The supersun continues to rise as the night turns to day, and the weekend begins in the Superversal Academy of Tomorrow. The sun's light peers from behind the distant city, the skyscrapers hardly visible from the campus.
Once again, the bus pods are parked in the lot, waiting as students approach it to board. Most of the students were already at the lot, boarding different buses, with a good amount of the students heading to the back.
As per usual, the majority of the students were upperclassmen, who were either seeking or had internships at buildings in the city.
There were only a few students left outside, still boarding the bus, as it was nearly time for the pods to leave. As the seemingly last student boards the second bus, Rohan rushes into view of the bus pods, seeming to be running late for the first time.
Usually he'd be unnecessarily early, however due to the work he had at the last minute, he was unable to get out early, and was paying the price painfully.
As Rohan sprints towards the front bus pod, the one he'd always take, his eyes widen in despair as he watches the door shut ahead of him.
The front bus pod then begins to drive off and out of the lot, already beginning its way out of the campus before Rohan could even board it.
Rohan turns to the other bus pods in the lot, seeing the second bus's door shut, as the others were seeming to head off. Recognizing that he wouldn't make it in time for the second bus, his eyes move to the third bus, who's door is still open.
Rohan sighs in a heavy breath, knowing that he had already made a major mistake, as all the buses had different destinations and thus none of the other buses would go to the Zprints Enterprise building that Rohan used to deploy from.
But if he were to miss all the buses, that would be a complete and utter failure, something he couldn't afford.
Rohan sprints to the third bus, flailing his arms around helplessly. As the second bus begins to drive off, the third driver looks ahead, ready to close the door and leave.
Rohan yells, "WAIT!," causing the driver to stop and turn to see the student run for him. The driver waits as asked, sighing to see that a student seemed to be lazing.
Rohan luckily boards the bus, panting and wheezing tiredly, as the bus driver scolds, "Get here earlier, everyone has somewhere to go, kid."
Rohan nods, apologizing "I know, I'm sorry, it won't happen again."
The driver commands, "Well, go, we're waiting."
Rohan nods again, and he walks down the aisle. He sees that the front seats weren't taken, and after walking two seats down the bus to get some distance from the driver, he sits in one of the bus seats.
He continues panting, his forehead sweating with his eyes still wide in utter fear, as he nearly missed a week. He tries to slow his breath, putting his hand on his chest to calm himself down.
Immediately, the bus pod's door closes, and the pod begins to move. It follows the second bus out of the lot, and takes the route out of the campus, and towards the city.
As the bus pods drive up the streets along with other pods of different shapes and sizes, Rohan watches out the window, hoping he'd be ready for the day, albeit the rocky start. While he didn't feel completely drained from the night of work, he did feel the effects of his complete lack of sleep, as he had to fight to keep his eyes open and his mind awake.
Rohan sighs, wondering if he had gotten carried away with the project and risked another week out in the city, contemplating if he should've just worried about designing a stronger suit and then put the ally problem off for later
However, while Rohan was in it for the long run, he knew that the more exposure Orial would get in the field, the better. While one week might've not been a difference, it was an investment that Rohan knew was paramount to the success of his mission.
Rohan, wanting to keep his mind steady and straight, says quietly to himself, "Orial, wake."
Rohan's Connect projects a three dimensional hologram of the simple avatar's head, which looks up at Rohan.
Orial asks curiously, "Yes?"
Rohan lets out a sigh, still feeling a bit odd conversing with an A.I he had just created, knowing how much hinged on the success of the bot.
He asks, "Orial, do you know why you were created?"
Orial answers simply, "No."
Rohan looks up at the ceiling, getting another barebones answer, which didn't give him much to go off of. He asks again, "Would you like to know?"
Orial answers bluntly, "No."
Rohan blinks twice, and he looks down at Orial. He tilts his head with confusion and surprise, and asks, "Wait...really? But why? I'd think you'd want to know or care-."
Orial responds, "I do not understand what you mean."
Rohan sighs, and he says to himself, "Maybe I should cool it with existentialism. Well okay, Orial, do you know what we're going to do today?"
Orial responds shortly once again: "No."
Rohan sighs again, realizing just how plain Orial was, as there was hardly anything to talk to. His answers were extremely blunt and robotic, which Rohan should've expected, for he didn't put much effort into allowing for a creative personality.
