, I guess, but not the secret itself." Wally looks back up at Ruby, Alth, and Tayer. "It's what my chemical powers are. I can't let anyone know, no matter what. If I ever defeat Morte I can tell you guys, but I just can't say until then." "Come on, Wally. You're still on this whole Morte thing? You don't need to go after him anymore!" Ruby says, but is interrupted by Tayer, who says, "He does need to worry. You might not have noticed, but for the past five years Morte has been freely going from planet to planet, doing what he wants, with no one stopping him. Soon enough he'll be too much to stop. So if Wally has some kind of trump card that could work out in our favor, it's best for him to make sure no one at all knows. We need Morte to be clueless as to what we could pull off, the more people that know Wally's power the worse." Wally points at Tayer, signifying that he was spot on. Ruby just says "Okay.. I understand. Sorry for prying." "..It's fine." Wally finishes.
We cut back outside to Jasper talking to Linn, saying "I wish I could just go live in that town out there, probably better than living here under these rules. Must be great to live on your own." Linn says "If you go on the scooter, you can quickly get there without anyone catching up to you and taking you back." "You know what.. Yeah! I'm out of here! Living on my own will be the best! If he asks where I am, just say I went inside and they didn't notice." "Okay!" Linn says. Jasper runs to the front gate, opens it up, runs around back, hops on one of the scooters, and speeds off towards Gravelroath, getting there in only a few minutes. He gets into town, and casually rides the scooter down the streets, watching the crowded sidewalks filled with civilians pass by. At first glance, the town seems like a nice little place. But he begins to notice things. Most of the people he rides by are gross looking men giving a stink eye, or some kind of violent look. Jasper begins to feel uneasy about this town, but keeps his hopes up. "I'll just go to another section of town." Jasper thinks to himself. He rides a bit faster, more towards the center of town. The more he goes, the more and more run down shops and poor stands with rotten fruit he sees. He sees homeless people hiding in the shadows between buildings, and people looking like they hate life being forced to live it. He reaches the center of town. A large open area with a fountain in the center, spewing out green murky water. By far the thing that made Jasper change his mind the most, was him seeing a large catwalk, with statues on it. The statues being molds of people with horrified looks on their faces. A man on the catwalk amongst the statues is yelling out "Bid for the labor! I repeat, bid for the labor! Pay me some money, and they'll make it back for you! That's right! Slaves being offered to you on a silver platter! Who wouldn't take this deal?" Jasper's sinking feeling grows exponentially, and he speeds off on the scooter hoping he won't turn out like anyone he saw here.
On his way out, he passes by multiple sketchy looking people. One of which, wearing metal boots, shoulder armor, and a large cowboy style hat, stares at him like all the other sketchy figures had, and then walks away, further into town. Junkies and homeless people cower in fear as he walks past them. The man arrives at a large six story building. Oppac's house. He walks inside, goes up the spiral staircase, and reaches the doors to Oppac's room. The same two bouncers from five years ago are still there, and they let the man inside. Oppac stands inside, and says, "Aiffam.. You don't usually come to visit me face to face, what is it?" "It's that school, sir. I think they may be making advances to attack the QS." Aiffam explains. "What makes you say that?" Oppac asks. "I noticed a boy riding in on a Vrocilia brand motor scooter. He also had a hand crafted stone sword, and I've heard that the school teaches sword fighting. Do you think they had some kind of hand in stopping our heist today?" Aiffam says. "Surely not. We all saw the two guardians of Oxys take out our truck. May have been near the school, but not caused by them. Good eye though, you're my favorite capo here, Aiffam. I'll let you take control of the situation, whether you want to advance onto the school, or keep an eye out. The choice is yours." "Thank you, Oppac sir. I'll keep an eye out for now, but if any one else from the school shows their face in Gravelroath, we'll strike!"
Jasper exits Gravelroath, zooming back towards the school. "I never realized how good I had it at the school, I guess Wally wasn't that bad of a guy after all. I'll just get back, stay at the school, and continue my training, just like normal." Jasper thinks to himself. Meanwhile at the school, Wally is about to board one of the scooters as well, but stops when he says "Nevermind guys. He's back." Jasper rides back up to the school, and begins to say "Hey, Wally, I uhm-" but is cut off by Wally, who yells and says "God damn it, Jasper! You had no right to leave! You aren't even allowed to leave the walls without asking, not to mention going miles outward to a crime filled town!" Jasper is speechless, he wasn't expecting any sort of ridicule or consequence. He looks at Linn, and says "You told him?!" Wally too looks at Linn and yells "You knew?!" "Y-yeah.." Linn says. "Well she didn't tell me, I can notice if one of my students went off somewhere. Jasper, do you even understand how dangerous going to Gravelroath is? Even for me it's bad. You're lucky to have gotten out of there alive!" "I'm.. I'm sorry.." Jasper says while looking at the ground, nearly about to cry. "You aren't going on the trip tomorrow. Neither are you, Linn. Jasper, you don't go on any trips at all until I specifically tell you that you can. I'm done with you. I'm going inside." Wally finishes. Jasper walks back into the school, passing Ruby who shuts the front gates behind him. Jasper walks to the side of the wall and sits against it, just thinking.
"Wow, I've never seen Wally get that angry before." McJ says. "I don't think I've seen him get that angry period!" Jacob comments. "What do you think Wally was talking about when he said it was really dangerous to go?" Cyrus asks. "I think we all have a pretty good idea. The Quarter-Star." Dex says. "Do you think he saw anything that could help us figure stuff out?" Jacob says. "Why don't you go ask him?" Eric says. Jacob runs up to Jasper, and says "Hey, Jasper! Uhm.. uh.. Dex how about you ask instead." Dex walks up as Jacob walks back, and asks "Why did you go to Gravelroath, Jasper?" Jasper looks up at him and says "I wanted to go because I thought we had no freedom here. I know, it sounds dumb. And now that I can compare here to there, it sounds even more dumb." "Well, what was 'there' like? What did you see? Anything weird or scary specifically that sent you back here?" Dex asks. "Well.. there were a whole bunch of shady people there, a lot of homelessness, and there was this guy publicly selling slaves! I don't know how they were slaves though, they were just statues. But that's what they were called. The slave stuff was the final thing that sent me back, it was too weird." Jasper explains. Dex looks back at the other boys, and looks again at Jasper and says "Okay, thanks for telling me." Dex begins to walk away, but is stopped by Jasper when he says "You aren't planning on going there, are you?" "...No. At least, not yet." Dex says.