Act 1: Into the Light

Chapter 3: Ein Heldenlaben

Maybe it was the overbearing silence of the room that ate away at Alivia Gray as she sat there in the library of Atlas. Maybe it was the fact that that one blue-haired girl and her friend group went around the library with the Irish one explaining every single plot contrivance in fiction known to man. Either way, the light brown-skinned teen sat there sort of running her hands through her waist-length dark brown hair that was braided in one long braid as she looked through the library trying to find something, really anything to read at that point. Sure, Ivor giving them the tour of the second floor, with a quite frank, absolutely giant rectangular simulation chamber that the principal claimed was three miles long and the shorter sides of it being two. And god knows how tall it was since the lights were off when he had shown it.

Alivia being a height of five feet and eight inches really didn't make her stand out from her classmates, but she was determined she'd be able to make up for that in her personality. Or at least, was hoping that would allow her to be more than just what an old, long since dead hero, would call 'extras'. But to hell with what those kinds of old heroes would think! But… in a way, her mind couldn't stop thinking about what great heroes like Deku would be thinking about the sad reality of heroes in the modern-day. Her brother was right really, heroes of today weren't ready for someone like All For One, and with Vox dead, no All Might would be there to rescue them either. She groaned and leaned back into her chair as she realized she was about to go on yet another internal negative rant again.

She closed her yellow eyes that cycled through a multitude of colors throughout the day and just tried to kill the thoughts before they'd develop into a self-loathing rant about how she was born at the wrong time. She sort of slapped her cheeks with her hands to reattain her focus on the book that was sat across on a desk from the comfortable leather chair she was in. Said book was very… well… boring? Alivia hadn't found books on history to be all that interesting despite her love of how heroes developed, she guessed she picked it up from her brother since he was almost the exact definition of book smart when it came to anything heroes. Which made his absence ever more painful as she thought on his quite passionate view on heroes.

She looked down past her blue shirt and jeans and pulled out her phone as she opened up to check her social media apps. While Atlas had indeed stripped their electronic devices away, and given them back when they reached the facility, they still allowed social media to be accessed. From what she could tell though, all apps that had chat features wouldn't allow her to click on the message options, along with the ability to like, share, and screenshot capabilities being non-existent to the point it was futile to try and do something that'd allow her to show she was even alive. Alivia also had a guess that Atlas had found a way to also restrict her ability to see certain pieces of news.

This guess may have seemed dumb, and more like a conspiracy theory upon first glance. But, this mostly centered around when she was trying to go back and read on a news article that had recited the details of the attack on UA. The problem was that when she had clicked on the link, it seemed like a broken link. While this alone may not have been strange in of itself, she got increasingly suspicious when the latest attack on Shineward Academy, which was a hero school centered in Britain that had taken down about three weeks ago, hadn't shown up when she searched the name up. Even weirder was when she tried to access websites she knew had been releasing information on the attack to just lead to even more broken links.

She could've kept digging at that point, but to her, it was a waste of time and negative energy that could be focused on something else entirely. Which, is actually what she had been attempting to do when she went to the third floor that housed the library. Speaking of which, the library was quite expansive in regards to its selections. It was practically the full size of a community library and had three subfloors connected by sets of stairs for each sort of category they wanted. The first was non-fiction, the second being fiction, and the third being what was called the 'Atlas selections' floor. The last floor was solely comprised of books and magazines that would be about the material that Alivia and her classmates would be learning from all of their classes.

Even though their classes were officially going to start in two more days, she still felt a large dread in the pits of her stomach that refused to relinquish, much to her dismay. Sure, she was also excited in a way, but she felt as though she was one of the few that saw the proverbial weight that had been set on their shoulders. The way Ivor had described how they were the quote on quote 'last hope' of heroes stuck with her in a way few statements in her life had. It made her feel prideful in a way, the fact she and no one else from her school had been chosen to represent the last line of defense against heroes being a normality was amazing. But at the same time, it was also somewhat like a curse. She was a teen, with the responsibility of becoming what has a chance to be the last large potential hero class of her generation gave her such existential thoughts that it was almost an impossibility to not be scared. But still, she somehow was able to push through all that dread and try to relax.

