Fandom [Private] Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine - New World

[Late]

Xavier
​

His class ended some time ago but Xavier stayed a bit longer at the school to look for a friend. He wasn't sure where she went off to since they agreed to meet up at her last class of the day. The snack he had before was doing some good but Xavier would love to leave with his friend so they can have a proper supper together. Or maybe his caretaker will be home early to cook up a mean dinner. Xavier always believe his caretaker was the best when it involves with cooking, but everything else could be improved.

Just the thought of cooking and dinner was enough to make Xavier's mouth watered up and he shook his head with a loud sigh. Where did Karen go?

Xavier did another round but once he passed by the spectating room, he took a couple steps back. After thinking about his options, he figured Karen will probably message him some time today. Maybe she got hold up on something. Probably causing trouble since Xavier knows she likes to pick on others for various of reasons. Not like Karen doesn't do that to him, he wasn't sure how many times she teasingly pinched his stomach, but that was usually all she did. It mostly made Xavier feel irriated at her rather than embarrassment.

Besides that, he considers Karen a good friend. Back before, he was being picked on by a tougher crowd. That's when Karen came to the picture. No, not as a savior, the opposite really. Xavier couldn't really bring himself to fight back so instead, he would try to be friends with his enemies. Kill them with kindness sort of deal. It took a bit but Karen eventually turn against her old friends and became the top dog of the group. Xavier was left alone from their bullying by then. He figures that would be it but Karen was starting to hang out with him in every chance she got. Often, she would even buy him lunch and the two always come up with ridiculous stories to keep them entertained. That's when their friendship was born. It takes a long while for Karen to warm up to people, reason why she doesn't have a lot of friends, but Xavier hoped to see another hidden layer of her anytime soon. Just recently, he learns that Karen loves cute things.

"Oh, Xavier, I was just about to look for you."

Xavier straighten up when he heard his name and was surprised to see Karen stepping out of the spectator room. If possible, Karen could enter in a beauty pageant and win if she didn't always have a resting bitch face. But Xavier can tell how she was feeling and there was a kind gleam in her eyes.

"I been looking for you for the past hour!" Xavier sighed, resting his hands on his waist.

"Settle down, mom, I just got dragged in here by my professor. He wants me to study some students doing a simulation. The good thing is that he left and I am not sure when he is coming back. Sooo!"

Karen grabbed Xavier's hand to pull him in the spectator's room, making him blush from the contact since she rarely grab him by his hands. Karen drag him over to a couple of seats and immediately, Xavier could tell that Phantom was part of the simulation.

"Oh, look at that," Xavier murmured, forgetting about Karen grabbing his hand moment. He took a seat as Karen was sitting next to him. "How is it so far?"

Karen's face break into a slight smile. "A bit of a rocky start but eh, suckers should be fine." Karen tossed Xavier a bag of popcorn. "Make sure you don't get crumbs everywhere. Don't want the teachers throw a hissy fit...huh." Xavier didn't hear Karen on time as he was already stuffing himself down. With a mouth full of popcorn, he tried to be a bit more careful but Karen was already laughing. "Slow it down next time, will you? Not like the popcorn is going anywhere!" Xavier couldn't really come up with an excuse and was downright embarrassed. "Geez, lunatic," she scoffed before picking a popcorn off his chest and throwing it in her mouth.

 

[Fume]

"I'm fine for now Phantom, no need to be so worried. I've had worse thrown at me. And I've already used my belt to stop the bleeding, though some bandages would be nice to really put me at ease. It was a clean shot at least, so nothing TOO major." He patted her head as he moved with a bit more effort to not show that he was limping, a tough guy act that was really sinking it. "See? Plus I'm just waiting for Pixie to have enough juice to heal me up. After that, the wound will close up."

He heard his party leader speak and nodded to him.

"Alright you guys, we're making our way East! Now I don't care how tired you are or how scared you are, just follow the instructions that we give and we can guarantee your safety! At the end of the day, your safety is priority number one! We'll take this detour, get what the boss found in the GPS and then move to the safe zone! Trust us, this is the best of a bad situation right now!" He shouted at them and they seemed to understand him.

"Alright boss, I got them to listen. Lead the way, leader."

MementoDei Phant0m

 

[MementoDei]

Lento​

He nodded at Dust and the group walked where the loot was. The first thing he picked up on the radar were Hua Po lairs on the last floors of the buildings. Lento took a good look with his binoculars to memorize exactly how to tell them apart from harpy lairs. They were only made of broken glass and were eerily silent. There were no feathers, nor faraway cries. From what he knew, they were the last kind of demons they wished to anger because they could use Agi against them. A new alert popped on the map of his COMP: there was an unforeseen threat approaching. He stopped and made a hand sign for Dust, Phantom and the Civilians to do the same. Only two meters separated them from that threat. Whatever demon it was, it surely knew how to walk silently among the ruins of the skyscrapers. Pixies? No, they left a trail of light where they flew. Not to mention their wings also made a sound. Kodamas were too dumb to act silently.

