Quad Four, albeit without Sam, walked through the neighborhood without much of a goal to reach. It was only mindless walking throughout. Their steps dragged the ground beneath them, a gravelly noise the result of that action. Between each member of the group, none of them were in the mood to be in a casual conversation, specifically after hearing so much negativity at school.
At school, Tom was hesitant to talk about his dreams to become a movie star, starting by getting scouted by the local industry at Torrent Media Studios. Bobby Belarus stopped mentioning his clothes and his connections to many people. Dawson became more aggressive in his actions, and Kana Namuro, with a tense look on her face, looked like she had a lot of baggage on her. And Nate was sure that Lucia was taking advantage of the situation going on somehow. Then there was the sole security guard, Mortin Kowpinn, as he was even checking on adults like the teachers Mr. Yathek and Mr. Mouch. Him constantly peering through the corners of the school, itching to find the perpetrators of crimes that weren't even committed yet.
The only thing that was remotely interesting around them while walking in the street was their homeroom classmate, Charter Buss, on his wobbly, worn-out-looking bicycle that looked too small for his already short figure. Even with him riding right by Nate, he chose not to say "hello", out of the ridiculous fear that he might make Quad Four do something bad.
The wisps of whispers about the mysterious green gases above the city circulated throughout the high school, and even beyond the school's boundaries, as if nobody paid attention to it, and they talked about the whole criminal thing with Jed. One rumor from Marlene Toberwell that rapidly bounced from one unknowing person to another was that Jed. It was crazy with the attention the whole matter was receiving; Jed wasn't that impactful of a guy himself, and then suddenly everyone talked about him like they were personal friends.
The gossip must've driven Cloey crazy, because she herded the rest of Quad Four out of the school, not unlike Sam when he was really focused on getting them to return home from Honoway Mall. Speaking of which, Nate noted from before that Sam had not been appearing in his classes for the majority of the time, only with times after school was where Quad Four could see him.
Cloey was in front of the group, her distressed hands gripped her dress as if there was no tomorrow at all. She looked like a lot was going on with her mind, additionally with her feet shuffling. It wasn't really surprising, with Jed being a part of Cloey's friend's list, to the surprise of absolutely no one, that the list almost involved everyone.
"Alright, this is it," she grumbled softly, not trying to sound too gruff. "I'm gonna go put some stickers everywhere in my room."
The rest of Quad Four blinked at her sudden exclamation. Nate himself was too tired to even properly hear, and only heard the basic meaning of her sentence by the slurring. Sheila almost bumped into him before catching herself because of her reading while walking, which to Nate sounded like a hard talent to do.
"What are you talking about? We walked towards nowhere, and you want us to leave? What's up with you, Cloey?" Manson firmly asked.
"I wonder if everything's alright? You do seem a little moody..." Nate stated to Cloey.
"It's really nothing. Just feelin' a bit unwell."
Manson scoffed in his own jacket collar. "Just a bit? Yeah, maybe a little too unwell for you, Cloey, with you being joyfully ignorant all the time."
Cloey uncharacteristically shot him a glare, making Nate back off in concern over her new personality. "Yeah, well, something that is too much is also your hair, Manson. Like, really? The brown part of your head looks so flat."
"Huh?!" Manson exclaimed as he patted the top of his hair down. "What's that s'pose to mean?"
"I'm just saying, it is a little not ordinary..."
Manson was offended by the comment; his eyes welled up with formed tears, but Nate was not sure that was the case.
"If you're going to be like that, then why bother with us at all? You could just leave and do things yourself. And I didn't want to go and sulk about how this day is all sad or anything like that. I'm leaving whether you like it or not!"
"Manson!" Nate exclaimed to him.
"Stop it, Nate, stop making yourself feel like you have anything to say about it. At least keep to yourself like Sheila."
His words made Nate stop whatever he was going to say. He thought he would make everything worse if he tried to intervene.
Sheila stared at the three of them uncomfortably, preferring not to make any sound that might draw the whole attention to her. She held on to her book as though any sound might set her off and pull it out like a gun.
"Then... I'm going..."
Don't worry.
Those were the words Nate stated to himself. He wouldn't worry about the whole ordeal that just happened right now since it was unavoidable for conflict to arise every so often. It was a natural part of life in a friend group, especially in a normally outlandish group like Quad Four. This problem was no different than the bickering and squabbling when Sam was with them. Meaning if enough time had passed, all of them would probably bounce back up in their normal selves, instantly forgetting what made them temporarily apart.
As soon as Cloey said those words to the group, she stormed off, probably towards her own home. Manson went in the other direction, fixing his hair and mumbling something about having it as a natural color with no products used. Sheila... being the quiet Sheila... left as she was also uncomfortable with the group branching off into separate paths. For Nate, with no other things left on his schedule for his friends, he went off to the Vivid Forest, something he was expecting there with his summoned sword, Rupture.
"Looks like this is a time for myself; might as well make the most of it with my power..."
* * *
Nate sharply raised his arms above his head and noticed pops rang through his arms and neck. The sudden relief made him sigh intensely as he stared at the emptiness of the forest in front of him.
The forest he was in was not some new or random forest, but the notorious Vivid Forest. Only in the daytime, though, as Nate felt safer walking through.
A lot of things were scrambling in his weak mind. He thought that he was a normal, ordinary human being, whose future was of little to no fault at all.
But things have been chaotic ever since the first explosion of the Theomin green crystals, back when Quad Four explored Vivid Forest for their science project ideas.
Back to back, those things called Fadens, as the bounty hunter would call them, were monsters that somehow seemed drawn to him at all times. He literally couldn't take a break; as one Faden was either they would be killed, defeated, or somehow ran away, one would take its place. Encounters happened everywhere he would go.