Alivia's eyes traced back to her book as she kinda sighed at it before closing it and putting back into the shelf she had found it in. She looked at the spine of the books that had been lined up so neatly and ran her fingers across them. 'The Wolf's Last Bite? No, that book's dumb… Maybe The Last Waterbender?' She thought as she kept a slow pace eyeing all of the books she could, trying to find something that would interest her and have somewhat of an interesting premise. Sure, there had been that one powerless kid against almost impossible odds trope that had floated around a few years back, and while it was pretty cool at first, the countless copies of that premise just sort of made it old. It wasn't before long that she came across another one of her classmates that had also been looking through the library.

He was sitting in the middle of the library in a small leather chair that had been strewn throughout the library, along with that, he clearly had a book in his hand that seemed interesting just from the title alone. Alivia slowly but surely made her way over to him sitting in the chair, the mess of black hair with two black cat ears sticking out from the back of his head was all she could make out as she got closer. He definitely could tell she was approaching, his cat ears on his head twitching with every step she made it fairly obvious of that. When she was a few steps away from him, he finally lowered his book a bit. What met Alivia's eyes were sharp, radiant green eyes that almost bore into her soul. The black hair almost covered them both but was so thick and curly that it was hard to define what his hair's style was supposed to be. All of these features only became more noticeable as she got closer, and it admittedly made her more curious about who she was seeing in front of her.

"Hey, um, whatcha reading there?" she asked, her soft voice cutting through the silence of the room like a hot knife through butter. She tilted her head a bit, in which the boy put his book down on his lap. With that, she could see his whole face. His skin looked soft and was a mocha brown with freckles spread all over his face. The most noticeable thing was the multitude of small scars looking like cuts that ran along his cheeks. When he did speak, it was smooth, almost in the sense it was controlled to not be expressive.

"Oh, um…" he said as he flipped to look at the cover of the book, with the art of a dragon and girl on the front. "The Last of the Dragons… it um, it's about a guy who meets a girl dragon, and he, um, teaches her how to be human..." he muttered as he recollected his thoughts on the book.

"Cool! Say, my name's Alivia, what's yours?" she asked, sitting down in a chair across from him, clearly with no intention of getting closer, much to the boy's relief. Before responding, he sat back into his cushioned chair, deciding on his words for a few moments. After a few seconds of silence, he set the book down on a small table in front of his chair and looked over to Alivia.

"Well, my name's Noriaki… I um, I'm from Cuba, well, I mean, I…" Darn it, why did he always have to fumble over his words when he was just needing to have a conversation with somebody? She wasn't trying to attack him, or at least he thought she wasn't going to… right?

"Oh cool, that's a really nice name! But, you said that book was about a dragon learning to be a human right? So… like, what happens besides that?" Alivia chirped out as she tilted her head whilst keeping eye contact, a small smile engrained on her face. She leaned forward a little, finding herself at the edge of her seat. From what Noriaki could tell, she seemed genuinely interested in the book, so why not indulge her question?

"Well, dragons in this book were a really strong race that actually had their own society! If I remember correctly from the last time I read it, the city that dragons live in was attacked, and the only sole survivor was a single female dragon." Noriaki explained as he picked up the book and ran his fingers along with one of the pages. "Eventually she meets a guy named Dorin and they travel across the world, with both trying to find out who they want to be…"

Alivia had her chin laid on top of her hands as she listened, her smiling face blank for once as she focused on his words. "So, do they win? Or well, do they find out who they want to be I guess?" She asked.

Noriaki's face seemed to turn solemn for a few moments before he continued to explain the book. "Well, no. They lose… I um, I should say they don't win, but they don't lose either. The antagonist of the story wins, but he still loses his life because of Dorin protecting his family that he eventually started with the dragon while she was in human form." he said as he scratched his scruffy hair and leaned back into his seat. "The good part is while the antagonist wins, Dorin still gets the killing blow."

