Cross-Teamers

Pod 49 is ablaze. The pod itself has already been completely consumed by the flames, nothing but a black shape behind wall of red flames. Luc has barely escaped, but he's covered in ash and the clothes provided by the Pod was singed and blackened.

"They're coming back," he pants, throwing the water we have just given him down his throat. "They killed the others in the Pod."

"And you couldn’t do a thing to them?"

"No," Luc said, shaking his head. "We could. I... caused the deaths of two of them."

I swallow. Luc has already killed people. Out of my pod, only Elemental has killed someone so far. I guess you could call me selfish. Everyone around me was fighting for their lives, and people are dropping like flies and being tossed into a ditch and burned every day. Yet here I am, hiding at the most remote pod of all, afraid of getting my hands dirty. Who knows how many people 001 has slaughtered. But killing someone isn’t as easy as you think. Especially when you've never even seen the corpse of anything larger than a fox.

Apparently two of 001's cronies had attacked Luc outside the pod after they had set it ablaze, and he had beat them both up with his fists and then shoved them into the burning pod. We were all stood outside the burnt-out skeleton of pod 49, and Dobo had found Luc a new set of the uniform - dark grey combat pants, black boots and a black t-shirt. We hadn’t been given weapons still, even after half a year in the cave, and we only trained with wooden ones which were confiscated after training, so we had found what we could and the rest of us were barehanded. But people like Elemental, Nyx and Dobo were deadly enough even without a weapon.

It wasn't long before they came. It was a huge number of people, their boots thumping on the stone ground as they advanced towards us, brandishing wooden sticks, pipes or razors. I swallow hard. I think all of us know that it's unlikely today will end with just a simple confrontation. The enemies all have murder in their eyes, and they knew it.

"You think we can take em?" Loflo asked.

"The ranks have been changing because of the scores in training, right?" Neo put in. "We're all in the top 50, and there's a reason for that."
"Most of them have received some sort of strengthening," Luc warned. "Whether it be pale vipers or horned rock lizards."
"Well, so have we, except Neo."
"I don’t need it."
"I'll engrave that on your tombstone."

"I won’t have one if I die in here."
"On the forehead of your dead body then."
"GUYS!"

The mob stopped about fifteen paces away from us, before they parted to let three people through. I caught my breath.

"He looks as cold as you, Elemental," Kake muttered.

He was right. Airo was slightly taller than me, with a slightly curled mess of black hair over a sharp jaw and defined features, expressionless, cold features. But his eyes were the most unsettling thing about them. They were two different colours - one of them was a deep, warm brown, while the other was an electric blue.

"I came here," he says, in calm, rather soft voice that didn’t fit his reputation. "Because I was bored of killing small fries."

"You kill a mountain of people, and now you say you're bored," Swono says incredulously. "Wow."
On Airo's right, a guy that I've seen a couple of times in the labyrinth and the climbing wall stands. I think I remember his name - 033, Relic. One stop below Dobo, 021. And on the left, there's the current 002, Avoma, who has a permanent scowl imprinted on his face and looks like he can bend iron bars and crush skulls between his fingers.

"Why are you here?" Elemental asks.

He's standing in front of us all, like a vanguard, since he is 003 after all, having displaced Artee and Ronin.

"I already said," Airo replies. "I was bored, so I wanted to try my hand at a stronger Pod."
"You'll regret it," Chris replies.

"Maybe, maybe not," Airo says, amiably.

Swono looks like he's about to pop a vein. So Airo's that type of person.

"Well then," he continues. "I came to have a look at the strongest Pod in Project Pharo."

"Strongest?"

"Can’t you tell? Or do you think you're weak?"

"You-"
"Kake, drop it."

Then, Airo turns to leave. Relic and Avoma follow him, and about half of his private militia turn to follow. The other half closes in around us.

"Think of it as a parting gift,"  Airo calls over the heads of his subordinates. "I'll see you round."

There were about forty enemies. We took care of them in about three minutes. It was refreshing to finally be able to properly put The Administrator's hellish training to the test, and for some strange reason it didn’t feel that bad knocking out teeth and breaking arms and throwing people over my shoulder onto the ground with a crack. I guess I took down about… eleven on them? Unlike Elemental, who was a straight up whirlwind of destruction, sweeping throw them like a force of nature and leaving behind a trail of groaning, bloody and unconscious enemies.

"This'll happen again," Elemental tells us.

We've gathered in our Pod, sitting around on the bunks and on the floor. Luc and Swono have moved in - we asked around for spare mattresses and pillows and blankets from pods with spare spots, and now three quarters of the floor in the already small pod I covered with mattress. It makes a good seat, though.