"Sora!" a female cried.

Lento turned around to see that one of the children had fallen unconscious in her mother's arms. The father was as scared as her, shaking the kid's shoulder and calling his name. As the only medic around, he got closer and pinched the child's arm, waking him up. Then, the mother fell asleep. And so did the father. Without thinking it too much, Lento fired a warning shot to his right. big green eyes peered at him from the darkness of an abandoned car and, in a blink of an eye, a Cu Sith leaped at him. He had no time to fire when its claws cleaved wounds on his shoulders. He hit the monster in the gut, right below its ribs to hit its liver. The beast growled and left him alone for just enough time for him to get his handgun, undo the safety and carve a new eyehole right in-between the Cu Sith's eyes with two bullets. The demon dog's eyes blacked out and it began to fall over him, but his Kodama soon sent it flying away with its overgrown punch. However, this was no time to relax. A circle of seven Cu Sith's were getting closer to them, their eyes fixed on the civilians. Lento began to feel drowsy and before he fell, he took his assault rifle back, aiming straight for the demon who was the closest to the children. He saw his bullet hit, the demon fall and the others leap forward.

Phantom and Dustin were...falling asleep as well.

"Mo...chi..."

He did not know for how long he fell asleep, but he woke up to the pain of a punch to the shoulder. It was his Kodama. He got back on his feet and turned around to see three Cu Siths ready to decapitate his teammates. He fired a short burst of bullets, but his adrenaline was still not enough to aim properly. The monsters turned towards him and he ordered his demon to swipe them. Its gigantic arm got one, making it a pile of broken bones and gore grossly covered in a dog's skin as it crashed over a wall. The other one leaped above him and he shot it once, straight through the head. He thought of going for his team, but left that task to his demon, taking out a syringe of adrenaline from his medical kit and injecting himself with it through the leg. It hurt, but the rush soon kicked in. Other Cu Sith's were dragging children and women away, some of the men had already been torn apart. Lento fired and got one, then two. His weapon clicked. Out of bullets.

Although it was the most dangerous decision, Lento followed the trail of the other demons and, once he was sure he could get him with his handgun, he shot them both dead. If he had counted correctly, he had only three bullets left. They were only ten meters away from the Loot Area. If they were lucky, they would not be any more demons until they got to the Loot Area. If not, they would be as good as failures. This attack had cost them perhaps a quarter of their civilians. But those the demons took away, they had to be alive. He saw a woman moving and he rushed towards her. She had a bad cut on her leg. Lento took out gauze from his medical kit to stop the bleeding, but it was flowing too much. It had probably cut her femoral artery. With a frown, he watched her weakly accept she did not have more than a few seconds to live.

"Are the others alive?" Lento asked.

The woman weakly shook her head, coughed and weakly pointed to one of the buildings to her left, "Some...hid."

Lento looked at his COMP to scan the building. There were no demons in that area and it was picking up heat signatures. They were likely to be human, based on their silhouettes. By the time he looked at the woman again, all life had left her. And, just like the simulated corpses of the six others the demons had taken, she vanished. From now on, they had less than twenty percent of their civilians left alive. Lento gave a strong punch to the ground before rushing in to get the four remaining civilians. He tended to their injuries the best he could, leaving just enough gauze to bandage the vicious scratches the Cu Sith had left. By the time he was done, Dustin was calling for him outside.

"The survivors are here, Summersdale," he hollered back.

The man with his pixie peeked through the hole in the wall which was the only entrance and exit and asked if everything was ok.

"We lost 80 percent of survivors. I...got careless. Cu Siths always attack in groups and have Dormina..."

"It's alright, leader. If we're still here, it means we still have a shot at this test. Those wounds on your shoulders are nasty though. Want a Dia?"

Lento looked at his shoulders. The gauze was saturated with blood already. They were clearly deeper than what he had expected. He accepted the weak healing spell and felt that he was no longer bleeding out. It was a whole different matter for the pain, but that would be manageable when they got to the Loot Area. There, they would have more than enough medical stuff to tend better to their and the civilians' wounds. And, most importantly, they would have bullets for days. If they were lucky, perhaps a grenade or two. The two recruits walked back towards Phantom, followed by the remaining civilians, who were now too afraid to even speak. They simply silently followed them, looking nervously at everything around them. Some cried silently, others simply had empty eyes. That would not be good for his grade. But he'd have to deal with it, one way or another. It was his mistake for not recognizing Dormina fast enough. Had he shot at the car before getting close to the kid who was first affected, their battle would have gone differently. They would have perhaps separated the demons by dividing the civilians and use them as Dormina bait. Then, they would have picked up the demons one by one. It was too late now. And he hated himself for it.

