"Seriously, it took the kid about five minutes," Dearka chuckled. "It was almost painful to watch." I laughed with him at the thought of Nicol struggling to take apart and reassemble the gun. That guy really had no idea, did he?
"I'm going to head to the cafeteria," Dearka said. "Wanna come with?" I shook my head and told him that I'd already eaten, and we parted ways. I decided that I was going to head to the mobile suit hanger. My last OS programming test results had been, well, below my expectations. In other words, terrible. I wasn't horrible at OS programming, but if I was going to be picked for the Le Creuset team, I needed to be able to program any mobile suit with ease. If I had trouble with my training Zaku, then I was going to need more practice.
Turning into another hallway, I saw Orga Sabnak leaning against a wall, but he hadn't seen me yet. Orga just plain creeped me out. That kid always had this sort of weird smirk on his face like he had an inside joke with himself. He and his little group of friends always hung around in corners, whispering, like they had their own hidden agenda. Maybe they did.
Still not having seen me, Orga was acting really weird, even for him. His fingers were twitching and his eyes were wide open. He seemed out of breath, gasping, and it looked like the wall was the only thing that held him up and kept him from crashing to the floor. He looked as if he was in pain. Too shocked and confused to say anything, I just stood and watched as he pulled something out of his pocket, a little brown flask, and drained the whole thing in one gulp.
All of a sudden, he was fine again. His breathing returned to normal and he stood up straight again. Taking a deep breath, he made a noise that sounded like a sigh of relief, and then pulled out a phone and began to speak into it.
"Clotho? Yeah, it's just me," he said. He must have meant Clotho Buer, one of his friends. "Yeah, I'm fine now. Listen, the Amalfi kid? Yeah, he's alone now." He paused while the person on the other end spoke, then he replied, "No, he's pretty skilled at OS. He could hypothetically pull it off." He paused again. "No, he doesn't really have any friends. Look, it's no problem, alright? Get into position. I'll meet you, and then we'll talk, okay?" He finished speaking and put the mobile phone back in his pocket. It was then that he saw me. His eyes widened and then quickly narrowed at me.
"You keep your mouth shut, alright?" he said quietly but menacingly, and then stormed off. What the hell did I just witness? More confused than ever, I turned and headed back in the other direction. I didn't even know where I was going, I only knew that it was the opposite way to Orga and that's what mattered.
I realised that I was standing outside the doors to the presentation hall when I heard music being played from inside. Piano notes of a tune that I didn't know drifted out of the hall. I immediately knew that it was Nicol, because no one else can play piano like that. On important occasions someone gets up and plays a few tunes, like the PLANT national anthem, but this was far from that. The music I could hear was classical, and sounded pretty old. With nothing better to do, I leaned my head against the door, closed my eyes and just listened, remembering what Orga had said. What was he talking about Nicol for?
I'm not sure how long I stood there, ten minutes maybe? I realised how tired I was. But I opened my eyes again when the lights all turned off suddenly. With no windows in this part of the building, I was plunged into complete darkness for a few seconds before the emergency lights came on. Nicol had stopped playing when the lights went off, but now he began to play again. He either didn't notice that something was wrong, or just didn't care. But I was now even more confused. This building and its power generator were state of the art. We never had blackouts, ever. Something was going on here, I just knew it. Leaving Nicol to finish his piece, I decided to investigate further.