Sid had failed on multiple fronts, yet he kept stalling—eyes darting between the strangers who were obviously downplaying their status. "You still haven't clarified how our involvement would tip the scales in your favor." He said warily. "Didn't a single one of you stop an internal war that involved our entire faction?" He eyed Zack conspicuously.
Not to mention the rest of you look more dangerous, he told himself, though his unfiltered thoughts slipped straight into Zack's mind.
"Should we just tell them how insignificant they are?" Psycho asked his group telepathically.
"…or that they won't survive until the end?" Pinky added.
"Stop playing Fate!" Lux scolded Pinky, slapping the string of fate away from her hands.
"Maybe not in those words," Zack said, glancing at Lux for approval. "I get you guys left humanity behind, but goddamnit! Play that scenario in your head before speaking, and you'll see how dumb it sounds."
"I don't get it!" Bazuka frowned. "They have a valid doubt. We have a valid answer. The truth is supposed to set us free—quite literally in our case. How is lying to someone you want a favor from considered humane, while staying true to yourself and your cause is… broken?"
Bazuka's unusual rant froze the group for a full second—which, in epiphany land, was close to forever.
Though they gawked at her, the conversation stayed aligned with the Gifted, thanks to a crudely crafted Slot. Zack placed the entire Division X in a mirage, out of mortals' vision, while his logical personality answered questions before the Gifted even finished forming them in their heads.
"Some work requires finesse." Zack nodded toward the unconscious second group of Gifted on the floor. "Some require raw power."
"Yet you refuse—"
"—Let's just say we hunt bad guys far beyond your pay grade." Zack's clone interrupted Mark, reading the thought beforehand. "—The same way there are others who are above us," he added, cutting off Olivia's growing question. "—Do the ungifted know about you?" he asked Sid before he could even think. "—Would you want them to find out?" he asked Dozy, answering her question with his own. "I'm sure you have people stationed to wipe memories." He confirmed, easily reading their attempts to hide the truth.
Zack was the strongest member of any Soul Hunter division—period. Yet he presented himself as an upper-class Gifted with a single ability: prediction. That way, he remained clear of the front lines, avoided Solgrave, and created far fewer messes for his group to clear up at the end.
"Maybe we should keep all newbies away from the timeline," Bazuka muttered, steering the group within the mirage into another spiral of unresolved topics.
"Agreed," Lux said, just as another thought struck.
"What do we get in return?" Dozy asked, hoping for a straightforward answer from someone other than Zack.
Zack, who already read the emotion as it formed in Dozy's mind, puppeteered Bazuka's body and mimicked her voice to reply.
"Something like that." She pointed at the unconscious group. "Within reason, of course."
As Dozy's mind unraveled inside Zack's Sub-Space, Zack wasted more energy suppressing his team's outbursts and missed crucial reasoning.
"That's spot on, Barbie!" Psycho collapsed and rolled across the alleyway in a broken display of hysterical laughter. A sudden burst of madness from Psycho could have been explained, but the casual roll destroying the entire neighborhood could not.
"Hey!" Zack tried to kick Psycho into another layer, but a massive smoking barrel blocked his path.
To mortal eyes, the red-tipped barrel merely distorted the air with heat—
But to a Broken-Soul… the heat melted reality itself.
"That was your final warning," Bazuka said.
The barrel warped, and Zack suddenly felt like an ant staring into an earth-sized cannon. "Next time, give the warning beforehand. Out in the mortal world. Because I didn't know I already got one."
"Didn't you just get one?" Pinky tilted her head.
"Wait—" Zack suppressed a frown, forcing a smile. "This is literally my first and last warning!?" The only reply he got was a loading sound. "You broken ass—"
!!BOOM!!
Dozy watched a bead of sweat roll down Zack's flawless jawline. On its own, there was nothing suspicious; unless one noticed the identical sweat bead rolling down every single member of Division X at that exact moment, despite the freezing temperatures.
A few accidents, restorations, memory wipes, and some unpleasant time-wrap perspectives later, Dozy finally agreed to team up with the mysterious Division X. She remembered spilling every one of their secrets in a recurring loop of déjà vu. Still, Bazuka's indifference to their social hierarchy strangely eased her concerns.
"So… what is it?" she asked Lila once Zack left. "Can we trust them?"
"You already seem to have made up your mind," Lila scowled. "Why ask for my opinion?"
"Because we only fight amongst ourselves," Eshelon said dryly. "What? I'm dumb, not clueless." He turned to Dozy. "We need that Zack fellow for you-know-who."
"Voldemort!" Lila gasped.
"NO!" Dozy yanked on Lila's pigtails. "The one who cannot name, because when we do, his gift lets him know everything about us."
Dozy's intense glare sobered up Lila as she finally got her wits back. "Having two gifts is just cheating!" She scowled.
"We hope that thing only has two!" Sid shuddered. "Let's hope that with one other similar gift, we can negate its hold. We need Zack."
"For his predictions?" Diulz scoffed. "I'd rather team up with that hot-headed tattooed woman and get blasted."
