Chapter Twelve
--Evan--
As Evan stepped out the door of the trigonometry classroom, he reflected that he was beginning to get the hang of this high school.
His trig teacher had been pretty laid back, but he hadn't had a chance to materialize his GD to begin monitoring any possible potentials in the area. There had been a considerably less amount of note-taking, and a bit more discussion.
The class had been composed entirely of his fellow juniors. He'd had a chance to hear many of them speak; it seemed that although they all knew Japanese fairly well, many spoke with accents. There was a lot of diversity; not just cultural, but emotional and psychological. He could sense it.
The girl, Andrea, was, from what he could tell, half-preppie and half-class clown. A social butterfly, too; he sensed that she was very receptive to the feelings of others.
Evan checked his schedule and found that he apparently had a free block now, along with the rest of his class, and--from what he could tell--half the school.
He followed along with the crowd and hoped they were all going to the same place to spend their free block.
--Ienji--
As Ienji passed into the halls and let himself merge with the tide of students heading to the break rooms and student lounge.
This was a familiar scene to him, as students at SHS had collective free blocks three days out of the eight-day rotating class schedule. Kids were given an hour to hang out with their peers; often many would take advantage of the free time to study or complete work for a more difficult class.
Ienji always took the opportunity to simply relax and enjoy time with friends. As he reflected upon this, he spotted Jared and Alec across the hall, and walked over to them.
The three friends found a table in the break room. The low murmer of conversation was present, although on this quiet Monday morning, the mood seemed less bouyant than usual, Ienji could feel.
Siojaton High was located in the south side of the city; the area shared several other high schools, so the 15-to-18-year-old population was divided among several local schools. This year, the high school served about five hundred kids, which was more than previous years.
As the three settled down, flopping their backpacks and bookbags onto the circular table, Ienji looked around. There were at least fifty kids in the area, mostly freshmen and sophomores. The juniors (in general) usually picked the student lounge as their free block hangout, while seniors, of course, went to the senior lounge.
There were exceptions, of course, and there was free passage between all free block areas.
Ienji took out his binder, deciding he might attempt to study for the history quiz later in the week; he hoped that having a focus would help him ignore some of the stranger feelings he was experiencing through this 'empathy'.
Jared and Alec took out a chemistry notebook and a thin silver laptop, respectively. The latter (kid) was rarely seen without it, and had a reputation as a goofball and a computer nerd; a fellow junior with a short stature and and light, close-cut hair, his friends knew of whom they'd be wisest to employ assistance, when it came to technology.
"So, I heard that Miguel Santos really had it in for the chemistry professor today," Alec said, his eyes set on the laptop's flat screen as his fingers flitted across the keyboard faster than anyone else in the school.
"How'd you hear about that so fast?" Ienji frowned. "It happened less than ten minutes ago, and the bell only sounded two minutes past."
Alec removed his gaze from the screen for a moment to lock eyes with Ienji, letting a good-natured smile fill his expression. "The speed of sound is one thousand sixty-two kilometers per hour," he replied.
For some reason, Ienji felt that there was an element of deception in his friend's response, but he let it pass. "Anyway, you heard correctly--he questioned the intelligence of the teacher, the quality of the curriculum, and the motivations of the school administration. He was sent down to the office--oh, here he is now," Ienji finished.
All three turned to the break room door, as Miguel passed through, hands in his pockets. He appeared quite frustrated. They watched as he took a seat at the mostly-empty end of a long table, by himself.
"Looks like he just got back," Jared inputted. Alec nodded agreement.
Ienji was suddenly very alert, as though expectant. His new sense, what he had assumed to be empathy, was feeling something else, something that didn't feel like the product of the human mind.
--Evan--
Evan had followed the movement of the juniors from his trigonometry class, and had eventually arrived at what a low sign on the door indicated was the 'student lounge'.
He took a seat on a table already occupied by several preppies, off to the side a seat or so, but not so much that he was disassociated from the crowd. He noticed that in the center of table, and doing most of the talking, was Andrea; in Japanese, not English like before.
"And so when I asked her what had happened, she told me she'd set the clock forward twelve hours because she didn't want to have to subtract twelve to the hour every time," he overheard her relate. Several friends laughed. "And that's why I was late today, to answer your question," she concluded.
Suddenly, she turned and glanced over to the end of the table, at Evan. He froze. "Oh, look, everyone, it's Evan. He's new here, apparently," she informed her friends.
Evan reflected that he'd have to change tactics; now that he'd been identified and brought to attention, he couldn't so easily just sit down anywhere and try to pick up nearby conversation.
