"Wait, wait, wait. So you tried seven times to get a soul animal and never got it?" Alba asked in shock.
"Yes, and could you stop reminding me of it." Ezra said, slightly embarrassed.
He looked back at Alba who was struggling to stop herself from laughing.
"You're not at hiding your excitement." he said.
Alba broke out it laughter and her laughter made Ezra also laugh at his embarrassment.
"Sorry. It's just that you look kinda cute when your embarrassed and that story is pretty funny you have admit it." she said.
Ezra chuckled softly before looking at the moonlit sky. These two had in fact been talking for past three hours and now they just looked at the night sky in silence. It was a full moon that night.
"Though you have to admit that I beat you though." Alba said, bringing back the fight.
"With an unfair attack." Ezra defended.
"You were already in armor showing that you were ready to fight so I poisoned you." Alba said.
"You still didn't have to poison me. The poison really slowed me down by a lot." Ezra said.
"That was the point, you big baby. When you're in battle you're supposed to use any opportunity to you advantage or you'll really get hurt. Mostly if you're enemy is stronger than you." she said.
"So you're saying that I'm stronger than you." Ezra teased.
"Don't be stupid. I'm clearly stronger." Alba said with a soft chuckle.
Ezra chuckled before looking at the sky. "May I ask you something?"
"Feel free. What is it?"
"Why do you cover your eyes?" he asked.
Alba first fell silent. She was not expecting him to ask her that. "It's my training."
Ezra looked at her confused. "You're training?"
"My parents died when I was young. Well technically they left me, so since then I've been staying with my grand parents and my grand father used to be a knight for the Arkwright Family so he trained me on how to use my soul animal."
"He says that one way to unleash your soul animals power is by letting it work on instinct by dulling one of your senses. In this case, my sight."
"Looks like she is stronger." the eagle said.
"Shut up and go back to sleep." Ezra told it.
"Was that the eagle?" Alba asked in fascination.
"Yeah, she just said that you're stronger than me." Ezra said chuckling softly.
"It's cool that you can talk to a soul animal. And she is right. I am stronger than you." Alba said.
"Keep dreaming." Ezra said before the two of them broke into laughter. "Hey Alba, can I see your eyes?"
Alba once again looked surprised. "Your questions always catch me off guard but I like them. They're strange."
"Sorry if I overstepped. You don't have to if you don't want to."
"So you don't want to see them."
"That's not what I meant..."
Alba placed her index finger on his lips shut him up before her removed her blindfold with her other hand. Ezra was awestruck. She had pretty seductive hazel eyes that looked kind of distant but he could see them looking at him directly.
"Oh, so that's how you look like." she said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ezra asked as Alba chuckled.
"Get a room you two." yelled a voice from the training ground. It was Koko.
"You want to join, Koko." asked Alba.
"Hell no. I'm gonna sleep. Goodnight." he said waving at them as he left the training.
"Night, Koko." Ezra said as the couple proceeded their chatter.
The next two weeks that followed, all the growth fathers and mothers began collecting the kids that they felt could be part of the operation.
Ezra was training with Mother Graves and again getting his ass handed to him but this time he switched up tactics. One of the things that had fighting mother Graves very hard, was her ability to conceal her presence using her ravens as she changed locations to attack Ezra with a surprise attack.
This time he decided to use his instincts. He closed his eyes and used his other senses to track mother Graves' movements and this time he actually managed to overwhelm her landing one attack on her.
"There, I landed one hit." Ezra said joyfully.
"Finally, I was starting to get tired to whooping your ass every time. Where did you learn that?" asked Mother Graves.
Ezra looked at Alba who was waiting by the benches for her turn to spar. Graves saw this and chuckled.
"Alba, huh. Don't make her angry. You may die." she said.
Alba looked at Ezra and waved at him before Mother Graves called her over to spar. At the end of the day they were all exhausted. They all fell onto their backs from exhaustion until Delilah was picked up by Axel, her boyfriend.
Koko, Ezra and Alba decided to go together to islands town and get something to eat before Koko was called father Khan leaving the two together on what looked like a date.
"Just realized that this looks like a date." Ezra said jokingly.
"Well it can be." Alba said, her voice sounding a little serious.
"But Koko's paying." Ezra said again jokingly.
"Definitely." Alba said before the two broke out into laughter then chatter.
They soon left the restaurant and Ezra ended up paying for all of their meals. A decision that hurt him from deep inside but he never showed it.
As the two were walking back to the school, they were approached by mother Graves.
"Out on a date. Good for you." she said before knocking the two out.
On the other hand, Nova and Eki were from their sparring session with each other when Picky approached them.
"Good work today, you two." she said.
"Appreciate it."
"Thanks."
"It's all good. I know that the two of you have been working hard and I'm happy about that. Why are the two of you working so hard though?" she asked.
"It sounds like you don't want us to work hard, mother Pinky." said Eki.
"It's not that. Listen, I know that the two of you are Elder Gods."
Eki was shocked but Nova wasn't considering that he knew he was just that he was too proud to hide his power.
"You're mistaken, mother Pinky. We both aren't." said Eki trying to defend himself.
"Don't try to hide it, Eki. She knows that you have the Chimera." Nova said.
"Nova, I don't know what you're talking about."
"It's very simple because of how restrictive you fight." Pinky said.
Eki was shocked beyond words. He looked at the two and clenched his fists.
"So what's going to happen to me?" he asked.
"Nothing. As a matter of fact I would like you to join the operation. I've trained two like you. They are seniors. You'll meet them with time and I have a dream that involves the Elder Gods so I need you." she said with a smirk on her face that could only be interpreted as mischievous.
"Go to the colosseum, you're fellow students await."
Nova and Eki without a word when to the colosseum where they found other students waiting on them. They took their seats and Nova looked around for Ezra who was seated in front of him with Alba.
Ezra and Alba had been knocked out by mother Graves and brought to her office for a secret briefing.
"You want us to what?" Ezra asked in shock.
"I want you to find The Sword of Yahweh. You two are a part of operation ten of tens so you will be tasked with finding Eden but that's useless if you don't have Yahweh first. So I want you to find it."
Ezra and Alba agreed but they were still shocked by the number of students that had been called for the mission.
"Greetings, I'm King Amira Jelani of the Southern Empire. You are all here to take part in a grand mission."
"This is Operation Ten of Tens and the a hundred of you have been chosen to Journey to Eden."