The rest of the way to the Loot Area was silent, only encountering a group of five pixies Dust and he dealt with. Phantom had, unfortunately, run out of ammo. And to be fair, Lento was now completely useless in combat now. He saw the tent with all the loot and rushed towards it, taking ammo for himself and Phantom. He passed the bullets to Phantom and squinted at Dustin. His leg was swelling and the belt he had tied to his calf was making the pressure on the wound worse. If he did not treat it properly, it could lead to a bad infection. Lento invited the man in so he could lay down on a metal table at the end of the room. Dustin was, of course, very reluctant.

"Gunshot wounds are not a joke, they can get infected really fast. Come so I can take the bullet out and patch you up."

"Oh, don't worry. I already took care of it just ok."

"Your leg is swelling. And the belt is not even stopping the bleeding anymore."

Dustin looked down and moved his leg, "Yeah, but I can still move it just fine. And it's not bleeding as much as it did before. No need to worry, really."

"You'll have less chances of surviving another attack if I leave it as it is. I went to the medical academy for half of my years here. I know how to treat it. There's local anesthesia here, antibiotics, the whole thing I need for a minor surgery. It won't take long."

After a long minute of silence, Dustin finally accepted and laid down on the table. Lento cut the belt he had put over it and cut the pants to see clearly the wounded area. First, he took out a gauze and started to clean the area around it, taking some care to avoid as much as possible the wound. After he took enough anesthesia to fill an eighth of an empty syringe, he applied it to Dustin's leg in one swift shot. He asked him if he was still in pain and when he confirmed that the anesthesia had worked, Lento continued. The swelling was probably because of the infection. Hopefully, it was nothing antibiotics could not fix. He took out a pair of surgical pliers and a lantern. With the lantern, he helped himself to see where the bullet was so he could take it out. It took him some careful digging, but he retrieved the bullet and took it slowly out. Now, he had to use stitches and cauterize the wound before bandaging it. It took him a little over ten minutes before he was all done. Of course, this was only possible in the simulation as it shortened any non-combat related complex task to a third of its normal duration. Dustin sat down again and Lento stopped him as he measured a shot of antibiotics.

"Another one?"

"Yup. Antibiotics this time around. Just to be sure you won't get a fever."

Dustin rolled up his sleeve and Lento gave him that last shot before telling him he could go and see if there were better weapons nearby. Dustin was not interested and just muttered a 'thank you' before walking away, meeting again with Phantom.

'I might be the so-called leader,' Lento thought as he cleaned up the table, the equipment he had used and threw away the used syringes, 'But nothing really changes. Heh, why was I expecting anything from these people? Everyone's the same.'

Once everyone seemed to have everything to keep going, Lento noticed they were closer to the finish line than what he remembered. They took the safest route, as far away as possible from the harpy nests, but those demons still attacked them. They were only four this time around. With a few well-placed bullets from both him and Phantom, they had their path clear again. And soon, their path itself became very strange. All buildings were nothing but broken foundations and parts of the road were shining with ice. No matter how one looked at it, it was strange. Lento ordered them to look around for anything, but the first thing he heard was the continuous beep of his COMP. The one reserved for imminent threats. Then, an explosion roared behind him, its hot aftershock sent him to the ground. His ears rang as he got slowly up to see Pyro Jack and Jack Frost approach. If they lost their civilians, their mission would be over. He hollered for hi Kodama to take them away and soon found his hands stuck to his weapon, frozen by Jack Frost's Bufu.

'Shit!'

He was a sitting duck, unable to even move around properly and evade Pyro Jack's Agi. But somehow, he managed to barely dodge it. Dustin had used his Agi against Jack Frost and Phantom was doing her best to dig new holes into Pyro Jack. This was different from what the other teams before them had faced. They did not have to deal with Caith Siths, nor two demons on the level of Pyro Jack and Jack frost simultaneously. Although he knew it was a dumb move, Lento ran towards a sharp rock, dense enough to break the ice over his hands and swung his hands over it. After three hits, the ice prison shattered and some of the shards cut his hands. They were already red, burning from the frostbite. But Lento could still feel them and move them. That was enough. He took aim and shot Pyro Jack, interrupting its Agilao. The rounds he had taken were stronger than what he had. A short burst had almost taken the demon's left hand right off. Still, Dustin did no longer have the time to cast Agi anymore. His pixie was keeping them going, but even her magic was running out. As for his Kodama, it had to protect the civilians no matter what. He had left it in its gigantic form to do just that. Jack Frost was charging Bufula, Pyro Jack was about to throw Agilao. There was no way to escape unless they somehow outran a motorcycle.