"Yes, I'm from the United States. I don't speak this language well," he replied. He hoped that last comment might discourage excessive conversation; he didn't want to stand out, he had a job to do.
"Welcome to Siojaton! Oh, you don't? Well, you'll probably be needing lots of practice, which I'm sure everyone here will be happy to provide in part; and I do love conversation!" She said that last sentence fragment in a comical tone of voice, and then laughed her clear, good-natured laugh.
She continued, "I'm from America, too; I came here when I was nine. You'll fit right in, considering that the city is very multicultural, due to the recent trends in globalization. There's a lot going down around here!" She spoke the last sentence in English, and let out a laugh.
Evan grinned; it was more habit that response, although both in part. This girl was indeed a social butterfly, and he found himself charmed by her benevolent personality.
Still, he had a job to do. Andrea turned back to speak to her friends about some test she'd taken first period, and Evan took the chance to look around the room.
He sat in a seat on a table in a rectangular room, twice as long as it was wide. Mostly juniors, but possibly a few sophomores and seniors, inhabited the recreational space. Two sofas, ten tables of various shapes and sizes, two oft-frequented soda machines, and a few folding chairs littered the area.
There was little to no supervision; it seemed to Evan that the school had the attitude that students should be expected to behave themselves when left to their own devices.
Glancing sideways, he checked to see that no one was looking, and briefly materialized his ghost digivice and slipped it into his bookbag, where he could reach his hand in to manipulate the device without little risk
of being noticed.
Working quickly and quietly, he set up a detector field, to sense for any potentials, which he would in turn locate and confront in due time. As he configured the visual display, he frowned.
For some reason, his GD wasn't working correctly; had he made a mistake? It should show only two blue dots, himself and Ienji, as the only two in the school to have passed through the forging and have digivices--with a few other red dots to show mere potentials, those who would need his guidance.
But, for some reason, the 3D projection of his ghost digivice showed roughly a dozen blue dots, with zero red dots. Which simply wasn't possible. Unless.... but, no, the early forging time for Ienji had simply been a miscalculation. Right?
He was about to re-evaluate the program on his digivice to find where he'd made the error--whether in display or data recognition--when one of the blue dots suddenly began to pulse.
Evan's jaw dropped. There was no time to make adjustments--this could only mean one thing. Several students glanced up at him in surprise as he raced out the door and down the hall.
--Evan--
As Evan stepped out the door of the trigonometry classroom, he reflected that he was beginning to get the hang of this high school.
His trig teacher had been pretty laid back, but he hadn't had a chance to materialize his GD to begin monitoring any possible potentials in the area. There had been a considerably less amount of note-taking, and a bit more discussion.
The class had been composed entirely of his fellow juniors. He'd had a chance to hear many of them speak; it seemed that although they all knew Japanese fairly well, many spoke with accents. There was a lot of diversity; not just cultural, but emotional and psychological. He could sense it.
The girl, Andrea, was, from what he could tell, half-preppie and half-class clown. A social butterfly, too; he sensed that she was very receptive to the feelings of others.
Evan checked his schedule and found that he apparently had a free block now, along with the rest of his class, and--from what he could tell--half the school.
He followed along with the crowd and hoped they were all going to the same place to spend their free block.
--Ienji--
As Ienji passed into the halls and let himself merge with the tide of students heading to the break rooms and student lounge.
This was a familiar scene to him, as students at SHS had collective free blocks three days out of the eight-day rotating class schedule. Kids were given an hour to hang out with their peers; often many would take advantage of the free time to study or complete work for a more difficult class.
Ienji always took the opportunity to simply relax and enjoy time with friends. As he reflected upon this, he spotted Jared and Alec across the hall, and walked over to them.
The three friends found a table in the break room. The low murmer of conversation was present, although on this quiet Monday morning, the mood seemed less bouyant than usual, Ienji could feel.
Siojaton High was located in the south side of the city; the area shared several other high schools, so the 15-to-18-year-old population was divided among several local schools. This year, the high school served about five hundred kids, which was more than previous years.
As the three settled down, flopping their backpacks and bookbags onto the circular table, Ienji looked around. There were at least fifty kids in the area, mostly freshmen and sophomores. The juniors (in general) usually picked the student lounge as their free block hangout, while seniors, of course, went to the senior lounge.
There were exceptions, of course, and there was free passage between all free block areas.
Ienji took out his binder, deciding he might attempt to study for the history quiz later in the week; he hoped that having a focus would help him ignore some of the stranger feelings he was experiencing through this 'empathy'.