Alivia sat there for a few moments, her mind dead set focused on his words. She was silent for a somewhat uncomfortable amount of time before posing a quite basic question. "What does the antagonist do to win?"

Noriaki was speechless for a few seconds. For any other form of fiction, it would seem like an easy answer, but for this book specifically, it was somewhat hard to say. "The best way I can put it, is that he attacked the, um… He attacked their very spirit I guess you could say?" The cat boy looked to the ceiling as he looked down at the book's page before setting it back down on the table. "He wins by defeating their very reason for being alive, before letting himself die… It's bittersweet really." He managed to let out as he looked back over to Alivia.

Said girl has a somewhat surprised look on her face as she crosses her arms. "Wow… that's pretty sad." Was the best she could phrase her thoughts. The idea of losing your will to live was most certainly one way to kill someone for sure. Since they'd probably do the work themselves, but at the same time, her brother always said that the scariest people were those with nothing left to lose.

"Yeah, I think the movie did the ending better though." Noriaki said before reaching towards his book before being interrupted by Alivia, his hand mere centimeters from its closed cover.

"Did you say movie?"

Oh… he really shouldn't have mentioned that…

Ivor's office wasn't exactly the biggest room in the facility, far from it. The small windowless room lined with bookshelves and screens displaying information that almost no soul aside from the principal could understand had a dark wooden desk in front of a leather chair that matched Ivor's stature. He had been sitting in it typing on the keyboard built into his desk that filled documents being displayed on one of many monitors decorating his desk, his face contorted into that of one filled with undevoted focus. Ivor's dancing along the keys filled the silence of the room with a slight tapping that was at a steady rhythm. One that he has been able to brag about back when he moved to the United States and got all of his work done first in High School.

That bragging didn't fill anything aside from his uncomfortableness with having moved to the U.S. at the ripe age of fourteen, and even then it didn't make him feel better. At least his quirk had made all of that studying in Spanish remarkably easy. Even his teacher had been jealous of just how quickly he mastered the language and would be a standard with all of his other instructors in the subsequent languages he'd learned at Harvard. Luckily, such a high standard schooling had prepared him for the more boring parts of running something like Atlas. The responsibility of the school had been his from the moment the idea formed in his head. Being a world-renowned hero informant and consultant had granted him so many connections that it was hard to count, and Atlas was the product of those connections being pushed to the absolute limit.

The problem with connections is that they have to be maintained if you wanted their full value. So there he was at his desk filling out document after document detailing how each student had been adjusting to their first week at Atlas. Every student had their own problems, but ones that didn't really hamper their actual adjustment to the facility itself. The issue was with at least two students; Niyah Shultz, and Maria Hautala.

Both of the students were normal, sure, but the two also seemingly had the worst chances out of everyone to really work with others. At least discounting David and Yura, those two were already under his watchful eye. The problem with these students was the inherent issues both had, that could be volatile if given the proper circumstances. David and Yura would come after, but for now, these two needed basic ground rules so that the teaching process could go much easier. Which is why he had invited them to his office, and if he was correct they should've been there at any moment…

Knock

A single knock at the door across from his desk made Ivor's head darted to the door. "Come in." He said as the monitors on his desk retracted down inside after he pushed a button under his desk. After doing so, the quote-on-quote guests of honor entered the room with another woman.

Said woman was five feet and five inches tall and displayed thick black hair that cascaded down to the end of her back. Her almond-shaped piercing gold eyes met Ivors as she led two students to two chairs that had been sat in front of Ivor's desk. She stepped around the desk to the principal's side, put both of her hands in her black dress pants' pockets, and leaned against the back wall. "Well Ivor," she said, her voice gentle and slow. "Here's the students you wanted, is that all you needed me for?" she asked, looking back over to Ivor from the two students she had set her eyes on since leaning against the wall.