"Mmm, we figured," Swifty says. "But why did Airo just run away though? While leaving half his group, at that?"

"He's a psychopath," Dobo agreed.

"I wouldn’t know about running away," Leon argues. "I think he was just having fun, like he said. He knew we wouldn’t kill anyone so he just wanted to relieve his boredom."
"While scouting out our strength as a Pod," Artee added. "I saw him, with Vedix and Avoma, watching us fight from afar."

"I personally think he'll leave us alone for now," Ronin says.

“On what basis?”

“He was watching," Ronin shrugged, before jabbing a finger at Elemental, me and Artee. "You three probably scared him away."

I point to myself.

"Me?"

"You didn’t see yourself?" Elemental asks, which surprises me since he doesn’t usually say anything in meetings. "You were pretty cool."
"How did you not even notice yourself breaking jaws like that?" Artee wonders.

"Enough of that," I say firmly, blushing a little.

I didn't think I had been seen that way by the others. As a monster.

"There's another reason," Ronin interrupts.

Elemental nods - he already knows, clearly.

"It's about the current 019."

"019?"

"His name is, uh, Woodsy, I think."
"Uh huh, heard of him, don’t really care, what about him?" Chris demands.

"Well, I found out something yesterday. He's been secretly gathering together a force that's even bigger than Airo's, currently. Most of the remaining survivors are joining him because apparently he's promising to evenly distribute food."
"That's nice."
"Where do you think he gets the food from?"
There's silence.

"Yeah," Ronin continues. "Woodsy's army has around three-hundred and fifty members, as of now, which is way, way more than Airo's. He also has several capable underlings, so t's not just a mob of small fries. 045 'El Casio', 066 'Stroma', 072 'Strain', 083 'Auvrion' and even 041 'Vedix' were seen with him and have been confirmed to be working with him. And they've been targeting unaffiliated Pods, either swallowing them into their army or leaving them dead. I think they’ve destroyed more Pods and killed more people than Airo."

Ronin was… half-right. Airo did not return to attack Pod 50. But he did come back.

"Avoma says they just want to talk."

"Do you believe him."

"Couldn't see anyone else," Artee replies.

We decided to trust Artee since he had the best eyes in the whole Pod.

"So, who's going to meet them?" Luc asks. "There's only two of them, right?"

Airo and Avoma were back, and this time they had come unarmed and alone. Avoma had told our advance party, Chris, Artee and Kake, that they had just come to talk.

"Elemental," Nyx suggested, and Elemental sighed. "You are the best in combat in this pod after all."
"Yes, but I'm not the best at talking."

We all agreed.

"I can go," Swifty suggested. "I'm good at talking."

"Sword, you come too," Elemental says. "It's Airo and Avoma. We don’t know what they're going to do."

"…fine."

We meet by a rock shaped like a mushroom about five hundred feet away from the pod. Apart from the rock there's not much else around, nothing for people to hide behind or inside.

"What did you want to talk about?" Swifty demands.

"Bringing three people when we're just two?"

"Bring a thousand people when we're just fourteen?"

"Okay, fair. Anyway," Airo continues, "we came here to talk about Woodsy. And his army."
"Expected," Swifty acknowledges. "It's only a matter of time before they come for the both of us."

"Even under strengthening effects, we're still human beings," Airo agreed. "And the enemy is not weak. They've gone through the same training as us."

His tone and what he's saying sound serious. But that was making me more and more uneasy around him. He just had that sort of… air around him. Like he's already thinking about a thousand ways to take you down within three seconds. There's a mischievous, slightly mad glint in his mismatched eyes that unsettles me.

"I've already met with Woodsy," Airo tells us. "He wanted us to merge with him, but can you imagine 001 and 002 becoming underlings of some random, stuck-up bully?"

"We're not planning on coming under him either," Swifty agreed. "He's going to try and wipe us out."
I'm sure all three of us already know where Airo's intentions are going.

"I know we just attacked you," Airo says. "But no one died, so we can let bygones be bygones."
"Uh…"
Suddenly, Airo's expression changes. And I don’t know why, but shivers roll down my spine. He's smiling. And when he smiled, he looked like he'd never even think about killing a spider. He looked like the kind of guy who starved himself to donate to orphanages, or campaigned endlessly in the cold for rights. He looked peaceful, genuinely happy, kind. That was, except his eyes. That insane, deranged evil behind that mask of sweetness, channelled only through those eyes. Those terrifying, unhinged, cold mismatched eyes.

"I propose a cross-team," Airo says. "Work with me, Cabin 50. We're all just trying to survive. Nothing more, nothing less."