Is it really for Nate to handle this all alone? The pressure from knowing that only he and Colten were the ones with special abilities within Standart City, it could only tense to a certain point.
He made a decision internally that he would try to find Colten, and until then, Nate would try to defend the city from anything or anyone that might threaten him.
Nate would then admit that he wasn't ready mentally for him to be known to the public if he was known to the public. It was selfish of him to do that; that much he could accept, but for his life to become something not ordinary.
He couldn't take the chance. As he made himself stronger in the meantime, to defeat more Fadens until there were no more, that was the part he would quit fighting and let himself rest, giving the chance for others to have their moment.
After a few days of trying to properly maintain the form of his summoned sword, today was the day that he could hold it without disrupting its whole figure.
He held out his recently made sword, Rupture, it was called, and pointed it towards the sun. The gleaming light playfully bounced in the metallic gray of the blade; the curved tip of the sword spoke "distinct" in the way it looked. The pommel and the guard remained in mint condition, like it always presented itself that way when materializing the sword every time. But the best of all, the brown, leathery felt natural to hold, albeit Nate summoned the sword in a casual setting, not in the midst of a battle.
With this weapon in hand, it was his only chance he could against the Fadens, no doubt. He lowered his sword and walked onto the path ahead.
* * *
Nate walked towards the forest with his hands in his pockets. Trying to distract his impending doom-like sensations from completely interfering with his nerves, such as using his nose to track the direction of the forest's scent or hearing the choir of the critters' chirping in the shrubbery.
In a new direction of the forest, somewhere where it is not the Trapsting Faden's Lone Site, or the Nistral Manor grounds by the coast. Perhaps for him, breathing in the fresh air of nature in a new part of Vivid Forest would clear his mind.
It would continue that way until he found himself in an open area.
Nate glanced around and saw a small pond surrounded by tall grass. In fact, this was the only big water source that he had seen while searching through the forest.
Based on what he heard of the details of the place, supposedly there was a body of shallow water somewhere moderately deep in the forest. The area with this body of water was called Lilac Pond, one of the few notable landmarks of Vivid Forest.
A faint shuffling of feet was barely perceptible to the busy Nate Elfirm practicing his swings. He stopped and hunched over nearby shrubbery, hiding his hands still holding his weapon.
He scanned the area, a faint hope glimmering within his gut, wanting it to be nothing, or at least little critters passing by. Nate felt that he should at least talk to someone about his secret parts of his life, even to an animal, which would make him feel like a crazy person like the disappeared homeless guy without anyone seeing him for a long time.
With only the occasional fallen leaves dancing in the air as if they were on a solid dance floor, and the tweeting of birds flying overhead, he dismissed his own concern and proceeded to go on foot, but what was next made him stop.
From a neighboring bush just a few meters away from him, a green-black spider-like creature with little snippy claws where it rustled lightly as it emerged. Following the first, a second creature made its appearance, but this time there was a turret gun shape carved on the top of its head, ready to fire anything straight ahead.
Based on the bizarre biology and appearance of the creature, and the similar color schemes that were on the other monsters Nate had witnessed, Nate definitely knew that those two were definitely Fadens, not just any Fadens but actually harmless living training dummies that Nate was using for practice against. He encountered them while exploring Vivid Forest for clues about his powers several days back. At first, his fear rose as he saw them, but when these two tried to kill him, it didn't even feel painful at all. Nate inferred that his ability had strengthened his skin passively or something like that.
The one with the snipping claws was called the Itsy Faden, and the one that looked like it could shoot projectiles was called the Bitsy Faden. No matter how much he tried to kill them both, they would always come back in this specific place. Nate couldn't tell if they were the same ones from before or if they were merely different spider-like Fadens, because he only found them in Vivid Forest, and the fact that Nate only came across one type of Faden each encounter.
Regardless of how he felt, the little Fadens were the size of a plastic water bottle, and they were easy targets for the strikes from his Rupture. Though the name for his sword seemed a bit corny and made Nate think that he was bad at naming things, like the time he proposed his friend group name as the Quad Four.
As he used his Rupture to attack Itsy and Bitsy to pieces, they would immediately be slashed into pieces and then withered away into dust. Then mysteriously, after waiting for five minutes upon their "death", the two creatures would emerge yet again from the bushes, puzzling Nate to question his hypothesis.
He told himself that he would learn more about them in the future, and that right now he should practice his sword swings, since he didn't even have formal training with a normal, basic sword at all in his whole life.
* * *
More than thirty minutes had passed since he started swinging his sword, although simple and took a while to see slightly considerable change, Nate was able to see that his swings were much more straightforward and not shaky like last time. Not to mention the handling of Rupture's weight was much more manageable to him as he swung in all types of directions. As he made contact with Rupture against Itsy, he was able to decrease the time to prepare for another strike after a rebound.
It wasn't much, but it was work that seemed to pay off noticeably.
A shuffling was heard in the distance while waiting for Itsy and Bitsy to spawn. Nate turned his head to see some sort of walking swordfish with four swords as legs.
"Another Faden in this place? Is it the Trapsting one? I'll get killed if it really was, though it was dark outside that night ago and I couldn't see the exact details of what that specific Faden looked like."
A mismatch of unusual animals with gray and dark green colors was a dead giveaway that it must be a Faden. No ordinary animals would be like that in Standart City. Anything he would have to say as a positive about the Faden would be that it was funny-looking at best when he turned his mind off for a second of his seriousness.
The Faden chortled a strange noise, like that of a rusty trumpet that had not been blown in for several years.
A choice presented itself in front of him, and Nate decided to confront it as a test to see whether or not his frequent swings against Itsy and Bitsy were worth it. Failure meant that he wasn't really ready for a time of combat.