Lento, however, had picked up an Agilao stone from the Loot Area.

"Run!" he screamed to Phantom and Dustin, undoing the safety pin of the grenade. Their eyes widened as they saw him throw the activated stone in the middle of the two demons. The way it shone with the sun and the remaining flames of Agi made the two demons stop for a second. It exploded. Lento felt the shock send him flying straight to a wall. He felt his bones crack, perhaps his spine as the heatwave burned his eyes away. He did not check what kind of bomb it was. It was powerful enough to take both demons out, sure, but it did not leave them enough time to take proper cover. The simulation ended and he was back on the big, empty training area with his team. Lento took a deep breath.

"We probably failed. My bad, guys."

Fume Phant0m

****
Akemi
​

She watched closely when Lento Iten took the Agilao stone. That weapon was exactly the key to defeat both boss demons in one strike, but he had to carefully plan it or else he and his team would be caught on the explosion range as well.

"Is Lento Iten charismatic?"

"He has his moments," Kei Nagano answered, "but he's not one to trust or inspire trust to most people. I respect his father, but most people only saw him as a foreigner. And that carried on to Lento. For most people, he's only a hāfu."

Akemi nodded as she watched the group beat up the harpies, "I see. Well, if he blows his team up, he might still have a chance to pass..."

Still, it was odd for someone like him to have been selected by Tokugawa. The kid was reckless, even for a medic. He should have let the kid and his family fall to Dormina and look at his COMP instead of rushing in to check on them. That was the first big mistake. The system would automatically compensate it by healing his Dustin Summersdale's wound, but that was no act of kindness. The system not only created realistic simulations but also gave them the emotions and vital signs of the students. Lento was angry when he could not save the woman's life, glad when he had found the survivors, but even that...it all had some kind of selfish interest. When he had helped Dustin, he was not affected by many emotions. Maybe that was the mystery to his natural allegiance to Chaos. If he had only learnt scorn from others, it was not impossible that was the only thing he could, deep down, reciprocate. In the end, only he mattered.

And that, Akemi thought, was exactly what Tokugawa sought. Because there was no better person to manipulate than one who would do anything for its apparent self-interest. To always be on the top.

She widened her eyes when Lento left his demon with the civilians and rushed in with an active magic stone to take down the two demons. His team survived, with fractures, yes, but they were alive. The Kodama had protected them along with the civilians. Lento, however, had received the explosion in its full blast.

That was not self-interest. It could not be. Lento Iten was not the perfect puppet Tokugawa was looking for. Not yet.

There was hope that he would walk down a different path. But she could not guide him too much. Or else, she'd vanish for good.

"Stop the simulation," she ordered.

"The other two are only two meters away from the finish line, ma'am. They still have four civilians."

"It's a team exercise, Nagano. Have you let other teams continue once one of them died?"

Nagano looked down, "No ma'am. I'll stop the simulation right away. They will receive a failing grade."

"No, they won't. Their simulation was the hardest one. One the others won't have to face. Make them barely pass. 60 percent for team 6."

 

[Fume]

When the bright explosion occurred, the aftershock pushed him back, for a moment he didn't felt gravity before it came tumbling down on him as he fell on his back. Despite the blast coming, he had his eyes open the whole time. When he was feeling the burn, when he saw the world sink, and when he saw the simulation fade away and saw the roof of the academy staring back at him. He couldn't bring himself to breathe for a few seconds, hearing his leader speak that they probably failed.

When he did allow himself to breathe, it was like a sudden gasp as he turned around from his lying position with his hands. He cautiously ran his left arm on his neck, fearful that the shock was enough to shatter the vial inside. He was trembling for a moment before he punched the floor with all the remaining strength he had as he screamed in rage.

"FUCK!!!" He didn't care that they lost, he didn't care that he might've probably been wounded to the point of not moving. But he did cared about being alive and when the thought of him dying to something as simple as falling on his neck, it sent him a bit over the edge. He couldn't stay there, not when he was trying to keep himself from lashing onto anyone around him. He stood up with blood dropping from his hurt knuckle, a scowl etched on his face. He wanted to walk to outside, he wanted to go to the bathroom and wash away the sweat and fear away from him, and yet he still had to stay here because class wasn't over yet and if he wasn't like a normal student here, then they'd basically kill him.

He just walked towards a nearby wall, ignoring the stares and mumbles and slumped down. If there was anything he wanted right now, it was to be alone, otherwise someone was going to get a black eye for sure.

