Eventually, the movie ended. Almin offered to walk Kattie back to her room. The others all returned to theirs or went to the park. All wished Chekof a happy birthday once more before departing. Lana gave him a big hug.
Whispering in his ear, "your wife must be amazing!"
He chuckled and opened his book. There, between the pages, was a picture of the most stunning woman she had ever seen. Her raven hair shimmered in the moonlight, and her skin seemed to glimmer with the magic of the moon.
"Her name is Divina," Chekof said with a level of reverence she was shocked by.
A smile slowly crept across her face. "How long did it take you to win her over?"
He chuckled, "5 years… Neither of us regret it either. I wish I could speak to her, but I'm only allowed to drop messages right now."
"Why?"
His eyes grew dark, "I still need answers on some things."
Lana nodded, "enjoy the rest of your day. We are going to my lab."
Time passed quickly with the busy schedule, dodging Pucket, and evading attempts to record things their enemies had no business knowing. The Super Model of the kitchen was adjusted per Lana's suggestions, and her commercial payments went up as a result.
Before they knew it, February and Karlen's birthday was upon them. She had a feeling, like Chekof, it was fake, but she didn't care. If they weren't willing to share their real birthdays, she would celebrate the ones the military had.
Like before, they went out shopping and made their friend's day special.
The next morning, the students were told there would be an assembly just after lunch and the students would need to be in uniform for it. Blaine continued meeting her before breakfast so Kyle could feed Kent. He was enjoying playing pet parent. It was further bonding time between him and Lana.
The friends all decided to stay around the dorms until then. At the assembly, they were told due to the previous outing ending so… tragically, some teams would be consolidated. There would be another outing two weeks from Monday, basically moving up the third outing from March.
A sergeant then instructed them all to get in their groups. Lana realized this meant Blaine's group would get another person. At the same time, four students in his class died on that outing so it should be expected. Tobias walked up to their team and asked if he could join them. They agreed having learned about his wind ability on the outing.
The sergeant stopped seeing movement and saw there were some groups that weren't fully at 5 yet so she had some students fill in there. At the end, there were three students left after every group was at 5. She took the last three and pointed at different groups. Next thing Lana knew, she heard someone say, "I guess I'm in your group."
Lana head snapped in the direction of the voice, "excuse me?"
"The sergeant assigned me to your group," Duff pointed in her direction.
Lana sat there dumbfounded. This student was in her homeroom class. He didn't know his right from his left. He couldn't activate a monster weapon. He's been using the wrong weapon in general. He caused her to have to kill Percy, and he's working for Pucket… But she couldn't let on she knew that so…
"Duff, how are you still level-0? Did you reject the ability book?"
He nodded.
"Do you get beat up a lot?"
"I used to," he replied.
"You got protection."
He nodded.
"In exchange for what?" she asked.
"I'm not allowed to talk about it," he said while fidgeting.
"What kind of ability do you want?"
He looked her in the eyes to see if she was being serious or asking out of curiosity.
She returned his gaze. "Well?"
"Some kind of support. Like a buff, maybe a debuff."
"Let's go to the library."
Duff looked scared.
"I cannot travel with a level-0. If you are to join us, then you need to actually join us."
They went to the library to see what kind of support abilities were out there. She knew healing which would actually be great to have in combat. Hers was too slow to use in such a fast-paced environment. They got to the library and sat down once again to do some shopping. They found several options. Lana was sticking to level-3 at the moment. Given his talent with killing plants, she wasn't sure he'd be able to go very high on the MC scale.
They settled on an ability that allowed attribute swaps. The ability user designated an opponent and a party member. An example would be the monster has strength of 15 and the party member has a strength of 8. Those numbers would swap and the party member would get stronger, the monster weaker. This ability worked on all attributes as well as health and MC if it applied. At level 3, the most that could be taken for MC and Healing was 15 points per use. It went up 5 points per level of the user.
She took the code to the machine to get the book. As she handed it over to Duff, "you learn this ability before the outing if you can. As of now, you are out of the Agriculture Club. You are to join the Monster Weapons Club. Am I clear?"
He gulped knowing he was about to be in big trouble, but the teacher placed him with the group. He had to play ball. Could they protect him from the monster? He didn't know but there was something special about this person or the monster would not be acting the way he was toward her. He simply nodded and took the book. They got his room number, 2201, in case they wanted to check up on him and sent him there to begin studying.
Lana smirked as he walked away. "I just gave him a week to learn a level-3 ability. Do you think he can do it?"
"We'll know in two weeks, wont we!" replied Alto.