19 Cafeteria

Lance felt a pounding in his head as if someone had bashed it in with a huge hammer. This made him wake up, finding himself propped up between his two "friends".

Although he felt indignant at being pushed into the fight, he knew that the situation probably would have resulted in one anyway seeing the reactions of the two goons. "Did we win?", he asked, massaging what seemed to be a big lump on his forehead.

"Easy peasy. You think our ranks are just for show? Besides, Apollo wasn't interested in getting into a fight now anyway. Even if he had 20 such goons, it would have been an easy fight.", bragged Darius. When Lance was massaging his forehead with his eyes closed, Darius and Entsy shared a nod as they approved of Lance's attitude. If he were whining right now about being pushed into the fight, it would have made them rethink their decision.

"Apollos the blonde haired kid? Seems very cocky. What are your ranks anyway? You didn't mention them to me when we met.", asked Lance as he reached forward to the plate in front of him. It was a standard school lunch, with some sort of meat, vegetables and long stalks that looked like beans but were yellow.

"I'm 2nd and Entsy here is 10th. Most of the top 1000 ranks are occupied by people like us who were taught by ancestors on earth itself. Eat up first. The yellow stalks are a food called enidra, exclusive to the IE station. They might be pretty tasteless, but they have incredible healing properties. They are grown in 0-gravity and require a lot of rare materials to reach maturity. I was surprised to see the cafeteria being so liberal. My old man rarely gave me some of these unless he accidentally broke my ribs. Aside from being great for healing, they lay a solid foundation for cultivation in the body. If a typical human being ate this every day, he would live up to 150 years of age easily.", answered Darius.

Lance was impressed as he started munching on the stalks. They were slightly crunchy but mostly bland. As he swallowed the first stalk, the pain in his head started fading away and he found himself becoming full of energy. He hurriedly gobbled down the rest of the food on the plate, excitedly looking for more new foods that might have such wondrous effects.

"Slow down. Other foods are same as back on earth.", said Entsy idly while munching on some enidra. Entsy didn't talk much, always opting to get his point across in as few words as possible. Darius, on the other hand, was already with a lengthy explanation for any topic. It almost seemed as if there was no topic that he didn't know about.

"Ya, others are your typical produce and meat. My old man told me that there was a time when each and every food was specially grown in IE, with each one having more and more amazing effects. It was the height of a major war, and initiates were directly sent to the front lines with minimal training. Thus, they needed as much advantage as possible. He said it was a boon that we were born now. I, on the other hand, disagree. If we were born then, we would have had more opportunities to climb the ranks and become stronger, faster. The people who excelled then are the people in command now." Darius sat up straight and radiated ambition as he said these words. Lance could see that both of his new friends were highly ambitious, as he had seen Entsy also nodding along with fighting spirit in his eyes.

Instead of feeling daunted by their ambitions, he felt himself also being filled with fighting spirit. He could not wait to fight, to prove himself and to get stronger. Although he couldn't explain to himself his motivation and purpose for feeling so, he was clear that this was what he wanted.