 

[Late]

Xavier
​

At the explosion, both Xavier and Karen flinched in reaction. It was sudden for sure, Xavier didn't think it would end off like that. Karen, on the other hand, was chuckling to herself as the simulation ended. He glances over at her, seeing how she was playing around with her pen before writing down a quick note in her book. He briefly checked the time, crumbling with the empty popcorn bag as he still felt hungry. Hell, even thirsty. He began to wonder if Karen had any sort of spare water bottle. Xavier tends to finish his own and throw away the empty bottle without a second thought.

"Well, I didn't think we would witness a bomber man in today's simulation, and my professor wants me to learn from this? Fine by me, I'll blow up my teammates too while I'm at it," Karen chuckled. She starts to pack up her belongings as Xavier hummed in amusement but he stops as he thinks about her words a little longer.

"Y-you don't mean that, right?" Xavier questioned her, getting up from his seat.

Karen looks over at him, grinning slightly but it went away immediately. "Not if you're with me, dummy," she sighed. "Plus, you're one indecisive glutton. One day, you wanted to be an engineer and then the next day, you want to be a demon buster."

"It's hard for me to know what I want to do exactly...even Eosforos hasn't been helping me much. That or he just has too many things in mind to help me out," he grumbled. "Can't I just balance both of them out?"

"Sure, if you want to have a lot on your plate," Karen snickered, forcing Xavier to roll his eyes at her. She already started to walk away.

"Wait, your professor?"

"Geez, I'm not waiting for him to come back just to dismiss me. Come on, aren't ya hungry?"

Karen beckons Xavier to follow and reluctantly, Xavier exits the room with him to the hallway. "Yeah, I am. You have no idea how empty I feel," he sighed, patting his stomach. "I could eat a horse."

"Don't worry, big guy. We'll get you something to chew on."

 

[Phant0m]

Phantom quickly sat up once the simulation was over, rubbing her arms as a phantom tingle of the simulated heat from the bomb tingled over her skin as her body tried to catch up to her brain. She looked around, jumping when Dust yelled before storming off.

She slowly got up and then she looked at their grade for the simulation. "Wow! That's the best grade I received so far! We barely passed!" She cheered with a large grin, doing a small jig to contain her excitement before she looked to Lento. "Do you even know how to use a bomb?" She asked, "Lento, just stick to guns."

Phantom then went to find Dust, and the instinct to leave him alone started to stir in her gut. She swallowed down the instinct and she started to make her way to him. "Hey," she asked in a gentle voice once she got closer, "You ok? Need anything?"

MementoDei Fume

 

[MementoDei]

Lento​

He was surprised by his team's reaction to the results. Dustin was understandably pissed and frustrated and he hoped they would accept his apology. Even by his own standards, what he had done was incredibly stupid. He could have done better. No, he should have done better. Just as he was about to apologize to Phantom, she was cheering about the best grade she had ever received. He raised an eyebrow at her extreme reaction, thinking about asking how she was even admitted if she had never passed any other test in her life. It made him wonder how rich her...well, technically his family would have to be. He had never heard of any Ayelet living in Home 3, so he supposed...Phantom's family had to be very rich. Should he risk calling her he? It was better not to give a thought about it.

"Do you even know how to use a bomb?" Phantom asked.

"That was not even a-"

"Lento, just stick to guns."

And just like that Phantom turned her back to go for Dustin. With a heavy sigh, Lento got out of the simulation room and sat as far as he could from the crowd, who was staring at him more than usual. They were all whispering his nicknames more than usual. He had shown weakness where he should not have. If it came down to it, he would come and spar directly anyone who came looking for it. Everyone but the teachers knew that he was not afraid to use sparring as payback for name-calling. The instructors saw that as zeal, but they were blind to the bullying and so blind to his way of fighting back. It had made the worst names stop, as well as the little pranks. Lento walked all the way to the back, three seats to Mikako Hoshida's seat. The quiet girl glanced at him with her copper gaze, looked back at her group of friends and, surprisingly, got up.

And she walked towards him.

"May I sit next to you, Lento-kun?"

Lento glanced at her, she had her arms crossed and her gaze was strong and defiant as if she knew he had no power to refuse her request. And, truthfully, Lento knew better than to be an ass to one of the popular girls. Mikako was a fine example of true Japanese beauty and she had the smarts to talk about lots of things. They had known each other before the DB school, actually. When he had begun studying to become a medic, Mikako was one of the few friends he had. The other two were upperclassmen who, by now, already graduated. But Mikako had changed after she transferred with him. She would not go out of her way to participate in the bullying, but she would not do anything to change his situation either. But besides that, Lento did not know just how much she had changed.

"Sure, Mikako," he muttered.

She raised an eyebrow at him and gave him a soft hit with her elbow, "Mikako-san."

They did not look at each other once, talking as they stared straight into the screens of the following team, "Ok, so we're back to formalities now. Good to know, Hoshida-san."

"God, you can call me by my name, Lento. Just...keep the san. Or else people will get the wrong idea."

