Amadeus crept through the sewers, his sensitive nose causing him to struggle with breathing even with a mask on, the smell of human waste nearly caused him to hurl. He checked the time on his watch, the sun was setting. He would be allowed some more freedom soon.
Damn them. Amadeus thought cursing at everyone that caused him to wind up here. Those heroes, that biker, the police, and the dumb old man for being able to escape before he caught him. Damn them all.
Because of them he had to stay underground for the last fifteen hours. But at least he was safe, what's more, he managed to move himself into a secluded location at the outskirts of the city. A place where he could get himself a meal.
Amadeus scowled again at the thought of having to consume the blood of a homeless person. How did he get reduced down to this? No matter now, he's too hungry to act that dignified, not that he won't feel the humiliation still.
Lifting the sewer grate out he pushed his bag out first before crawling out himself. He took a deep breath of the crisp, fresh air, finally free from all the filth. Letting out a relieved sigh he looked around his surroundings he saw the city to his east, while to his west were a few houses littered about.
Those weren't his focus however, it was the slightly more forested area that interested him. It was less travelled and more untamed, which made it perfect for the poor to set up small camps. Losing a couple of them wouldn't matter to city, no one even knew of them in the first place.
Stretching out his new wings a bit Amadeus smiled as he began to creep towards the nearest camp. He saw the camp lightly illuminated and the silhouette of someone crawling into bed and lying down. What a perfect target.
"Hey, so you ran from me last time." A voice said to his left.
Amadeus froze in place as if hoping that not moving would somehow hide his presence. Slowly though, he did turn his head over to see who was talking to him. The same annoying S-rank student that nearly caught him last night, Jarold Walker, stood above a small hill and leered down at him.
"Hey so I'm going to need you to surrender yourself. Or don't and I'll just kill you." Jarold said as he tapped his sword on his shoulder as he watched Amadeus casually.
Amadeus stared at Jarold and began to hyperventilate, "H-h-h-how?" He stammered out.
"You're not as smart as you think you are. So if you want to be smart then you should give up." Jarold said, "I would rather not have to drag a corpse back."
Amadeus grabbed his bag and tossed it at Jarold, Walker rolled his eyes and quickly sliced the bag in two. Though the resulting bag blowing up in his face was not what he expected.
"Glarrrghh!" Jarold cried out as the bag exploded. The explosion wasn't the most destructive, but the smoke that filled the air went straight into his lungs. Immediately he began to hack and cough as his eyes watered.
Jumping out of the cloud of smoke, Jarold tried to blink away the pain in his eyes. As he recovered, he looked around only to find Amadeus gone again. Jarold fumed and screamed up into the night sky in frustration.
"Where are you!" He yelled out as he began to try and track Amadeus down again.
Amadeus on the other hand, was currently grinning ear to ear as he skulked away behind a house with the lights currently off. Getting a meal right now was going to be difficult and Amadeus salivated as he smelled the residents inside the home. But he needed to control himself, especially considering there weren't many places to hide right now.
He'll go further away from the city and then loop back around to target one of these homes later tonight. He would still need to be careful of Jarold and any backup that arrives, but Amadeus needed something to sustain him soon. He'll get something tonight, he has to. He gave up all his remaining items to escape, he needs to get something out of this.
As Amadeus gave himself a much-needed pep talk, he saw someone standing right in front of him. Looming in front of him was a massive shadowy figure. Where the face was supposed to be was replaced with a black glossy reflection of dread.
No mouth, no eyes, no nose, just darkness faced Amadeus. The head was too big and round to be a human's, and in the darkness the rest of the body was imperceptible. As Amadeus opened his mouth to scream, a black-gloved hand wrapped around his mouth. Screaming in agony as he felt as though his jaw was being crushed, the strange figure peered down at him.
"Let's go for a ride." Hissed out from the faceless man, the voice was not human. It was echoing, crackling, rasping, hissing, it was a cross between a reptile and a machine trying to form words. More than that though, there was a tinge of glee as it addressed the cowering Amadeus.
