"There you four are. What took you so long?" The instructor spoke somewhat angrily.
Jade simply looked at her nervously. She had gone through the portal first and was therefore the closest to the instructor and her rage.
There had been a little incident on the other side, and "incident" obviously meant that Gary had tried to get into a fight with him. Unbothered, Zen had simply pushed Jade into the portal and jumped right in after her before he could react. Unable to do anything, Gary could only swallow his anger and leave.
Seeing as all the kids had arrived, the instructor simply decided to forget it and started leading them somewhere.
A few minutes later they found themselves in front of what looked to be an auditorium.
"After you" said the female instructor as she opened the door for the four kids.
Still a bit confused about what exactly they were late for, they stepped in and saw a huge crowd of people, which they could only assume were the rest of the new students.
As they each made their way through the crowd, Zen suddenly felt his hand brush against someone else's and a feeling like an electric shock suddenly ran up his arm, making it feel numb.
Zen whipped his head to that direction but he had lost sight of the person in the large crowd
"She's here" Zen muttered
"Hmm? Who's here?"
Zen didn't think it would be wise for him to explain now so he simply told her he would at a better time
At the very front of the crowd,on a stage , there was a man who seemed to be giving some sort of speech to the students. While listening, Zen suddenly noticed that the man had switched to a rather interesting topic.
"My dear students, as you all may already know, one of your fellow participants was brutally attacked by an agent of the evil organization known only as the arcade "
The large screen behind him suddenly turned on and displayed an insignia inked in black. The wings and halo of an angel facing upward, the wings and horns of a demon or dragon facing downward, both nearly attached to the blade of a sword with a game controller for a hilt
Jade looked at the symbol on the screen. It wasn't her first time seeing it but she couldn't help feeling strange. She remembered when Beatrix had hugged Zen and she had joined in. She remembered that she had leaned closer and had seen Beatrix's neck under her collar. There seemed to be some sort of strange tatoo . Thinking, Jade felt like although she hadn't seen it completely,it looked a bit like....no that was impossible, there was no way that could be true. Jade would never believe that a child as warm,sweet and innocent as Beatrix could be one of them. The fact that she knew Zen seemed to further cement this thought despite the fact that she barely knew Zen too.
"This organization sprouted up from places unknown,in fact, almost nothing is known about them. What we do know about this dark faction is that they aim to completely take over the world order and they will do whatever it takes to achieve this twisted goal. The arcade trains agents, warriors they call players. These players have openly been declared to be the arcade's weapons of war, hell-bent only on destruction".
The man looked over the crowd and nodded approvingly before continuing
The entire place had gotten notably more quiet and solemn.
"I know you all must be confused as to why I'm speaking of an evil faction that had, fortunately , been attacked and successfully destroyed at its base of operations over a month ago. My point is that this world is a dangerous, moreso than I'd like to burden you with at this moment, but our world is in need of new heroes. With many more organizations like the arcade, its many subordinates and rogue agents, this world needs its own sentinels to protect it, those warriors stand before me today, ready to challenge the world! It's a very big world, and the arcade,no matter how dangerous is only one threat out of all of them. One soldier can only do so much, but today you students join an army! Tomorrow you could be the one to lead it"
The man who gave a few more words of encouragement, reminding the students to work hard to grow stronger. His speech seemed to resonate with a large number of the crowd as they burst into loud cheers while clapping.
Zen didn't react much,it was honestly hard to, considering the implications of that speech for him.
"Even more moving than the last time" Freya spoke somewhat nostalgic
"You've heard this before?" Zen asked
"Well it isn't the same speech, but it's the same guy giving it. He was a lot younger back then though"
Zen looked at the man who seemed to be the dean or something like that.
Freya suddenly remembered something and chuckled
"He sure does know how to give a good speech. I honestly felt like joining their side for real, and then there was Riley, she was a mess,i was actually scared that she was gonna switch sides for real and betray us"
Freya "smiled" while reminiscing about her crimson haired twin sister jumping up and yelling while she kept proudly flashing the academy symbol. One thing very obvious about her in that moment was that she was terrible at controlling her emotions.
Freya's playful laughter suddenly stopped though,as she suddenly went quiet.
Zen kept his focus on the stage and didn't bother Freya. He knew what she was going through, it was just too bad he couldn't feel it the way she did.
Once all the chaos had subsided,a figure wearing a black robe, slowly walked up the stage and looked towards the students while staying eerily quiet.
Noticing the students' unease, the man who gave the speech quickly pacified them, saying that the individual was simply assessing them, mentioning that it was a sort of tradition in the school for new students.
Zen who had closed his eyes, open them and looked up to see the person and the moment he laid eyes on the hooded figure, his right eye which he hid under his hair suddenly began to sting and burn. He quickly averted his eyes, wondering what that was all about.