"Oh right, you have a princess reputation to maintain now. Sorry."

She had a heavy sigh and looked at him, "Jeez, you've grown so bitter, Lento. I'm sorry, you know? For doing nothing after all you did for me."

Although Lento could only see her from the corner of his eye, he could tell that she had lowered her voice to say what was really in her mind just now. She had always done that around him. He could not deny that, even before, their friendship had not always been met with good eyes. But that was why he had begun training, so those bitches would not even think of cutting Mikako's hair ever again. He closed his eyes for an instant, taking back a brief remembrance of the two years before this one and looked back at her.

"I think I told you I don't need that. I can deal with the bastards on my own. They've even stopped for a while."

Unlike the past, however, Mikako was not even comforted by those words anymore. A long silence set between them, and, because neither of them could stand to see the hurt in the other's gaze, they turned their attention back to the ongoing simulation.

"Say, Mikako," he began, "how are they going to hold this mistake against me?"

"People were not talking about you in that way, Lento. They were scared by the intense difficulty you had and how incompetent your team was. Especially the other shooter. I think, all things considered, you did better than what they would ever hope to do given your circumstances."

The words brought a brief smirk to his lips. She was still that hopeless optimistic girl, deep down. Some were perhaps impressed, but a lot of them would only retain the final mistake of his simulation. That was just how things worked. But maybe he could hope part of the past would come back.

"Mikako," Lento turned around to look at her, "Uhm..."

"yes?"

The words on his mouth froze before he could even say them. It would be strange for a princess to fall out of grace because of his selfishness.

"Nevermind. We're both incredibly busy from now on."

"I'm free on Sunday," she insisted, her eyes almost shining with his hidden enthusiasm.

"I...don't think that I'll be. I gotta help my mother at the clinic."

She gave him a small smile before turning away. Only she would get his implicit agreement to an afternoon date after his shift.

"Alright, Lento."

 

[Fume]

I took him nearly every fiber in his mind to not hit Phantom by reflex, it was painful the amount of self restraint he was enforcing right now. But not looking at her was helping.

"I am seeing three different shades of red, and thinking of ways to make then next sodding bastard black and white. Leave." He said it like a request, but it sounded like an order, not to mention that his body was trembling out of his rage alone.

"Dustin, please calm down! She's just trying to help." Lilly attempted to talk to him through his COMP, but he didn't listen.

"I need time. Give me that, or I'll start regretting my actions after I blow up."

He was seeing red, he was not okay. He was desperately trying to calm down, hand on the back of his neck with a look that just seemed deranged, even though it was really fear, masked into rage to fool everyone.

"I think you should leave for now... He might really hit you." His Pixie was afraid of seeing him like that, but knew when to stay on the back. Like when she was with the horde of her brethren.

Phant0m MementoDei

 

[Phant0m]

Phantom took a step back and she raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. She opened her mouth but Nox gave a bit of a cautionary whistle, which had her close her mouth and nod. "I'll...give you space. Take care, ok?" She finally said and she slowly walked away before finding a spot for herself to watch the other simulations go down, quickly making herself comfortable as she scowled with the male uniform on her clinging to her at the wrong angles enough to have her adjust her position every so often.

Fume MementoDei

 

[Heavengiver]

Kei felt the fallout of the simulation the next day. He really didn't want to, considering how he wasn't even in Lento's group. And yet, the air was heavy, anticipation and anxiousness feeding an imaginary ticking time bomb. What the hell did he do to deserve having to sit through this atmosphere?

He knew the answer to that question. Being aloof made him more aware of everyone else's aura or mood. It's how he was able to navigate himself around school without drawing attention to himself. He avoided any area that felt like a low-pressure system, hung around places that had air untouched by people's emotions. That was how he normally operated.

Except, after getting Kuru, that sense seemed to have amplified. And now, he wanted to escape to the roof and get some fresh air.

Too bad he couldn't. Tomoko and Tsukasa were staring at him intensely, whispering among themselves. After their simulation run yesterday, he overheard their teacher asking them to help him "show more progress." Apparently, they were impressed with his uncharacteristically active performance.

Kei didn't bother to confront them on the matter. What happened yesterday was a one-time thing. If they ask him a second time, no matter how much they begged, he won't give a damn. Because he knew that they really didn't care about helping him. All they wanted was to earn brownie points from their teacher. Still, with class about to start, if he left now, they'll just bug him, or even worse, follow him.

"Ugh, stop thinking. You're stinking up the place with your thoughts."

Kei smirked and laid his head on the table. Kuru was right. He might as well sleep through announcements.

