Nero had already considered many other possibilities. He had considered that this could merely be a means for someone to lay a trap for him, or that this was a way for someone to get him in trouble. Just because the administration of KMA remained unaffected by external pressures did not mean the cadets could avoid being pressured, coerced or convinced either.
Even so, he went ahead with it. The ever present Dominion across the academy reminded Nero that there was not one inch of this place that wasn’t under someone’s supervision. While the Sage responsible for this Dominion may not be paying attention to everything all the time, its mere presence was a deterrence.
Besides, he was not the first cadet in the academy to have enemies, nor was this the first time someone was being hazed in the middle of the night. Surely the academy had more or less perfected some way to ensure things didn’t go out of control.
Lastly, he was not a coward, nor did he fear challenge or trouble. He also wanted to see who had the courage to mess with him, because he could most certainly mess with them back. For example, though he only knew the names for Ben and Roland, all twenty of the seniors who had visited him would be getting challenges from him sooner or later. He would be sure to thoroughly express his gratitude to them in the arena.
Nero surveyed the entrance, checking for any traps, but found nothing remarkable. The entrance had a tall dresser, and a coat rack, as well as a colourful, circular carpet but that was all.
Slowly, Nero entered the room and walked towards the sitting area while sticking close to the wall. There was no door between the entrance and the sitting area, only a door-wide opening covered by a curtain. He carefully checked the next room, making sure once again that there were no traps, or signs of the occupant, before entering.
He placed the letter on the center table, and was about to leave when he sensed something amiss. Slowly, carefully, he turned to look in the top corner of the room behind him. He had already checked the room earlier - including the ceiling - and found nothing.
Yet this time when he looked, he saw a woman with deathly pale skin and long, pitch black hair, curled up in the upper corner. Nero wasn’t sure if she was using the sheer force of her hands and legs pressing against the walls, or the ability of some card, to stay up there, but she wasn’t moving in the slightest.
She was wearing a long, white gown that looked like really old, worn out sleep wear. Covering bits of her gown were long, messy tufts of hair that seemed to spread out all around her, as if it had a life of its own.
Nero knew for a fact that she hadn’t been there - or at least hadn’t been visible there - when he entered the room. That meant that she either arrived there after he set down the letter, or she had been hidden by some ability.
Regardless, he had been caught redhanded sneaking into her home in the middle of the night, which could not end well for him. Considering the fact that Nero saw no way out of this without getting in some trouble, he allowed himself to indulge in an impulse. Or maybe this was just him showing more of his actual emotions.
"Bad hair day, huh?" Nero asked suddenly, his voice breaking the dead silence.
The girl raised her head and glared at Nero with strained, reddened eyes that contained an unspeakable fury. Apparently, she did not appreciate his joke.
The girl screamed, her voice a high pitched shriek that tore through the night, shattering all the glass in the nearby houses while pushing Nero back.
The silence of the night was broken, waking up all the residents nearby far. Far off, Ben and the others heard the scream too, and they could not help but feel elation that they had run away in time.
Nero bore the brunt of the attack, though naturally he had done his best to defend himself. Before the woman screamed, the very moment she opened her mouth, Nero sensed the aether in the room trembling and had defended himself.
Since he could not anticipate the kind of attack she was about to unleash, he had done the only thing he could have - he covered himself in cerulean flames! Unfortunately, the flames could not protect him from the volume of her scream, though it did manage to burn away the hidden, aetheric attack in the sound itself.
A disorienting headache struck Nero, alongside sudden silence, though the vibrations of the ground beneath him alerted him to the fact that the scream was still ongoing. No, the silence and disorientation were because he had gone deaf! His ear drums had been ruptured in that single attack!
Nero barely managed to keep himself from falling over, opening his eyes to search for the woman in the white gown, but she was already gone.
Behind him, the woman was standing, glaring at him with the kind of hatred in her eyes that only a deeply personal vendetta could create.
"I had almost fallen asleep!" the woman roared at Nero, unfortunately he could not hear her.
She wanted to lash out at him, but the chilling, roaring flames covering his body kept her at bay, so she did the only thing she could. She unleashed another scream, aiming to rupture Nero’s very heart!
Nero’s senses were severely compromised due to the disorienting effect of his ruptured ear drums, but he was able to pick up the fluctuations in the surrounding aether and reacted.
He did not run - there was no running from the reach of that scream. Instead, he attacked.
A deep, chilling calm took over Nero’s mind, allowing him to act with a perfectly level head in that moment. He needed to neutralize the enemy and wait for medical aid.
Whether he was in the wrong or right no longer mattered at the moment!
The flames spread from underneath his feet, rushing towards the creepy woman in a straight line. Her scream was unleashed, throwing Nero once more, affecting his internal organ simply due to the sheer energy packed within her screams. Fortunately the aetheric aspect of the attack was blocked by his flames, or he might not survive.
He felt terrible, but he wasn’t the only one. Exhausted from severe sleep deprivation, the woman was not able to react quick enough to Nero’s flames which reached her in a heartbeat.
Deep blue flames covered her body, beginning to freeze her skin and absorb whatever warmth her body had. The sudden chill that encompassed her roused her mind from the manic state she had entered, alerting her to the immense danger she was in!
She screamed once more, hoping to use her voice to neutralise the flames, even as she dashed deeper into her room to find her cards. Her scream, this time a wild one out of pain, attacked Nero nonetheless, finally throwing him to the ground.
But, as it turned out, being thrown to the ground was a blessing, not a curse. Disorientation was hard to fight with the weights on his body dragging him down, but on the ground he forced himself to immediately begin crawling outside the room, a part of his mind still focused on maintaining the flames all around him.
If his ears were working, he would have heard that countless, loud fights seemed to have broken out all around the house he was in. Unfortunately, he was handicapped, so all he could do at the moment was think of entering the open.
Outside the housing area, two Mystics stood there, watching the chaos unfolding. One of them was smoking from a pipe, reeking of tobacco.
"To think Roland used fresh cadets to keep the Banshee from falling asleep. Now that’s cruelty," the one with the pipe said, showing no inclination of going and resolving the situation.
"What would an only child like you know?" the other one scoffed. "That’s called sibling rivalry. Yes, it’s cruel to take advantage of her insomnia like that. But then again, her enemies will target her weaknesses too. Her brother is just preparing her for the wide world out there."
The man with the pipe scoffed, and instead turned his head towards another fight. There were three women fighting a single freshman cadet, but they were unable to lay a single hand on him.
"Seems like the new batch has a few hidden aces. This is going to be a fun year," he commented.
"I know that one. Bella Storm - I read his file. He has a strong, wind based innate ability, living up to the Storm family name. I would expect no less from one such as he," the man said.
Yet his praise fell on deaf ears, because the man with the pipe was already studying someone else.