"Huh? What's wrong? Z?" Jade asked worriedly as she saw him stagger due to the pain.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt? Z, talk to me"
"I'm fine" Zen replied after a few seconds, pacifying Jade who was still a little nervous "
"Really?..... well good, but if you need help, you can come to me. Don't forget,i still owe you"
Zen glanced at her for a while seconds but couldn't find what to say, he wasn't very good at this stuff. Looking away, he decided just avoid looking at that person and luckily for him, they left after a few more seconds.
The man who gave the speech sighed and looked to be in thought. A bright light suddenly erupted from where he was. As it faded, the man was gone, he had just vanished.
A school official suddenly came up to the stage and said that the man had some matters to attend to. He encouraged the students to heed to the advice they had been given, giving a shortened version of a speech himself, before informing them that the locations of their dorms and other relevant information had been sent to their watches.
Taking this as permission to leave, the students began to rush out as they tried to get out resulting in chaos. Strangely, the numerous school officials made no attempt to stop them or even calm them down.
Zen looked around him and all he could see were students rushing left and right,all trying to get ahead of each other. At some point, he realized that Jade was no longer beside him, likely having been separated from him due to all the chaos.
"Ugh, I hate this part" Freya said, hinting that this must happen a lot.
A few seconds later, the chaos subsided. Zen looked around and saw only a few students left who were still close by and were still trying to get to their dorms. At some point the school officials had disappeared, leaving the room mostly empty.
"Okay, let's find your dorm"
Zen nodded and opened the new file on the watch.
A holographic 3D map of the academy suddenly appeared over the watch . Zen suddenly realized just how huge the academy was. It even extended underground, although, that area seemed off limits,it wasn't even clear what exactly was down there.
Zen decided to go straight to his dorm. He tapped on the location of the dorm that was marked on the map.
The map retreated into the watch and a small holographic image of a golden eagle appeared, hovering a few centimeters above the watch with its wings spread behind it in a way that made it resemble an arrow.
"Looks like they tweaked a few features on it" Zen said before walking towards his dorm under the guidance of the arrow, and taking twists and turns whenever it said so.
"So is there anything I should know about?" Zen asked Freya, hoping to get some info from her
"You'll figure it out" Freya replied nonchalantly
"Why don't you tell me about that girl you were talking about?"
It took Zen a few seconds to realize she was talking about the girl he'd met on the rooftop. Seeing no reason not to, Zen narrated what happened that night, making sure to tell her about the literal shock that would happen when they touched .
"Hmmm, interesting. I can't exactly say what the electricity is about but what i can say is that for her to pull off what she did, she can't be low level, unless she is an extremely experienced strength or earth ability user.....or something like that"
Zen already knew that much. It seemed like he'd have to look deeper into this matter.
Zen turned a corner and was about to say something else when he saw someone familiar.
"Zen?"
"Oh it's this little bitch" Freya said with clear distaste in her tone, clear to Zen at least.
Zen looked at who was in front of him for a few seconds and as usual,felt nothing. Looking at her, he could confirm that just like it had been for many years, his heart was empty, hollow, feeling emotions was the purpose of the others
Zen was confused , but for a very strange reason. After a few seconds, he simply walked around her, not really bothered.
"Zen, wait" Celia suddenly grabbed his hand
"Can we talk?"
"...."
"Listen,i know what happened looked bad but-"
"–You were following orders" Zen interrupted
"... Yes and-"
Zen decided to cut this meeting short, Freya was already telling him to move it to his dorm and he wasn't really interested in talking to her.
"You have nothing to apologize for. What happened was normal, you won, and i lost. Now that it's all over,we have nothing to do with each other. It was -"
Freya suddenly yelled, stopping him from saying the next words out.
Zen realized what he had almost done and without saying anything else,he released his hand from Celia's grip and walked off, and for some reason, she didn't follow and only watched as he left.
Zen didn't really forgive her, he just couldn't care less about her or what happened.
Zen kept walking for a few more minutes under the hologram's guidance and suddenly noticed that the eagle started making a soft cawing sound. He looked up to where it was pointing and in front of him was a door.
"This must be the place" Freya said excitedly
Zen turned off the hologram map and stepped in front of the door which immediately started scanning his watch, while this happened, Freya decided to explain
"This is mainly to check if this is your dorm. It's only gonna do this the first time and all the other times, you have to type in the code"
At that moment, Zen received message on the watch, with a six digit pin and a message warning him not to share it lightly. He only had to look at it once to memorize it and as soon as he did, he put in the code.
"You're gonna love this room. The best part is that the school isn't too strict so you can customize "
The next second, the door opened and revealed his dorm room