Velle had already arrived at the school, the familiar brick building stood tall within the city, completely indifferent to the people fighting in the streets, crashed cars, and even the sound of distant sirens. She pushed past the blue double doors at the front entrance and sighed when she felt the calmness of the school.

“Thank goodness. The school seems to be doing better than most.” She says.

She looks around, noticing the lack of lights and the eerie quietness that causes her to pull out her phone. She swipes through her contacts, stops at Dante’s name, and calls him. The number doesn’t ring at all, she checks her cell service, noticing it at zero bars.

“Did someone destroy the cell towers or something? Grrr… What a pain.” She shoved the phone back into her pocket and walked down the halls. “Guess I should head to the field… Which way was that again?”

As Velle figured out which way to go, someone—or—something had been watching from the shadows. She walked down the east hallway past door after door of classrooms.

“I guess school did let out for the day, but I don’t remember it ever being so dark here.” Velle casually stepped through the halls past rows of lockers before seeing a pair of giant double doors.

“This should be the cafegymatorium. Heh… We did everything in here lunch, gym, assemblies, you name it. Damn, here I am trying to fill the silence with random babble about this school.” Velle sighs. “Regardless, the field should be through here.”

She opens the doors and finds a wide room full of large folding tables. Resting her arms behind her head, she continued walking past them as she noticed that each table still had lunch trays.  Upon closer inspection, trays were on the floor, and knocked-over milk cartons spilled onto the waxed gym floors. 

“Wait a minute…” She pulls out her phone and looks at the time. “1:30? School never got let out, which means… It’s on lockdown after what happened?” She guesses.

“Ah, that’s why it’s so quiet in here.” A voice says.

Velle turns around and feels an icy breath on her neck, a strange greasiness that covers the back of her neck, causing her to punch in that direction. The figure that crept up behind her was low to the ground, hunching over. Her hair was long and dark, trapped in large clumps of greasiness and bags under her eyes.

“Who are you?” Velle questions.

“Things are a bit cooky with all this codex stuff. So I thought visiting my favorite teacher would be a good idea!” She smiles.

“Visit your favorite teacher, now?” She asks.

“That teacher changed the trajectory of my whole life. So I wanted to thank him.” She says.

“Riiiight. Personally, I would wash my hair first… But different strokes and all.” She wipes the sludge off the back of her neck with a tissue from her pocket. “Would you mind explaining why you crept up on me?”

“Sorry, I’m a bit socially inept, The last time I saw the sun before today was… Almost a year ago.” 

“You didn’t look out the window?” Velle traces the shape of the woman’s body with her eyes and notices a strange shape under her clothes. “You got something sticking out there.”

She looks down, at her clothes, noticing the protrusion under her shirt.

“Oh, that! That’s just my knife.” She clasps her hands together and starts blushing. “It’s a gift for my teacher. Do you think he’ll like it?”

“Uh… Is he a cooking teacher?” Velle asks.

“He teaches math.” She starts tugging on her hair, nearly pulling it from the roots. Dark sludge falls from her hair to the ground releasing a small puff of smoke. “If he passed me, I could’ve gotten into Lawvard. My boyfriend wouldn’t have dumped me. I never would’ve spiraled like this.”

She lifts her shirt with her index finger and pulls out the knife.

“I have a gift that he won’t soon forget!” She exclaims and slashes a few times into the air.

“Oooookay, she’s gone off the deep end.” Velle thinks.

“Don’t go swinging that thing around, it’s dangerous!” Velle throws her hands up.

“You just don’t understand how I feel. I’ll make you understand!” She points the knife at Velle.

“She’s seriously lost it.” Velle thinks.

“I can’t let you attack that teacher or anyone else,” Velle says. “Just put the knife down and we can talk about this.”

“Nah. I don’t think I will!” She lunges forward swinging the knife erratically. Velle takes a few steps back to avoid her swings, then dodges to the side, but the girl catches with a spinning slice, causing the knife to slam to collide with her shoulder. The momentum caused the blade to cut cleanly through her leather jacket but stop at her shoulder as though she hit a boulder. There’s a brief pause between them before Velle punches the girl in the face with a left hook. The girl tumbles into a garbage can and falls over, while Velle checks her shoulder in a panic.

“There’s no blood… Or even a cut… This is awesome.” Velle says. 