What happened next was Jarold hearing the sounds of a motorcycle igniting before quickly vanishing. Jarold looked around, only to come up empty as Mercy Cowen and Lothar Pontus met up with the seething Walker.
***
"Like I advised you earlier, you should have just waited for us to arrive. Then we could have caught him together. He wouldn't have escaped then, as you said before, he only had the one bag." Lothar lectured Jarold as they made their way back to Trinity Academy.
"If I waited for you he would have already been on a feeding frenzy." Jarold snapped back as they stopped before the school gates.
"Jarold has a point. We came too late." Mercy said.
"We needed to get approval." Lothar reminded the two, "If you just ran around destroying parts of the city without anyone knowing you would be in trouble. You're an S-rank we need to make sure people know that you are special."
"Yeah, but the time it took would have gotten someone killed." Jarold countered.
"If he did kill someone, it just gives us more reason to eliminate him." Lothar said.
Jarold furrowed his brow as he reacted to that last comment, but before he could say something a police cruiser pulled up. Followed by an unmarked police cruiser, a green older model car that was around since the great calamity, well-maintained, mostly. From the passenger seat stepped out Inspector Xiao.
"What brings you here Inspector Xiao?" Mercy asked.
"We got a message to meet you here." He said calmly as he addressed the driver, "Helio, did you remind the others to bring the proper restraints?"
"Yeah I got it boss." Detective Helio said, "But isn't this overkill?"
"Overkill? What do you mean by that?" Jarold asked as the police officers in the other vehicle pulled out two large, strange-looking manacles from the trunk.
"What is that used for?" Mercy asked looking at the chains.
"Apparently they're meant for wings." Detective Helio said.
"Wings?" Jarold asked.
"What was the message?" Lothar asked.
"It was about a breakthrough with a subject, it told us to meet here. It gave us a valid code, so we came after following the instructions. We thought it was sent by one of the professors." Inspector Xiao answered.
Jarold turned to Lothar only to find him equally confused. But before any of them could figure out anything more, they heard the cries of a man in agony.
"I recognize that voice." Jarold muttered as everyone turned to the source of the noise.
From the darkness came crawling out Amadeus Count, his usual face was bleeding and cut, one of his eyes swelled to the point where he couldn't see through it. He desperately crawled his way over, his body was battered, his clothes were ripped.
"H-help, me…" He croaked out.
Inspector Xiao immediately began to approach Amadeus along with everyone else. Everyone held the same confused expression as they saw the state that Amadeus was in. His wings were broken, and there were holes torn through the leathery wings.
As Xiao went to take a step closer, Helio moved in front of him in a protective manner. Jarold then walked right in front of the prone Amadeus and looked down at him.
"What happened?" He demanded. Amadeus desperately grabbed at Jarold's pants, trembling as he looked up at Jarold, eyes pleading for help.
"I-I'll tell you everything… please! Just keep me away from that thing! I'll say whatever you want!" Amadeus begged.
"Stay away from what?" Jarold asked as he noticed that Amadeus's legs were tied together with a metal chain.
As he traced the chain back to its source, he heard a clink and a clatter in the darkness. Someone unhooked the chain from their side. Trying to squint through the darkness and use the little light the streetlamps could offer and saw the silhouette of something. It was too dark to tell, and at least the upper area looked vaguely human.
A moment later they heard the roar of a motor engine and Amadeus visibly flinched, "No! No! No! Please!" He cried out clutching at his head as the dark form rapidly grew distance between it and the group.
"It's gone… it's gone! Thank you! Thank you!" Amadeus sobbed as he curled up into a ball shaking.
"What happened?" Mercy asked Amadeus.
"I'll tell you everything… I did it… I did all of it." Amadeus managed to sob out.
***
Archer as he changed into his sleepwear, pulled out his phone and texted a few messages in the main group chat to tell the others that everything should be done on his end. Immediately he received a few responses back demanding more details.
