Alkalians (11 page)

Before he can lift his
face up from the table, his head is pressed down hard against it by
another hand, as a new woman, this one in a white uniform with blue
stripes on the vest’s sides, growls into his ear in an icy voice,
“Last I recall, it’s not a piece of trash’s job to educate the next
generation around here. That’s
my
job. You got that, you disgusting
worm!?”

“
Gah, yeah, I got
it!”

“
Good.” Yanking him back
up by his hair, the woman trips him over backwards, having him hit
the floor hard, before a swift kick to his ribs sends him rolling
away. “Now get your filth out of here!” Stumbling to his feet, Ryan
hastily bumps his way past the other students and out of the
cafeteria, the woman’s enraged expression following him.

Once he is gone, she sighs out a deep
breath, brushes some of her blue hair away from her face, and turns
back to Matt, her expression kind as she says, “Sorry about that,
and pay that creep no mind. He’s all talk, and not worth much in
anything else. If there’s anything you need proper guidance with
around here, my associates and I would be glad to help
you.”

“
Oh, uh, thank you.” Still
reeling with surprise from the turn of events, plus the woman’s
eyes truly being a chilling, pale blue, Matt manages to ask while
the other students return to their meals, some chatting about what
just happened and others acting like nothing happened, “So, um, are
you, Lyn Arcterus?”

“
Yes, that is me. And you
are?”

“
I’m, ah, Matt
Calamos.”

“
Matt Calamos. Calamos.
Would you happen to be related to a Romulus Calamos?”

“
Ah, yeah. He’s my father.
And Fenrir Arcterus is yours?”

Lyn’s icy blue eyes widen in joy as
she exclaims, “Yes! Wow, Matt, we meet at last!” For the umpteenth
surprise, she swiftly grabs Matt and hugs him, causing the other
women and students to share Matt’s startled expression. “Fire
Spirit be praised, it’s so good to finally meet the son of my
father’s good friend!”

“
Uh, it’s good to meet
you, too!” Once Lyn lets go of him, he tries to remain composed as
he says, “My father’s said good things about yours, as well. And
now, here I am meeting his daughter! Isn’t that great?”

“
Yes, it is! Oh, there is
so much we can talk about, so much we can learn about each other!”
As she realizes she’s still drawing attention from those around
them, she calms down a little. “Although, there will be plenty of
time for that, especially when my friends and I can help you out
with studies or whatever.” Gesturing to the table where her gang
sits, she asks, “Would you like to join us for lunch,
Matt?”

Feeling the eyes of all others boring
into him, Matt is sure he is about to have a nervous breakdown
before he replies, “No, that’s all right, I have my roommates to
eat with, over there. But, thank you for offering.”

“
You’re very welcome,
Matt.” Lyn glances to the other students, her cold stare turning
them back to their meals, and says back to him sweetly, “And
besides, right here probably isn’t the best place to get better
acquainted. I can see all of this may be a little overwhelming for
you, at the moment. How about, after class hours, you can come to
our reserved study hall?”

“
Um, yeah, I guess
that’s…Oh, no, wait, that won’t work today. I have detention with
Professor Kaloss.”

“
Aw, you’ve gotten in
trouble, already? That’s a bother. But, it won’t be a problem. You
could still come to our study. I have Kaloss for my next class, and
I can let him know you’ll be serving out ‘detention’ with me and my
girls.”

“
Re-really? You can do
that?”

“
Oh, yes! As long as
you’ll be doing what you would have done in his room, he won’t mind
if we take you in. And, I can assure you, our study hall will be a
much happier place to spend your sentence. Wouldn’t you
agree?”

“
Ah, yeah, that would be
great! I guess I’d like to come, then.”

“
Great! Hang on a sec.”
Reaching into a pocket of her vest, Lyn pulls out a small slip of
paper and hands it to Matt. “Here’s the room number of our study
hall, here in the building. You can come on over right after your
last class.”

“
Alright. Thank you,
Lyn.”