Jared and Alec took out a chemistry notebook and a thin silver laptop, respectively. The latter (kid) was rarely seen without it, and had a reputation as a goofball and a computer nerd; a fellow junior with a short stature and and light, close-cut hair, his friends knew of whom they'd be wisest to employ assistance, when it came to technology.
"So, I heard that Miguel Santos really had it in for the chemistry professor today," Alec said, his eyes set on the laptop's flat screen as his fingers flitted across the keyboard faster than anyone else in the school.
"How'd you hear about that so fast?" Ienji frowned. "It happened less than ten minutes ago, and the bell only sounded two minutes past."
Alec removed his gaze from the screen for a moment to lock eyes with Ienji, letting a good-natured smile fill his expression. "The speed of sound is one thousand sixty-two kilometers per hour," he replied.
For some reason, Ienji felt that there was an element of deception in his friend's response, but he let it pass. "Anyway, you heard correctly--he questioned the intelligence of the teacher, the quality of the curriculum, and the motivations of the school administration. He was sent down to the office--oh, here he is now," Ienji finished.
All three turned to the break room door, as Miguel passed through, hands in his pockets. He appeared quite frustrated. They watched as he took a seat at the mostly-empty end of a long table, by himself.
"Looks like he just got back," Jared inputted. Alec nodded agreement.
Ienji was suddenly very alert, as though expectant. His new sense, what he had assumed to be empathy, was feeling something else, something that didn't feel like the product of the human mind.
--Evan--
Evan had followed the movement of the juniors from his trigonometry class, and had eventually arrived at what a low sign on the door indicated was the 'student lounge'.
He took a seat on a table already occupied by several preppies, off to the side a seat or so, but not so much that he was disassociated from the crowd. He noticed that in the center of table, and doing most of the talking, was Andrea; in Japanese, not English like before.
"And so when I asked her what had happened, she told me she'd set the clock forward twelve hours because she didn't want to have to subtract twelve to the hour every time," he overheard her relate. Several friends laughed. "And that's why I was late today, to answer your question," she concluded.
Suddenly, she turned and glanced over to the end of the table, at Evan. He froze. "Oh, look, everyone, it's Evan. He's new here, apparently," she informed her friends.
Evan reflected that he'd have to change tactics; now that he'd been identified and brought to attention, he couldn't so easily just sit down anywhere and try to pick up nearby conversation.
"Yes, I'm from the United States. I don't speak this language well," he replied. He hoped that last comment might discourage excessive conversation; he didn't want to stand out, he had a job to do.
"Welcome to Siojaton! Oh, you don't? Well, you'll probably be needing lots of practice, which I'm sure everyone here will be happy to provide in part; and I do love conversation!" She said that last sentence fragment in a comical tone of voice, and then laughed her clear, good-natured laugh.
She continued, "I'm from America, too; I came here when I was nine. You'll fit right in, considering that the city is very multicultural, due to the recent trends in globalization. There's a lot going down around here!" She spoke the last sentence in English, and let out a laugh.
Evan grinned; it was more habit that response, although both in part. This girl was indeed a social butterfly, and he found himself charmed by her benevolent personality.
Still, he had a job to do. Andrea turned back to speak to her friends about some test she'd taken first period, and Evan took the chance to look around the room.
He sat in a seat on a table in a rectangular room, twice as long as it was wide. Mostly juniors, but possibly a few sophomores and seniors, inhabited the recreational space. Two sofas, ten tables of various shapes and sizes, two oft-frequented soda machines, and a few folding chairs littered the area.
There was little to no supervision; it seemed to Evan that the school had the attitude that students should be expected to behave themselves when left to their own devices.
Glancing sideways, he checked to see that no one was looking, and briefly materialized his ghost digivice and slipped it into his bookbag, where he could reach his hand in to manipulate the device without little risk
of being noticed.
Working quickly and quietly, he set up a detector field, to sense for any potentials, which he would in turn locate and confront in due time. As he configured the visual display, he frowned.
For some reason, his GD wasn't working correctly; had he made a mistake? It should show only two blue dots, himself and Ienji, as the only two in the school to have passed through the forging and have digivices--with a few other red dots to show mere potentials, those who would need his guidance.
But, for some reason, the 3D projection of his ghost digivice showed roughly a dozen blue dots, with zero red dots. Which simply wasn't possible. Unless.... but, no, the early forging time for Ienji had simply been a miscalculation. Right?
He was about to re-evaluate the program on his digivice to find where he'd made the error--whether in display or data recognition--when one of the blue dots suddenly began to pulse.
Evan's jaw dropped. There was no time to make adjustments--this could only mean one thing. Several students glanced up at him in surprise as he raced out the door and down the hall.