Archer gave a small smile as he texted back vaguely that he caught Amadeus and he would be spilling everything. Also, he told Professor Phil already and that Alice should be expecting quite a few guests soon. Which promptly caused some angry replies from Alice, which Archer laughed off and explained that she would need to cover for Esme. Archer then promptly shut his phone off and went to bed.
***
09/09/3122 YDB – September 11th, 3122
As Archer Griffen made his way down the street to the main gate of Trinity Academy, he was surprised to see who was standing in the front checking the students. Esme Soto stood there with newly repaired glasses and meticulously checked every student that went by.
"Is two days with me gone all it took for everyone to go back to their bad habits? Trinity Academy needs to maintain its status!" Esme said as another aggravated student stomped away from her.
"You're back early." Archer said looking surprised.
"I made sure to have my name cleared and everything sorted before sunrise." Esme replied smoothly, as if everything that happened these last few days hadn't occurred.
"That doesn't sound like you had much sleep." Archer said looking concerned.
"I had a quick nap. Besides after the medicine I feel great." Esme said practically beaming.
"Well that's good to hear." Archer said as he prepared to enter through the gate.
"Hold on. Tuck in your shirt." Esme said halting him.
"Hmm?" Archer looked down and saw that his shirt wasn't properly tucked in, "Oh my bad." He said before giving a small laugh, "Looks like you're doing better already." Archer complimented.
"Thank you." Esme said as she quickly glanced up from her clipboard at Archer as he walked by her, "Also, thank you Archer."
Archer gave a smile in response and walked away into the school towards his first class. It seemed that school life had no change over the recent matter, no mention of the animal pen situation being resolved. Nor was there any mention of Esme or anything, school life simply continued.
The rest of the school day continued on as normal and as he was about to leave he felt his phone vibrate. Checking it he saw that Julia was demanding for a secret meeting and that Esme was added into the group chat. Archer pondered for a moment before deciding to relent.
Following the instructions, he headed towards an empty classroom to have his meeting. As he walked down the halls he passed by a professor in a lab coat who dropped a few pens. Archer quickly bent down and picked it up for her.
"Thank you."
"No problem." Archer said with a positive smile as he continued on. He quickly made his way to the empty room and poked his head through it, "Am I late?" He asked as he saw that Julia, Luna, and Esme were waiting for him.
"No I just got here a minute ago." Esme said as she seemed to be looking at her hand.
"So what are we meeting about?" Archer asked coyly closing the door behind him.
"You know exactly why. What happened?" Julia asked.
"Can't Esme explain that?" Archer asked.
"Well I don't know everything." Esme pointed out.
"Fair enough." Archer said, "Okay, so me and Professor Doyle had been having a conversation on how to solve the whole issue with Esme for a few days now. We made a story in which a mysterious student was employed by him to help chase the big bad monster down in secret."
"Which is why they never asked me much about you despite them knowing someone helped me." Esme said.
"Yeah. Professors request for secret commissions all the time here apparently so even the S-ranks couldn't pursue my identity due to the lack of permission."
"And then you could make the excuse of saving Esme because Professor Doyle gave you the job to do so as an experiment." Julia surmised.
"Exactly." Archer said nodding, "Though that was only possible because Amadeus did tell the police everything exonerating Esme as a victim."
"They used me to write quite the narrative, but I can't complain seeing that they will be overlooking my new additions." Esme said bearing a set of sharp fangs, "Didn't even question if I was stable or not."
"The police didn't?" Archer said.
"The police couldn't, it was deemed a school affair and the quieter it could be the better." Esme said with a shrug.
"The school seems very comfortable with the death of their students occurring." Luna said with an uneasy look on her face.
"Only the strongest survive is a motto here." Julia said, "As long as no major names wind up dying the school is given a pass."
"I mean, I understand the risks of death when signing up here. But I didn't think they would be so careless about it." Luna said.
"To be fair. It's specifically a lot worse this year only due to multiple different factors. But don't worry, as long as I catch wind of an issue I'll be around to try and stop it." Archer said.