“
It’s a pleasure, Matt.
We’ll see you later, then!” After they exchange a hand shake with
her sweet smile beneath her ghostly eyes, Matt nods, retrieves his
lunch tray, and departs across the cafeteria for Sean and Rose.
When he sits down next to them, letting out a long sigh, Rose asks
him, “So, did things go well over there?”

“
Ah, I’m not so sure. I
still feel a bit flustered after all that happened so
fast.”

“
Well, Matt, let me tell
ya, you’re one lucky fellow, for now,” Sean says between bites of
his sandwich. “But don’t forget, you gotta be careful around them,
especially Lyn. She is a time bomb waiting to go off, with a short
fuse. If you do or say the slightest thing that upsets her, she
will chew you up and spit you back out before you can even think of
apologizing. Literally!”

“
Hmm, is that so, Sean,”
Rose says after sipping from a juice bottle. “And how would you
know her so well? Have you had first-hand experience?”

“
You know, I’m starting to
think you like me in misery, Rose.” After Rose shrugs at him, Sean
sighs before explaining, “Last year, I went ahead and hung around
Lyn and her gang, for the help with studying and such. But then,
only a month into the school year, an all-out war erupts between
her, Cain, and James, and I soon found myself getting caught in the
cross-fire. One moment I’d be chatting with the girls outside the
building, the next moment I’m running for my life while battle
morphs are clashing all around me! Eventually, I couldn’t take the
drama anymore, and I tried telling Lyn that I wasn’t so comfortable
hanging around with her crew anymore. The next thing I know, she
explodes in my face, cussing me out and calling me a spineless
coward, among other things, and tells me to get lost! And as if
that weren’t enough, later, when I was at the casino, she and her
girls…”

“
Whoa, wait, what?” Rose
interrupts him. “Casino? What casino?”

“
Ah, I’ll tell you,
no,
show
you both
more about that later, you’re gonna love the place! Anyway, at the
casino, they find me, drag me by my heels to the pit
arena…”

“
Pit arena?” Matt
asks.

“
WILL YOU LET ME FINISH!?
Anyways, they throw me into the pit arena, and it’s in there that
Lyn totally ravages me in our battle morphs, nearly tearing me to
pieces and such. The morale of the story, then, is don’t give a
girl with scary eyes and scarier tantrums a reason to hold a grudge
with you!”

“
Wow, that’s scary,” Matt
complies after gulping. Glancing at the table of women across the
cafeteria from them, he adds, “I don’t know if I would believe you,
after how nicely she treated me, if I hadn’t seen what she did to
that Ryan guy.” Looking back to Sean, he asks, “Did Lyn stay mad at
you after all that?”

“
Eh, well, no. Once the
gang war all cleared up, she, or more precisely one of her girls,
as I made sure to always avoid her after her outrage, came to me
and apologized for her loss of temper at me. And I just smiled and
nodded, wanting to say, ‘Don’t expect me to come back for your
help!’ All I can say is, Matt, be very,
very
careful with those girls. They
could make your first few months here at school pretty nice, or
they could do the exact opposite and make it a waking
nightmare!”

“
Uh, yeah, I’ll be
careful.” A moment passes with the three eating their meals before
he asks, “So, what did you two talk about while I was
gone?”

Rose clears her throat of the juice
she is drinking before replying, “Well, I was just telling Sean
about how Cynthia Volvaron is in my music class.”

“
She is?”

“
Yeah, and, I suppose Sean
wasn’t exaggerating about her looks. She really did have all the
guys in the room constantly gawking at her. She was also quite
aware of the hold she had on them. She would purposely move in, uh,
suggestive fashions, and speak in an alluring tone that made the
guys melt when she talked to them. I didn’t care much for it, of
course.”

“
Ah, I see. So, does
Cynthia play an instrument, then?”

“
Oh yeah, she does. She
plays the violin, and, from what I’ve heard so far, she’s very good
at it.”

“
Huh, that’s interesting.”
As they finish their meals, Matt looks to Sean and tells him, “By
the way, I probably won’t be joining you back in Kaloss’ for
detention. Lyn said she could get me moved to the study hall she
and her group uses.”

