In two days time, the five students would officially enter the AFA by battling the current top 5 of their student body. For the time being, though, Gary and the others were taken to a temporary room. They were free to rest there, as the temporary bedrooms were being prepared.
As the only girl among the group, Izzy was very happy about that last fact. The room itself was located in the sparing building. On every floor, there was a large octagon in a different style or shape filled with equipment for Altered to train with.
After placing their belongings down, everyone was allowed to order some food. Once more, the former top rankers were free to order whatever they liked. Eddy had even recommended them to make use of this opportunity to have their last ‘cheat meal’. Once inside, their dietitian would decide what they were and weren’t allowed to eat.
The teenagers didn’t waste this chance, as they wished to gain every bit of energy before their matches. An Altered’s body required a lot more calories on a daily basis than a regular human. Their bodies would digest food in a short amount of time, which allowed their body to absorb it and produce the energy they needed to fuel them, especially if they wanted to transform.
Everyone was different in how fast that process was, but there were even those who could eat an entire three-course meal and fight right off the bat without it affecting them at all. His friends had long since accepted that Gary was that type of Altered, so it came as a big shock when the only thing he had asked for was one measly steak with some potatoes on the side.
“Is everything alright with you? Does that measly meal even count as your appetiser? Usually you would order steaks by the dozens. Are you still feeling sick, or something?” Ian asked worriedly.
“No, it’s not that. I'm just… not that hungry right now.” The Werewolf replied in a dejected manner.
His friends looked at each other, but didn’t say anything. They thought that he must simply be nervous about fighting in front of his old girlfriend. They couldn’t blame him, as they themselves felt nervous about the tough fight in front of them.
‘What the f*ck do I do?!’ Gary screamed internally, his mind had been like this for a while now. ‘How can I get out of that situation? I can’t tell them that I’m not feeling well when they have state-of-the-art machines to check me out. They won’t take me seriously, especially not if there’s nothing visible wrong with me! They’ll just think I’m scared of fighting. Oh god, I don’t want Xin to think of me as a loser when we finally met.’
The Werewolf still had no idea about what to do to avoid having to fight on that. He just one thing for sure, he had to make sure his Energy would stay under 30 that day. Thanks to the experiment during the last full moon, he had discovered that the key to surviving the full moon was by starving himself so that he would lack the Energy to transform.
However, while he had already proven the success of that method, it came with a number of big problems. First of all, the overwhelming desire to eat was prone to make him act far more snappy than usual. He was also more likely to give into his natural urges. Ideally, the teenager would have preferred to avoid interacting with anyone at all, just to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally devour anybody.
‘Sh*t, why couldn’t it have been the day before or after?! Am I really just meant to fight on a hungry stomach? Should I just surrender and live with the shame?’ Gary wondered. He didn’t like that course of action, but if he didn’t come up with anything better, that might just be his fate.
When everyone’s food arrived, the green haired teenager enjoyed his meal… for the entirety of roughly thirty seconds. After that, he had to force himself to stop glancing at the meals of the others. The scent alone made him hungry, and his stomach started to grumble. Nevertheless, he pretended like everything was fine.
In his head, he imagined his mother and sister together in a room with him. No matter what, he would suffer through whatever it took to avoid eating them. This scenario helped him come to terms with his fasting.
Sty was the first one to leave the room. The Fly Altered knew that he was on thin ice, so he ignored everyone else in the room. After all, he knew perfectly well that they all hated him. He headed towards one of the empty rooms to train for the fight.
“What do you guys want?” Gary asked as he noticed that Izzy, Ian and Numba were all looking at him expectantly. Izzy was a bit startled by the Werewolf’s tone of voice. He sounded annoyed, nearly angry.
“We just thought that you could teach us… You helped us improve before, so we hoped you could help us again. With only two days time, we should do our best.” Ian explained their reasoning, also having noticed Gary’s erratic behaviour.
“No! … Now is not the best time.” The Werewolf shook his head. He could see the look of disappointment on their faces. It sucked, but he couldn’t explain that he wanted them to keep their distance from him because he was afraid of hurting him due to the state he was in. The hungrier he got, the more likely that he might snap at them, and he had yet to find out how strong he currently was.
“I'm sorry, I need some time to myself. With how long I’ve been asleep, I want to focus on some basic conditioning training. Just repeat what we’ve been doing in the past, and you guys should be golden.”
Before they could reply, Gary ran out of the room at his top speed. This way, he was continuously using up his Energy and it allowed him to focus on something besides his protesting stomach.
“I guess we were being a little selfish.'' Numba sighed. “We have relied on Gary for a while now, it's not right for us to keep relying on him. We are now in the AFA, so we need to start acting like it.”
Izzy and Ian let out a sigh each as well, but they agreed with Numba. Taking Gary’s advice to hear, they headed over to a training room. After warming up together, they each trained in their own way, before they started to lightly spar with each other.
——
Late at night of the same down, Eddy called in the AFA students for a meeting.
“I hope all of you took the time to check out our batch of students. As is tradition, your rank 1 will fight their rank 1 and so on. Well, I’m sure you all remember how it goes.”
On the TV screen, the faces of the AFA students appeared with a number below them. Numba at rank 1, Gary rank 2, Sty rank 3, Ian rank 4 and Izzy rank 5.
‘This is great!’ Ryan smiled to himself. ‘Let’s see Xin continue to ignore me after I kick her boyfriend’s butt!’
*****
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