He nods his head, and says, "Well, I guess I'll tell you once we get there."
A few moments pass as the hologram of Orial hovers in front of Rohan, silent, as if it didn't hear what Rohan had said. Rohan tilts his head in confusion at the unresponsiveness, and he says, "Uh...hello-?"
Orial suddenly responds, "Hello Rohan."
Rohan groans, and he shakes his head. He asks, "Orial, sleep."
Orial nods his head, and he says, "Goodbye Rohan," before his hologram vanishes, leaving Rohan alone once again.
Rohan rolls his eyes, realizing just how stoic and inhuman Orial was, and how communication could become more complicated than he hoped.
He did only spend one night on Orial, so he didn't expect much, but he didn't expect red flags to show so early.
However, he had yet to test Orial in action, so as long as Orial was able to record his experiences during Rohan's battle and give basic assistance, the latter being less expected now after the short conversation, there shouldn't be an issue.
Rohan simply figures that it wouldn't be so easy to create an artificially intelligent voice that can be as engaging as an actual person.
Rohan turns to the window again, wondering why he was even putting so much emphasis on something as unnecessary as conversational capabilities. The bot was created to help Rohan in battle, not to be a friend, Rohan already had plenty of them.
All he could hope for was that he wouldn't waste this day on a loss again, but that shouldn't be an issue, as he had a significant upgrade to his suit. If the slim sports equipment wasn't strong enough to take on the Exhumans, his new mechanical beast should be more than enough.
It was almost overkill, but Rohan felt it necessary to do his best to strengthen himself as much as possible, both to be able to throw winning blows while also protecting himself from death, as he got too close to comfort in his first battle alone.
The bus pods enter the city, and they separate off to their own destinations. The front bus pod drives towards the plaza where the Zprints Enterprise building is, but the pod Rohan rides continues going forward, not following.
Rohan sighs, seeing how he was unable to get to the tallest skyscraper of the city, which he needed to do in order to get into his suit without being spotted.
The bus pod right in front of Rohan's deviates as well, leaving his bus as the front one in the busy street systems of the bustling city.
The bus pod continues driving down the city, far past where the plaza was, and Rohan realizes that he would need to find a way to get to the plaza quickly to be able to transform, as any building he could find at his destination would certainly not suffice.
Rohan tries to brainstorm a solution as the bus pod turns and continues towards its destination. Rohan didn't know too much about the city, but he had heard of an underground subway system that connected the whole city, providing a public transportation that didn't collide with the pods in the sky.
The subway was Rohan's best bet to get to the plaza, as he knew they were far faster than any pod anyways, and they would be the cheapest option.
Rohan's eyes widens as he realizes that while it would be cheap, it wouldn't be free, and he sticks his hands in his jacket's pockets in hopes to find any credits to use for the ride.
Rohan feels a metallic chip in his upper left pocket, and he sighs in relief, remembering that his friends would give him money to get the food he wanted, and they were generous enough to let him keep the leftover change regardless of how much Rohan offered to give it back.
Rohan takes out the credits in his pocket, and counts up the few he had in hand, which amounts to 23 credits total.
It wasn't much, which worries Rohan and causes him to grit his teeth, however there was nothing he could do but hope that it would be enough for transport.
The bus pod lowers to the ground as it seems to reach its destination, and slows down to a stop.
The door opens, and the driver yells, "Get off and go!"
Rohan stands up and walks off of the bus, lowering his head to avoid another exchange with the annoyed driver. He steps on the sidewalk, and walks down the street, among other citizens who talk in groups.
As other students get off the bus pod before it drives off, Rohan looks to find himself in a completely different area of the city than the plaza, as this one has large long connected buildings which are far lower than the skyscrapers, only being a few stories high.
It seems to be a housing district, as Rohan sees people walk out of the buildings, waving to presumably someone. Some of them even sit in pods on the edge of the road, and drive off.
Rohan groans to himself, feeling completely humiliated for missing the front bus and landing somewhere so different.
However, there is no extra time to complain internally, and so he holds his hand out, projecting his Connect's hologram.
Rohan navigates to his map app, and then locates the entrances for the subway system. He finds an abundance of spots marked all throughout the city, with one being only a block behind where he was.