"Of course Lydia, that'll be all for now." came from Ivor's mouth, to which Lydia's smooth features formed a small smile as she nodded in response. After she exited the room, there was a few seconds of silence between the only three occupants of the office before Ivor let any more words slip from his mouth. "Well, Niyah, Maria, I'm glad you could take time to meet me here." Ivor said as he leaned forward on his desk, which earned a response from one of the two students.

"So, why are we here exactly?" came out of Maria's mouth first with a moderate Russian accent. Said female was five feet and eight inches in height, and by all accounts was quite fit in nature. Her narrow jaw with a small vertical scar on her right jawbone that reached her right eye only boosted an already intimidating aura to that of almost absurdity given her age. Maria had her legs crossed, with her arms following the same behavior, with a clear unease bristled underneath it all.

Niyah on the other hand was silent, her face almost unnaturally blank in expression as her almond-shaped eyes practically bore into Ivor's soul. The five-foot and seven-inch tall girl sat fairly straight up in her chair, her almost dark gold skin was covered by a button-up shirt and jeans with the bottom of the pant legs rolled up somewhat. Niyah's unusually straight face wasn't strange to Ivor, given her background, it was fairly normal to see. "I'd like to know too, why did you need us?" she asked, her voice a bit low and smooth with an almost harsh tone.

Ivor cleared his throat, "I met some of my lifelong friends from hero work, and working with people's lives at risk only made it easier, to be honest to one another." he said as he turned his head from the two of his students. "You two have your own respective issues, but I need you both to be open to the class and try to form bonds. I know It'll be hard, but that woman that brought you here? She's your counselor and therapist, and will be here for when you need to talk about your issues…" Ivor continued. "She is here to make sure everyone is of the best mental health possible, and I expect you to be honest with her."

The principal let out a small sigh, "Trust me, you have no secrets you can hide from us. We have all of your information on file…" he said, his eyes tracing over to Maria. Said girl almost instinctively knew what he was talking about, and she averted her eyes to the ground in some vain attempt to hide the break in her intimidating demeanor. "Now, I'd like to say thank you for coming here. I know this was short, but I want you to have your expectations now so that this transition to Atlas can be more seamless for you both." With a small smile, and almost magically, Lydia opened the door and motioned outward for the two students.

The meeting was quick, and efficient, just how Ivor had planned it to be. So when the students were out of the office and down the hall to the lift, the principal let out a question to the counselor that had waited at the door. "Lydia, any information on Erik?". The question seemed to send the counselor into a small state of panic as she tensed up.

"N-n-no sir…" she muttered out.

Ivor let out a small huff, "Need I remind you how important he is to all this?" The question earned the principal a no from the counselor, and he shook his head. "Just… just go, we can find more information later…" Lydia knew better than to not protest as she gave a slight nod, and closed the door after leaving the office. Ivor sat in silence for a few moments before standing up from his desk and walking over to a display case that had been set aside in between some of the bookshelves. In it sat a simple switchblade propped by a small metal claw in the middle of the glass square. The light that shot from the bottom of the case reflected from the blade as Ivor's eyes could be perfectly seen from the reflection. The handle of the blade, however, was covered in dirt and grime, with what was more than likely something akin to dried blood.

The principal could still remember the day they had found it, the last remnants of his greatest fears incarnate. He could still remember the words drawn across the walls in blood, and while they were never seen again after that day, Ivor still saw them more than clearly…

"Follow the buzzards…"

Well, been awhile hasn't it?

Firstly, I've addressed why I've been gone on An Age's End's Discord server but I'll just restate what has been going on for me.

Life has taken tons of time away from me in all honesty, and combining that with parental issues hasn't exactly been the best combination. I won't dig into the details, but I will say that a lack of inspiration really deviated from a lack of a want to put myself forward. Considering most of my efforts just end up going to waste, I thought this story would be no different. Suffice to say I was wrong, and I have ended up meeting some of my best friends thanks to this SYOC.

The story is still going, and I have finally gotten a writing schedule I think I like. Thank you to everyone here that has supported me, and I wouldn't blame most of you for moving on already. Have a good day everyone, stay safe.