The girl uses the garbage can to get up and turns to Velle.

“Just put the knife down. You can’t cut me.” Velle announces

The girl whips her hair forward, throwing sludge at Velle. The sludge arcs through the air in a wide shape, unable to dodge it due to the wide radius, she throws her arms up to block it from touching her face.

“That’s gross!” She exclaims.

Her attention shifts as the darkened muck emits a low hiss as it burns through her jacket sleeves and even her skin. Velle emits a pained groan while flailing her arms to get it off. The girl runs up and slices downward, cutting into Velle’s left arm. A long cut down the side of her arm appears, causing blood to leak from the wound.

“Gah!” Velle backs away from the girl to get some distance. She grips her arm as confusion strikes her face.

“So what was that again about this being pointless?” She questions as she swings the knife around. She does a spin, causing her hair to launch more slime at Velle. She grabs a lunch tray and uses it to block it. After the impact, she lowered the tray, but the girl wasn’t there. She spotted a glint in her peripheral vision where she was stuck from below. With her flexible body, she did an upward slice, making a shallow cut on Velle’s left abdomen. Blood trickled down the knife as Velle kicked her in the chest sending her backward into one of the folding tables. Velle grimaced as she covered her wound with her hand, but took advantage of the situation. She ran up to the woman and jumped as she was sitting up from being kicked. Velle swung her leg around, slamming her in the jaw with a full-force kick. Her head jerked violently to the left before the girl fell back onto the table, dropping the knife in her hand. Velle falls to the floor on her side. Pain filled her entire body as she landed on the cut, as she tightly shut her eyes and rolled over, holding her side. She breathed out deeply from her nose as her body was curled inward. She finally released her tension and started breathing deeply.

“They really downplay… How painful these types of injuries are in the movies…” She mumbles as her vision sways from the pain. She sits up and looks at the blood she left there. “I gotta go treat this now.”

She stands up and grabs the girl’s knife, throwing it in the trash can. Next, she ties the woman’s hands to the support bars for the table using the belt on her jacket. Then, she makes her way to the nurse’s office while trailing drops of blood behind her. 

Meanwhile, some blood trickled from Raiah’s mouth after taking that heavy blow. She rubbed her cheek to alleviate some of the pain, but she couldn’t stop her legs from shaking in the process. Her eyes were on the brass knuckles on his fist, like a dark spot on a bright wall. Her eyes shifted to her health bar. It had gone from full to about 70% in a single blow and was now yellow. Darker thoughts began to flood her mind, and soon panic began to fill her body. 

“If my health hits zero, am I going to die…?” She questions.

As she begins to spiral, Velle’s words echo in her mind. They provide her with a bit of comfort. She takes a deep breath, taking another look at the situation before her. 

“Calm down. If I panic, then only the worst outcome will remain. I still have a lot of health left, at the very least, even with that brass knuckle, he still needs to attack me three more times. So I have three turns, assuming he has nothing to deal more damage.” Despite realigning her thoughts, her legs were still shaking but she selected “fight” anyway, and four moves popped up before her.

“Fearful stare. Punch. Sneak Strike. And Invisibility.” Raiah began reading what each attack did and sighed in relief.

She selected her skill, “Invisibility”, and became invisible. As Orange winded up another punch, his head tilted in confusion.

“Where’d she go?” He questions.

He walks over to her last location and swings randomly, hitting nothing. Raiah was just slightly further ahead of him. She wiped the sweat off her forehead before taking her attack. She crept up behind him, raising both her hands clasped together before slamming them down onto his head, causing him to drop to one knee. His health fell to 60%. As she went back to her spot, she remained invisible. He once again tried to swing on her and nothing connected. Once again, she hammered him in the back of the head, dropping his health to 35%

“Almost there.” She muttered with relief

Her invisibility faded away.

Orange came power walking over to her with his fist raised and struck her just below the chest with a thunderous blow. She falls to her knees as she is left heaving for air. Her vision goes black momentarily as she struggles to catch her breath.

She reached up, to touch the icon while still recovering, to press invisibility, but it was on cooldown for one turn. Beads of sweat raced down her forehead as she looked up at Orange, confidently standing over her with a grin.

“Sorry, but I can't lose this battle! There’s too much at stake!” He exclaims.