Fume MementoDei Phant0m Late

 

[Fume]

Dustin Summersdale
​

After having a day to at least calm down, enough for rational thinking, the initiation from yesterday's trial was a complete and utter disappointment. Dustin had reviewed what he could remember through the simulation during the night, and each mistake being remembered like fine wine.

So many useless movements, terrible decisions, and even bad teamwork between the three of them. More specifically, from his part. He was the vanguard, but the only thing he did was attack and get hit unnecessarily. Too many hits, not enough protection, not enough training with the blade.

"Guess that's what you get for being an amateur at best, and a novice at worse with a god damn sword. Fuckin' hell, that was so dumb from my part..." He mumbled to himself while writing on his notebook the mistakes that he had made. He wasn't a blade master or had military training, he was just a smuck with some muscle and fire magic.

Then came the teamwork parts. Granted nobody talked about what they were good, especially him since he kept his fire magic hush-hush, because he wanted to use it as a trump card, lot of good did that...

Point is, they were badly coordinated, only Lento looked like he had a hand on the situation and tried to keep the team united. In terms of firepower, he was average while those two had the range and enough skills to back up their talk, even healing with first aid from his boss. If that wasn't a strike at ones ego, then he didn't knew anymore.

He guessed that the streets influenced him a bit too much, not knowing what really is out there and how strong the demons can actually be. The memories of the outside were blurry, but they certainly were back with a wake-up call. He thought he could walk over the test and still feel like a big man, he thought wrong, he acted arrogantly.

Then came the aftershock of the explosion. To them, he overreacted at the simulation, but to him it was such a terrifying moment. He thought the vial in his neck broke as he feel down on his back hard, as the vibration hit his head. He hid it pretty well with anger, but when night came he basically didn't sleep without at least a hand on his nape at all times.

He didn't bothered talking with no one after the test, nor did he bother to speak with anyone when he arrived at the class. If what Lento said after the simulation was true, then the three of them failed right there and then. He'd be lobbed out of the academy like a sack of potatoes and either killed, or imprisoned for the rest of his life and Lilly would die, just like that.

"Class is about to start, where the fuck is Phantom?" He whispered to himself, wondering where the female gunslinger was.

MementoDei Phant0m

 

[MementoDei]

Lento​

Watching the rest of the teams did little to cheer him up. Yes, his test had clearly been tougher, but that didn't erase the fact he had failed the expectations his teacher put on him. He supposed Mikako was somewhat pitying him, as she kept him company throughout the rest of the class. When the day was over, he noticed her still packing her things, glancing sometimes at him.

"What's the matter, Mikako-san?"

"I was just thinking we could catch up a bit."

"Is today Sunday afternoon?"

The raven-haired girl rolled her eyes, "No, but if we're going to pass an afternoon together, the least we could do today is break the ice."

Lento sighed, taking his backpack with him as he walked out of the classroom. Mikako followed him to stay next to him.

"Breaking the ice, huh?"

"Yes."

"I'm only baffled you decided to talk to me after all this time. Besides that, there's not much ice to break. We've known each other for what, four years now?"

Mikako looked down, combing strands of her hair behind her ears, "Yeah, about four years. And it took me one to realize most people here aren't exactly the kind of friends I want to have all the time around."

Lento looked at her, "Are they bullying you again?"

The raven-haired girl shook her head, "Not at all. It's just that getting tons of friends when people finally found out about my family's position... I was super happy about it at first, but, you know, I wonder if they don't have other motives to be suddenly all nice to the shy, ugly, nerdy girl."

Lento nodded, letting some much needed silence float between them. He had never thought about it that way. Mikako had simply gained so many friends so fast, he was pushed away from her before he could even wonder why all those friends appeared in the first place. He figured it was a good thing for her. She even left her glasses for contact lenses and let her silky hair float free, as it should always have. Mikako had never been ugly. The words she had last said, however, still floated in his mind. He had nodded to that. He had agreed to call her "shy, ugly and nerdy".

A glance at Mikako already worried him. She had kept her head down, even forcing herself to look away from him.

It was time for damage control.

"You're not ugly, Mikako."

The girl turned around, chuckling "It's alright, Lento. If there's one silver lining about fake friends is that I learnt to be more confident in myself."

She then dramatically swung her hair, "I know I am the peak of all beauty. All of my friends would say so."

Lento shook his head with a smile, "Those friends aren't liars. That's good."

Mikako suddenly stopped, her face growing redder by the second, "Eh? W-what? I was just joking around, you know?"

"Ah, there is the Mikako I know," he said as he continued his way, waving his hand at her as he walked off to his home, "still as shy as ever."

By the time he made it home, he was already running late to prepare dinner for himself and his mother. However, Mochi was knocking furiously on the screen of his COMP, demanding to be let out. Lento thought he had the patience to ignore his demon, but he was proven wrong as soon as he had set most of the preparations. With a heavy sigh, the young man let the Kodama out.