“
Oh, really? Hmm, I
suppose that’s good for you. Plus, that leaves him all alone with
me! Muahahaha!!” With a devilish grin still on his face, he gets up
from the table with his tray and says, “Okay, guys, see ya both
later in gym!”

“
Yeah, we’ll see you
soon,” Rose returns as she and Matt get up, and the three part ways
into the moving mass of students as they leave the
cafeteria.

***

Later that day in gym class, Matt,
Sean, and Rose, along with the rest of the freshmen class, emerge
from locker rooms off to a far side of the arena, all changed into
workout clothes like t-shirts, shorts, sweatpants, or athlete bras.
Matt is wearing a red tank top and loose, black shorts, Sean has on
a torn and ragged t-shirt and some ripped-up jeans, and Rose wears
a green training bra and matching, tight shorts, with her amulet
still hung around her neck. After Prof. Serpanz yells at them to
warm-up with three laps around the arena, all the freshmen take off
into steady jogs while Matt, Sean, and Rose bundle together to chat
as they run. Sean begins the conversation with, “So, how was
alchemy?”

“
Eh, it was okay,” Rose
says, “we just got to look at and feel different samples of
elements, which we tried to change into other elements, some of us
better than others.”

“
Heh, sounds like simple
stuff. How’d you guys do?”

“
Well, that’s the strange
thing. I did just fine, changing some copper into iron after a few
tries, but Matt…” She glances to him, who nods, and continues,
“When he tried changing the copper sample into silver, it instead
turned into a rare form of metal known as ‘aegis steel.’
”

“
Aegis steel? What’s that
supposed to mean?”

Matt replies, “Well, after the half
hour or so of him trying to figure out what happened, how it
happened, and making me try to change some other metals a few
times, each time producing the same stuff, Prof. Loske told us how
volcarnothium, better known as aegis steel, is perhaps the toughest
metal ever found and used by Alkalians. Pure veins of it are
extremely rare, and although one could just transmute some other
substance into it if they knew how, aegis steel, like other rare
minerals such as gold and diamond, are illegal to transmute except
through specialized miners from Minari or Riaquen.”

“
Huh, and you made a bunch
of it without even knowing what you were doing? Now that’s just
weird.”

“
Hah, you know what else
was weird?” Rose remarks. “During our experiments, James Iroshen
would keep coming over and checking on me, to see if I was doing
alright and if I needed help, and every time I would assure him I
was fine before he went off again. I suppose you were right about
one thing, Sean. James may have taken an interest to me
already.”

“
Ah hah, you see? I did
warn you!” They continue jogging the rest of the laps with the
other freshmen before resuming conservation as they make their way
to the center of the arena, where there are some intermediate
students again standing near Prof. Serpanz. Seeing them, Matt asks,
“So, what’s going on today? Didn’t we already do that inauguration
thing yesterday?”

“
Ah, they’re just here to
give us visual examples,” Sean assures him and Rose. As they sit
down on the floor with the other freshmen, he adds, “The professor
shall explain.”

Once all the freshmen gathered before
her on the floor, Serpanz begins a lecture, her tone serious and
resolute as she paces back-and-forth before them like a drilling
instructor. “Today, I will enlighten you all upon the basic
techniques and abilities of battle morphs with some demonstrations
from the volunteers behind me. It is important to know these
things, as not only are they common abilities for many Alkalians,
but you will also be able to recognize the common kinds of battle
morphs and know what they are capable of, which is an important
factor in any battle. Now, before we begin, are there any
questions?” Waiting for any hands to fly up, she sees one that does
and calls on it with a bit of distaste. “Yes, Sean?”

Granted permission to speak, Sean
asks, “Okay, so, is there really any point for me to sit and listen
to this whole presentation, when I’ve already sat through it last
year? And, let’s say there are people here who already have a
concept of the basics, like Matt and Rose. Do they have to listen
to this, too?”