"Don't overwork yourself." Luna said concerned.
"No need to concern yourself with me." Archer said.
"Then give us a reason to." Julia said, "Let us know what's happening."
"I don't know if that's a good idea."
"Why not? It helped this time and last time too. Wouldn't it be easier for everybody if you keep us up to date?" Julia pointed out.
"Yeah, I need to repay your kindness." Esme said.
"But that's not your job. It's my job."
"You've told me you're in training. Well so are we." Esme said.
"Uh, I mean, I volunteered for this."
"And we're volunteering for this too. We're not going to turn a blind eye when you need help!" Luna stated.
"But shouldn't you just live high school life?" Archer said looking overwhelmed.
"Archer, if you haven't noticed, this kind of thing is high school life for Trinity Academy." Julia said flatly.
"… You got me there." Archer admitted, "Fine I'll tell you more about any new jobs I get, but you can only help when I ask okay? I don't want things to get needlessly complicated if I can avoid it."
"Of course." Julia said with a smile as Emse and Luna nodded their heads.
"Three people in two weeks, I'm bad at this undercover stuff." Archer said shaking his head as he then asked Esme, "Anyways I'm guessing all this high energy despite the lack of proper rest has something to do with the two different shots you had this week?"
Esme nodded, "I feel a lot stronger than I did before."
"How much stronger?" Archer asked.
In response Esme pulled out a small coin and snapped it in two, "About this much." She said before bending the two halves into quarters.
"Guessing you couldn't do that before." Archer said looking at the destroyed coin, "You know it's illegal to deface currency right?"
"I- uh, didn't mean it!" She said panicked.
"Cravings?" Archer said getting back on topic.
"Professor Phil gave me a rundown, I just need a glass or two of blood every few days to function. The school will supply me with some blood, so no need to worry. Also binge drinking won't make me stronger for the most part."
"Most part?" Luna said looking curious.
"He theorized that I might get some boosts when I drink blood of someone with powers." Esme said as she seemed to salivate a little, "I wonder how that would taste." She asked as her pupils seemed to dilate a bit.
Archer gave a quick glance at his wrist before looking back up, "That craving thing needs to be monitored for a bit it seems. But aside from that it seems like you'll be fine."
"So then it's official? We're part of your team?" Luna asked.
"Yeah, something like that I guess." Archer said with a shrug before he got a message on his phone, checking it he saw it was from Phil Doyle, "Looks like I need to leave this meeting. Duty calls."
"Tell us after." Julia demanded, "We joined this school for things like this."
"Understood." Archer said finding it hard to disagree with that statement, "But make sure to act like you don't know me during school okay? Need to not raise any suspicion." He said as he left and quickly made his way discreetly towards Professor Doyle's office.
Upon making it to his office, Archer knocked on the door and poked his head in, "You called?"
"Archer good to see you. I take it that your meeting with the girls went well?" Phil responded looking up from his computer.
"You know about that?"
"I assumed."
"Hmm. So what is it that you wanted to talk about?"
"Someone likely going to be a problem for you for a while." Phil said, "One of our professors seems to have the misfortune of having a bloodline of demons."
"Feels like something that should be vetted earlier."
"Well normally it wouldn't be a problem as it should be unable to be activated, but recent actions have caused me to be concerned."
"Recent actions?"
"I've been following Evan and Petyr's actions, they seem to have a keen interest in the professor," Phil explained.
"I see." Archer nodded his head. He has told Phil about how he thought Evan and Petyr had some knowledge of future events. Though he did omit the fact that they might be under the direction of gods, "So who's this person of interest?"
"Professor Lilith Lilac, she holds the bloodline of the demon king." Phill said turning the monitor around and showing Archer a picture of her on a screen. She was a lady in her twenties, with brown hair that went just down to her neck and green eyes. Her portrait had her wearing a white lab coat and she smiled kindly at the camera.
Archer blinked in surprise, "I just walked by her earlier."