"What's the deal?"

"The deal?" the spirit spun around him, "there's no such thing as deal, you playboy!"

"Uhm...excuse me?"

"You drop something like that on a girl and you leave her to walk home on your own?! Unacceptable!"

Lento facepalmed, "Mikako is just a friend, okay? Don't go ahead and imagine things that aren't there."

"Things that aren't there? I don't think I'm wrong to think there's something more than friendship between you two. You invited to pass an afternoon together. Only you two, am I right?"

The alarm the young man had set on his COMP went off, making him go check the stew he had been preparing. He tasted it. It wasn't extremely salty. The tofu looked to be just on point. He took the pan off the fire and served himself a bowl of stew as he answered Mochi's question, "Yes, you could say it's a date. But I don't have a chance to get serious with her."

"Serious with her...why not?"

Lento took out a spoon and began to eat, soon forcing Mochi back into the COMP right before his mother came back. He couldn't sleep, looking at midnight pass before he decided he had to stop thoughts he knew to be only fantasy to cloud objective reality.

The following morning was only a return to the usual routine, although he noticed Mikako briefly waved at him. He nodded back, keeping any expression of emotion to himself before the crows settled in. Through his headphones, he heard them talk something about showing gratitude that someone like Mikako took pity on him. He truthfully couldn't care less what they thought about it. He had chosen a quieter corner in the classroom, silently making anyone avoid sitting around him. Until someone did.

It was Dustin.

Lento could guess the man had still not gotten over his anger. Or at least not completely. He took his headphones off and heard him whisper about Phantom's whereabouts.

"I haven't seen her," he casually replied before getting back at his books, "Good morning, by the way."

Fume Phant0m

 

[Fume]

Dustin Summersdale​

"Fuckin'-! Jesus Christ Lento, don't fuckin' startle me like that." He snapped his head to the student that was his boss for a day. He took a few seconds to recompose himself, his thinking must've took away his attention more than he thought, if he wasn't so careful with his surroundings. Speaking of, there are a lot more students than he thought that arrived before the class started.

"Ah~, I'm really effin' off today..." He released a sigh before looking back to Lento, already reading one of his books. "Good mornin', by the way." He replied to him, still a bit irritated with himself. He looked at his clenched fist before speaking with him again.

"Yo, got a moment?" He asked before catching the big mans attention. "It's about yesterday. I'm not one to say this much, but I'm sorry for what happened in the simulation. You got paired with a guy that isn't so trained as you lot, probably figured it out during the fighting. It pisses me off that I thought I was some hot stuff, that I could take the damn fighting with a grain of salt, pisses me off even more that I couldn't do as much stuff as you guys did. What I'm trying to say, is that I couldn't carry my weight in there.

It was hard the test, probably harder than the rest of the lot around here, but it wasn't an impossible one. I let my guard down and if I did that in the real thing, we would've been dead right there and then, and that makes me shake, probably made me shake so much that I couldn't sleep at all last night. I fucked up, big time.

But I ain't gonna be the lower man and make excuses to get the slip and outta dodge. If the teach' gives you a bad grade, I'll speak up and try to get your grade a notch up. Least I can do as a street rat with some pride. You just got bad luck paring up with a guy without a lick of experience with a sword. That's all I wanted to say to ya." He finished his small talk and returned to his notebook, might as well make a drawing or make some lyrics before the school day ends.

MementoDei

 

[Phant0m]

Phantom ran into the classroom, pausing at the door to catch her breath. "Made it," She cheered before she coughed and grimaced. Shaking her head, she made her way to her seat and yawned and rubbed her eyes. She noticed Lento and Dustin and gave a wave. "Morning," She greeted before yawning.

She grimaced when her hand flexed a bit against the bandages on it, and she rested it on the cool surface of her desk. Ever since the simulation, Phantom had been spending most of her free time at the shooting ranger with her Sweeper to improve her aim, sometimes with Nox whistling encouragement or warnings. He was aware that her gun barrels get hot after her training sessions, but Phantom last night forgot due to her sleep deprivation. Grabbing her gun definitely woke her up.

Phantom noticed the notebook in Dustin's hands and tried to peek into what he was writing. "Whatcha got there Dustin?"

Fume MementoDei

 

[MementoDei]

Lento​

He blinked at Dustin's rambling apology. He wasn't quite sure how to react to it, but there wasn't any reason to believe the man next to him was lying. At least, he hadn't seen a single potential bully try to buy his ego like that. It would be too obvious, almost cartoonish.

"It's fine. I don't know how you plan to talk to the teachers, but it's probably going to hurt our grades even more."

He watched Phantom get in a rush and pushed his notebooks aside to let her put her bag, "Good morning, Phantom."

Fume Phant0m