Arrival
Not much happened during the trip, if Mike was being honest.
After the briefing, the students were allowed to roam the ship, and besides a few important areas, they could pretty much go anywhere they wanted.
Hence, Mike spent most of his ti training or talking with Theresa and Kris.
It went without saying, but the three of them decided to team up.
They had more or less established themselves as the outcasts of their grade, so they might as well stick together.
But seriously, they believed that teaming up would be the best choice. After Mike shared his thoughts on how those popular students could have their lackeys do most of the work, Kris and Theresa revealed that they had similar thoughts on the matter, so they collectively agreed that teaming up would do them good.
However, there was a small issue with that.
"How exactly do we find each other?" Theresa asked with a frown.
"We could probably do it in the latter stages of the excursion, but by that ti, we’d be at a severe disadvantage as the others probably have ways to find each other quickly. Moreover, I don’t think I need to say it, but chances are that we are gonna get targeted the mont we are spotted by so people, and while I’m confident in our strength, it’d be better to avoid such a situation." When she finished, Mike and Kris spoke at the sa ti.
"I could–"
"I know–"
The two boys paused imdiately when they started talking over each other. They looked at each other before Kris said softly.
"Go ahead..." Hearing this, Mike smiled and nodded.
"Right. I could find you two pretty quickly if you give sothing you both keep to yourselves often. It doesn’t need to be important, clothes, an accessory, anything works." Hearing this, Kris and Theresa looked surprised.
"... How would you find us like that?" Theresa asked carefully. It was sothing related to his ability, so she didn’t want to co off as prying.
"Let’s just say I have pretty good senses." Mike pointed at his nose.
’Oh? Could he perhaps enhance his sense of sll with his aura? If so then that could be handy. Then again, he’s always seed to have acute senses.’ Theresa thought before looking at Kris who just manifested two chains.
"I could make two permanent chains and give you guys. Even if I no longer supply them with energy, I can still keep track of them up to a certain distance." He said quietly, but there was no pause between his words.
In fact, he rarely paused in his speech now when he spoke to them, and he expressed his emotions a bit more openly, to the point where even Theresa could make out his expressions from ti to ti.
Progress.
"Hm, yours sounds more efficient. But Mike’s could be equally accurate." Theresa rubbed her chin as she considered which thod to employ.
"Why not do both?" Mike asked with a shrug, and the two of them looked at him.
"How would that work?" Kris tilted his head.
"Well, both of you give sothing I can use to track you, and you give both of us your chains. That way, instead of going to each other one by one, both of us could go straight for Theresa." Mike explained, and the other two shared a glance.
"I don’t see why not. But I guess I will have to be relatively stationary to avoid you guys moving too much." Theresa said, not against the idea.
"Yeah. I think that could work." Kris nodded.
With that decided, the trio continued to discuss things over the remaining days, and soon enough, the ship arrived at its destination.
Currently, all the students were in a large room at the base of the ship. The room was filled with pods which they were ant to enter, and the floor acted as a screen that made it look like they were looking through a large window, and the view below was that of Naraka from orbit.
Staring at it, Mike felt a little weird.
’It’s so green.’ He thought.
Proxima Centauri D was also green, but it wasn’t as intense as here.
Seeing as he grew up in Klein 4 where trees were simply bedti stories, seeing so much vegetation was genuinely odd to Mike.
’Well, I’m gonna see a lot more stuff that is strange to but is probably normal to everyone else. As long as I don’t die. So I might as well get used to it. Besides... it looks nice.’ His gaze softened a little, but he was soon snapped out of his thoughts as soone tapped his shoulder.
He turned to see Theresa in her armor, the nanites hugging her figure considerably, enhancing her curves and giving Mike quite the view.
Theresa caught his stare and just rolled her eyes.
"Get your head out of the gutter, are you ready?" She asked, and Mike nodded as he looked at her face.
"Yeah." He said simply while raising what looked like a blue scarf that she had given him.
"Good." Theresa nodded and turned to Kris who just gave them a thumbs up.
Kris gave the two of them chains that were just big enough to make bracelets, and he gave Mike a yellow glove.
With the things divided, several bits appeared to start sending the students into the pods.
The trio gave each other brief goodbyes before they entered their pods.
As soon as Mike entered, the door slid closed. The inside was small, just big enough to fit a fairly tall human. There was also a window that allowed one to look outside.
Beatrice had already spoken to them before this, so there was nothing else to be said.
Soon, a holographic countdown appeared in front of Mike from 30, and he couldn’t help but feel nervous as he watched it count down.
What if sothing went wrong?
What if the pods got attacked by a powerful beast as they entered orbit?
What if he randomly got angry and transford, accidentally destroying the pod from the inside?
What if sothing happened to Kris and Theresa?
However, as soon as he had those thoughts, he quickly stopped himself from thinking, took a deep breath, and allowed his thoughts to resu, far calr this ti.
’Trust them, trust yourself, and trust your instincts.’ He told himself. What was affecting him was his human brain and its tendency to look at the worst possible scenarios. His instincts said things would be fine, so they would be fine.
3...
2...
1...
Weightlessness.
Mike felt himself beco weightless for a mont as he entered space for a brief second, then a pushing force ca from above as thrusters appeared on the sides of the pod and shot it downwards.
Mike looked through the window as the dark expanse of space started to take on a blue hue, which was a sign of the pod approaching the atmosphere.
Shortly after, the pod started to shake, and Mike could see flas dancing on the window as the re-entry began.
Mike forced himself to take deep breaths as his heart pounded. It was both nerve-wracking as well as thrilling as the pod descended through the atmosphere.
The shaking continued for around a minute before stopping, and Mike sensed that he was falling.
However, his descent started to slow down gradually. He couldn’t see it, but he could sort of feel sothing happening at the base of the pod, so he guessed there was so sort of air-brake that reduced his speed.
He could see other pods in the distance as they descended, and soon, he started to see the tops of trees. However, he noticed sothing off.
He could see the tops of the trees, but the ground still seed far away.
As he looked through the glass better, his eyes widened as he realized what the deal was.
The trees... were massive!
Even the smaller ones looked to be over 100 ters tall, and the bigger ones were a kiloter tall and above!
As Mike tried to wrap his head around trees having such gargantuan proportions, his pod suddenly broke past the tree line, and he saw the ground begin to approach.
He tensed as he awaited so sort of hard impact, but surprisingly, the landing was relatively smooth.
When this happened, he took a deep breath as the door of the pod opened.
’Here goes.’ He thought as he stepped out.
Imdiately, he was hit by a wave of warm air as well as the sll of vegetation and wet dirt.
His senses picked up nurous things, from the buzzing of insects too big to be natural, to the rushing of a river in the distance.
It all seed strangely surreal, and Mike took a mont to take it all in.
Then he sighed and cracked his neck as he spoke.
"Quite a rude welco, don’t you think?" He said, and as if on cue, the bushes around him hustled as several creatures erged.
’I just got here and I’m already being put to work. Well, that suits just fine.’ His lip quirked upwards as he stared at the dozen feline-like beasts with green fur that matched the surroundings and two tails that seed oddly flat and unnaturally sharp.
He pressed his fists together and growled.
"Co at ."
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