Dean put on his school uniform. He wore black trousers alongside the white shirt coupled with the black button-up coat alongside a black tie with white stripes. At least for Almara Island, that was the standard dress code for students. Dean wasn't aware of how other schools dressed.
"Dean, you looked rather… less intimidating?" Orion complimented.
"Because of the uniform?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, I guess?" Orion asked.
Orion kept spraying the hair spray into his hair as he looked at the mirror. He wanted to keep his brown hair shiny to protect his look and his style. He did say that Orion wanted to do some girl hunting at the academy. Dean could have sworn the room stank.
"Oh my god, what's this stank?" Andre came out of the bathroom after being fully dressed in the academy uniform. "Dude, did you hotbox this room with your pomade?" Andre complained to Orion.
"Well, you definitely did," Dean commented as he put several notebooks on his backpack.
The backpack was just a regular student backpack that was given by the school, not the rucksack that Dean carried to the school on the first day. It carried books, not guns and MREs.
"Alright, mates, I'll be waiting for you outside, the room stank."
"See, Orion, I told you not to spray the whole thing into your hair."
Dean closed the door as he waited for those three to come out. Dean just laid his back at the railing on the second floor. The students from the other dormitories had begun coming out as well. The APC was also gone, the user of the APC probably had taken it to somewhere else, for example, the range.
Dean took a deep breath of the fresh air. It felt good up to his nose, even though it was sea air for the most part. His dorm room opened, and the stank of pomade immediately went up to his nose again.
"Holy smokes, how many cans did you use?" Dean covered his nose with his hand.
"Probably half a can," Orion said as he touched his hard solid hair.
Andre then grabbed a lighter from his pocket, "You know," he lit up the lighter, not putting it on Orion's hair, "Your hair is flammable as hell."
"DUDE!"
Dean let out a small chuckle to his friend's shenanigans. Well, they were teenagers, technically, albeit enrolled in this military school which wasn't even close to what Dean had faced in the previous military school. He wasn't told to run around in rucksack or anything like that, it was pretty much civilian.
Dean walked downstairs with the other two and began walking to the academy. Several cars were also entering the academy, most of them were either the teachers or the students. Occassionally, a tank was also rolling towards the academy. 120th wasn't exactly consisted of mechanized infantry, so the tank was rather questionable.
"A modernized M1 Abrams, never thought I'd see it," Andre complimented.
"Yeah, one of the tanks that helped us against the first Menkaid invasion," Dean commented.
"I remember seeing one in action, it was glorious, but also scary," Andre said.
"Menkaid invasion?" Dean asked.
Andre just nodded. "Yeah, Menkaid invasion. Dean, can I ask you something?"
"Throw it away."
"What is your stance in magical energy usage in modern warfare?" Andre asked.
Quite tricky. Saying magic was useless in warfare was as same as saying that the rifle that he always carried with him was useless as well. Magic was a tool, that was for sure. It could kill people, but it also had its own limitation. It was not like magic was the win all solution that humanity needed to fight Menkaid.
"It has its uses."
"Elaborate more, please?"
"On a basic infantry level, magic can be a defining power between life and death, there was no denying that. However, if you move up, for example, to mechanized infantry, there is only so much you can do to a tank with magic. For the most part, magic only can be used in inconventional warfare, then again, it has its own limitation. It has its own diminishing return the more complex the unit is."
"Huh?" Andre still didn't get it.
"Against people on foot? Sure. Against tanks and spacecraft? Heck no."
"I see."
Behind the trio, far behind them, was a scheming group. The four boys were scheming against one person, and that person's name was Dean Barnett. It was Mick and the others. They also heard that Dean was an F-rank.
"That arrogant kid, he should know his place," Mick said to the rest of his friends.
"What do you want to do with him, boss?"
"Let's kill him," Mick said.
"You can't be serious, man."
"Nah, I'm very serious. Let's do that. It's going to be easy," Mick uttered.
"How so? No offense, Mick, but dude's kicked your ass last time."
"We're going to set him up, of course," Mick said as he smiled.
Mick was coming from a well-established family, but as a result, he was too spoiled for his own good, coupled with his relatively above average magical power, it turned him into the perfect bully. However, after Dean slapped him with reality, he wanted his revenge. He wanted Dean to be gone after the ruckus from the first day.
For him, the sooner, the better. If Dean Barnett disappeared, most people would take this as a message. As long as there was no evidence connecting him to the murder, he would be free for the most part. However, he still had no idea on how to bait the soldier boy. No way there was a thing that could bait him unless he asked.
Mick wouldn't dare to even befriend Dean. The outcome could be one of these. Dean could refuse the friendship outright, or worse, it could turn into another heating up situation that would embarass him again. He needed information, and he knew how to do that.
"Dude, you have a sister here, right?"
"Yup, boss, she's in the first year. Want me to contact her?"
"Yeah, ask her to approach Dean Barnett, extract anything that can be used as a bait to get him into a quiet place," Mick said.
"Noted."
"But don't make it obvious, alright? The last thing I needed is to have that Barnett coming after me, and find out more about him, will you?"
"Oki doki, boss man."
"Good, I don't want this thing to bite back on my arse."
======
In the classroom, business was more or less the usual. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Dean was sitting right next to the window while looking at the white board in front of the classroom, and he was thinking that this was a normal life would be, if his parents were still alive.
It might be nice, just to sit down and enjoy the life. It was only a piece of broken dream now, though, knowing that everything was gone. After they escaped the initial bombardment from the Menkaid invaders, a clean-up task force was sent after them.
These Menkaid task force only had one job and that job was to kill every human that they saw. They used their weapons, their bombs, and their missiles to kill anything that moved. Dean managed to be alive just because he had a wound to his head and added to the fact that he was barely conscious.
He remembered being left alone in the middle of a bridge with his back laying on the ground with a metal rebar attached to his head from the exploding bridge. From two directions, Menkaid soldiers were attacking the escaping humans. They shot at them, threw grenades at them, anything that could kill them.
One of the team commanders took off its helmet, revealing a demonic Menkaid with white hair. Dean didn't know who she was, but he remembered that she shot his mother with her own pistol as she tried to run.
She was speaking in Menkaid language that Dean didn't understand at that point. However, it didn't take him too long to find that the whole bridge had been cleaned from human. The Menkaid soldiers went back to their dropship after that and flew away. He couldn't forget the woman.
The white hair woman with semi-blue eyes kept lingering on his mind for several years. It was the symbol of hatred that Dean kept. No matter how many Menkaid he killed, it didn't satisfy him enough until he got the woman. Still, it seemed to be a far fetched dream. The Menkaid had returned to their planet.
Dean sighed as he put his focus back on the class. It was just an introductory class and the teacher introduced herself. Tomorrow, there would be a ceremony where everyone had to wear their military uniform. Most likely, there would be a promotion for the second year and the third year. Dean wondered who would got promoted later, most likely, Adams would be one of the lucky students.