The Elite

Four

Tass

"Wait!" Leon yelled suddenly.

Our conversation had been pretty quiet, and with the buzz of chatter permeating throughout the cafeteria, it would have been hard to hear what we were conversing about; everything we'd said had been private. At Leon's cry, though, everyone began to focus their attention on us. Leon rarely shouted — being of the more tame sort — so everyone had turned to see what was going on, undisguised interest in their eyes. Gossip could spread as fast as a wildfire, and everyone wanted the juicy bits.

With so many peering eyes and perked ears, Leon stepped closer to Bulleye, and spoke in a whisper. "Don't, Masozi," he said. "Leave them alone. They only said what they said because I wanted them to. I just..." he paused, sighing. "Sometimes I get angry, Masozi — angry at the Elite — because I've lost my squadmate family, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of stupid kids. I know its protocol, but I'm just having so much trouble managing this grief. My life is shit, and I hurt. I hurt so much."

Bullseye's face instantly softened. As Leon started to smiffle, Bullseye wrapped him in a warm, friendly hug. Maybe this might have been a normal thing for Bullseye to do — they were friends, after all — but it felt to me like it was something strange as it wasn't what I expected to happen. Maybe I was just overly suspicious, but I hadn't thought a hardcore Elite like Bullseye would have forgiven Leon so easily, even if they were close friends.

Turning to the rest of our squad, I surveyed their faces, wondering how they felt by this sudden change in dynamic. I was glad to see I wasn't the only one that felt it was odd. It seemed they too had picked up the fact that they were still feeling rebellious — maybe they had before that day — and the feeling wasn't fading as it should have. That feeling was sticking to me like gum on the bottom of my shoe, making me know that Leon was influencing Bullseye into forgiveness rather than having affected us.

Fearing someone else would figure this out, I scanned the room. Thankfully, most of them just simply looked shocked. As they were Elite who only thought highly of themselves, I would have wagered a guess that they were more shocked that Leon openly admitted something was wrong with him than about Bullseye's sudden change in demeanor. Elite were so egocentric, admitting their fault was practically a travesty in their eyes so that was what they focused on.

Unfortunately, though, I did spy one person who looked as suspicious as I was about what just went down. It was a woman with long, straight red hair that very nearly matched the color of her shoulder stripes. Her keen brown eyes were narrowed in Leon's direction, clearly picking up the vibe that he wasn't being entirely truthful about what he was saying.

I found myself appreciating her distrustful nature because she couldn't possibly just know. Recognizing her, I realized she was Assassin of Squad 2, who possessed powers of control over a malleable red energy. However, she couldn't use this energy to sense the truth. She might have been one of those special Class 5s that could take a base power and use it for essentially several different powers — as shields, turn it solid, use it for explosions, etc. — I knew she couldn't use it to determine what was truly happening. So she must have been relying on distrustful guesswork, and yet she seemed pretty confident of what was happening.

Not ready to get kicked out of the Elite yet — I still had changes to enact before I got them all under my thumb — I knew I couldn't let her tell anybody that I spoke those rebellious words of my own volition; I had to stop her.

"She knows."

Julian's words were a mere breath in my ear, startling me. Once again, I'd forgotten about him. I should have known he'd see Assassin's threat, though, as I could tell he was obviously well trained in espionage. Of course that training would allow him to determine Assassin's suspicion.