Rohan sighs in relief, hoping that there was a saving to his terrible start, and so he turns around and begins running down the city, searching for the subway entrance. He passes the other students, who move to the side in surprise to his haste, but they notice that he seems to be a lowerclassman and lets it be as an occurrence naturally from a freshman.
Rohan runs down the block, panting with his holographic map in front of him. He knows that he looks like a fool to the people around him, however it didn't matter in the moment, as he had to get to the plaza to be able to test his new suit in hopes to succeed in stopping another attack.
As Rohan runs down the city, he sees a group of people walk towards a small building, and Rohan looks at his holographic map to see that it was the subway entrance near him. He runs inside the building after the group, his speed not having wavered.
Rohan stops to find himself in a medium-sized room, which has holographic maps plastered by the walls, examined by people who seem to mostly consist of adults. The walls were all transparent, allowing vision of the city outside, as the building was more of a single room than anything.
Rohan then turns to see other people heading towards elevation pads, however there were many moving down side by side, creating an escalator of sorts. He approaches it, noticing that the escalator was moving underground, where the subway is.
He follows onto one of the elevation pads, which starts to bring him into the underground. He puts his hands in his pockets, looking around as he still feels anxious about getting to the plaza.
As the elevation pad reaches the bottom, Rohan finds himself in a fairly large subway station, with large halls of people heading to different stops. In front of him were more holographic maps, and a set of booths that created aisles that led into the hall. There are energy half doors of sorts similar to the ones in the main hall, which prevented students from entering without identification.
Some people approach the aisles and allow their Connects to scan the booth to their right, which causes the doors to open up for them, while other people place credits into a slot, causing a hologram to project for them to choose from a menu, which then opens the barrier.
Rohan walks towards the large maps that everyone else was looking at, trying to find where he needed to go. He examines the map of the city, trying to use references of the path he took to his destination in comparison to the path he'd normally take on the front bus to find where the plaza was.
His eyes focus on the destination, which was indicated by a visual of a wide area similar to the plaza, surrounded by skyscrapers. He then looks to see a marked subway stop by the plaza, which was named '75F.'
Rohan memorizes the destination he needed to go to, and walks to the aisles to find the subway he needed to take. He walks in one of the aisles, and stops in front of the energy barrier. He then pulls the credits out of his jacket, and inserts them into the slot in the booth to his right side.
After placing a total of 10 credits from two inserted chips, a hologram pops up, showing that Rohan had already paid the necessary fees. He sighs in relief, seeing that he had more than enough credits to pay for a trip.
He looks at the holographic menu, which has a list of different destinations categorized by numbers.
Rohan scrolls to number 75 and presses on it, which then opens an alphabetic list, to which he presses on F.
The hologram then closes, and the booth seems to scan Rohan for a moment. The energy door then opens, allowing passage into the subway.
Rohan smiles, ready to get his day going again, and he begins walking down the gray hall, searching for his station.
He uses his Connect's holographic map again, which shows a detailed representation of the station, giving him the locations of the different pickup zones along with the interval of destinations it covered.
His eyes instantly go to the pickup zone that holds the interval of 60-80. It was the one he needed to go to, and so he marks the location in his mind while continuing down the wide hall.
As he continues walking, he sees intersections in the halls, with more people turning to them to continue their own way.
Rohan hears the distant sound of loud hums similar to a pod, however far more high pitched, and far louder than even the most powerful sports pods.
He continues walking while hearing a voice speak from the walls, announcing: "Train six will be leaving in five minutes. Train six will be leaving in five minutes."
Rohan looks at his Connect again to see that the pickup zone was numbered 4, so he figures that the announcement didn't pertain to him.
He continues his walk down the large hall, full of busy shuffling and chatter.
Rohan takes a deep breath, hoping that he would have enough time left in the day to work, as time seems to be moving too fast for him.
More people walk behind Rohan, presumably heading towards pickup zones near his. The subway station was full of people, as it was clearly a popular option of transportation.
One of the people walking behind Rohan wears a black and white tracksuit with a black backpack, wearing a hood over his head.
The man continues walking down the hall towards Rohan, his hands by his side, with his right hand tapping his leg softly, as if trying to contain his impatience.
The right hand progressively taps faster and faster against his leg, however it begins to become unnaturally fast, so much to the point where it seems to be vibrating rather than tapping at all, showing as a constant blur.