"You and me both, brother." Eshelon lifted his fist, which hung awkwardly in the air as Diulz's frown deepened. "I'm also very stubborn." He kept the fist raised as the conversation dragged on.
"We can use Zack as a double-edged sword," Dozy said.
"Won't a predictor see that coming?" Lila scoffed. "Which part of their ability—or their title—didn't get through that drowsy skull of yours?"
"There are limits to everything." Dozy brushed past them toward a dustbin she thought she recognized. "Our ancestors pulled gods off their thrones. Weren't you all waiting for a fight like that?" She pushed on the bin and sighed as metal pushed back. "Well, you got your wish."
"I'll get our fake IDs," Diulz smirked, finally bumping Eshelon's still-waiting fist.
"Eh!" Lila hiccupped and downed another swig. "For fucksakes… I'm in too, I guess! What's the prediction?"
"Triple S," Sid muttered, already covering his ears.
"Wait—that's a school! How am I supposed to drink there?!"
"We've got a month. Practice," said Dozy, staring blankly.
The Gifted took less time than usual to prepare for a hunt, while Division X focused on acting more human, which, in the end, turned out to be impossible anyway.
────୨ৎ────
Date: 10-07-2009.
Time: 19:04 MH.
Location: Triple-S dormitory.
Incident: Suicide.
Many rules guided the sacred sanctity of Triple S. They didn't raise the country's future leaders; they brought children closer to divinity, and regulations were necessary to maintain both fronts. Rules that tempted their inner demons toward freedom.
Under a fortress made of thin bedsheets, a group of girls imagined a world beyond these rules. A world that ran on imagination. Their inner demons needed a treat for following the commandments this far, after all.
"Sneak out to a party?" Zoey suggested.
"Boys' dorms?" Thea proposed choosing a safer and closer option.
"Alcohol. Drugs." Raya aimed higher, for something far darker.
"Age. Prison," Ayla frowned, committed to her self-appointed role as the group's guardian.
Jessy scratched her chin. As the ringleader of this little rag-tag band, she aimed to please every one of them, while still ensuring her own wish came first. "Let's pull in the new girl. Tammy… was it? She's timid. Let's scare the bu'jesus out of her, then go on to plan accordingly."
"Don't take the Lord's name in vain," Trisha whispered, gently slapping her own cheek instead of Jessy's.
"Ohh… this ain't gonna be in vain. Far from it," Jessy giggled, and the rest joined in.
Trisha was sent out of the bedsheet fortress to fetch Tammy, buying the group time to prepare.
Tammy resisted at first, but peer pressure eventually won. She crept through the dimly lit corridors of their dorm, unable to remember them ever being so… dull.
Word to God, they never kept the lights this low. The elders feared the dark more than the little girls who lived in them due to poor maintenance. Something good had at least come from their terror of the devil who supposedly lurked in the shadows. The root of all evil, they called it—a place where the devil could reach one's soul.
For people preaching the word of God, they sure knew how to terrify children.
Trisha found Tammy dragging her feet and asked. "What's wrong?" Her sudden question startles Tammy, and she clasps her mouth before she screams. "SHhh… At this speed, we'll meet the Lord out of thirst." She chuckled at her own joke and patted Tammy on the back. "Go and come back. Fast." She slipped a small cross into Tammy's pocket and tiptoed away, her anklets chiming despite her measured steps.
"She wears her anklets while sleeping…" Tammy murmured, clutching the Cross as she headed toward the end of the corridor.
The light grew brighter, flooding the hallway as though dawn had spilled indoors.
'Power of the cross,' Tammy joked internally, turning her stride into a hop; her fear vanishing with the light.
A memory forced itself upon her at the fresh-water dispenser: two girls whispering about the water quality. Tammy had never made out their faces, yet she remembered their complaints with unsettling clarity. They had been arguing about taste. One swore it was disgusting, while the other tried to prove her wrong, until both froze, staring at something green and wriggling inside their bottle of clear water.
The memory made Tammy's stomach churn. She gagged, leaning toward the edge of the basin. She slipped the Cross into her pocket, not wanting to vomit on something holy, but as she tried to recover her hand, the Cross's edges snagged between her pocket and ring. She yanked harder, in a hurry to cover her ears, and the force sent the Cross flying. Shocked, her heart skipped a beat, and her gag reflex was pushed down as she moved to reclaim the Cross.
The Cross flew out of reach, landing within the cafeteria's garden on the ground floor.
She cursed her sudden strength and luck, looking below for a way to retrieve the Cross without actually heading down.
"A miracle right about now will be appreciated." She looked up at the sky and joked, and upon lowering her gaze, she found the Cross to be missing. "Not that kind of miracle!" She gritted her teeth, mumbling.
She looked around the dimly lit garden, cursing their caretaker for not doing his job. After a while, she panned her gaze across the ground floor, as if the chain could move on its own. Her actions didn't seem stupid until she spotted 'the quote of the day' on the garden's blackboard: "God sees all!"
The sense of dread lifted from her shoulders, and she began questioning everything…
Had she actually heard those girls, or was she remembering it now for some strange reason?
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Fifty. ———<>||<>———