2.15 The Flier

"What just happened. . ." Lucy was thinking as she was sitting in her new position in the class.

"I think it would be a good time to think about suicide..." Alex was on a whole different dimension of thinking.

"I have to get a job in the administration... so cool." Rick was boiling with excitement.

"Fuck my luck...not only the earth, but my whole world is round..." Ravi cursed his luck as he was scanning the classroom.

"Okay class, we'll start the introduction of our new friends once Emma comes back, she's a little ill from the previous incident. Till then, let's check the homework." A middle aged man in black cloak entered the class. The cloak covered half of his eyes, his white beard was apparent because of the pitch black cloak. He looked like he was either going to create a magic circle and summon a magical creature or start an epic battle with a supervillain with his magic. But alas, he was only a history teacher.

So as he is currently checking the homework, let's do a little time travel and see what actually happened some time ago that got our friends confused.

[Approximately 30 minutes ago]

"How's the pain Rick and . . .Lucy right?" Cécile was in black cloak but didn't cover her head as it was problematic for her long hair.

"Yes, it's almost gone." Rick proudly declared.

"Yes, it's noticeable but not too much." Lucy agreed.

"It's almost time for class Alpha's entry. After this, we'll go to class." Cécile said checking her watch.

The crowd consisted of various types of people, but one thing was common, everyone was in a cloak, but the colours were not the same. This gave a feeling that the colour indicates certain jobs or power hierarchy.

"ON GUARD" Cécile shouted as she saw a black van arriving from a distance. Everyone was suddenly silent. Although she said to be on guard, the students did not have any weapons or shields to be on guard. They just stood facing the arriving bus.

As soon as the bus stopped, the door opened and several armed men and women came out of it and made a path to the building by standing side by side. Each of them were in a sap green dress like the army, and they each carried a glass shield. After a few moments, slowly few cloaked persons came out, it was a weird purple colour cloak. The uniform was just like the other students. The only difference was they all wore helmets and gloves, so no skin could be seen.

They slowly came out of the bus and headed towards the building clad in security. There were 20-30 of them, nobody could clearly count them because of the armed security.

Suddenly everyone's watch vibrated. As they all looked at it, they saw a red exclamation mark.

"ATTENTION, UNKNOWN DRONE INCOMING FROM EXACT NORTH-EAST", it was Sarthak.

As soon as the announcement was done, every armed security got their gun out pointing at the sky. Cécile quickly gathered the class A students and brought out a device and it created a transparent dome around them.

"Everyone on position" Suddenly Sat came out of the black bus clad in total battle armour. He looked like a total robot ready to fight. He slowly walked towards class Alpha and stood right in front the guards, facing north-east.

"Sir you shouldn't -"

"SHUT UP"

One of the security personnel tried to say something but Sat immediately shut him up.

After a few long second, a black dot appeared on the sky at the northeast direction. Everyone was on guard. As it slowly took a shape, it turned out it's a pigeon slowly flying.

"Seriously..." Someone sighed but it was hard to detect because of the helmets.

Suddenly a sharp sound of cutting through air was heard. And not even after a split seconds delay a white thing slashed away the pigeon and it started raining bullets with enormous speed.

After a few seconds of continuous absolute rain of bullets, when everyone couldn't even start to think straight, Sarthak's voice was heard, "Target Locked"

"SHOOT" Sat screamed like thunder and everyone started shooting at the sky trying to hit the drone. Suddenly they all changed the trajectory and headed towards a certain point and *BOOOOM*. The drone fell from the sky in pieces.

The bullet rain stopped. Silence covered the area, it felt like everyone had lost their hearing.

"Situation Clear" Sarthak announced peace.

"Is anyone hurt?" Sat said in a loud voice. He didn't even flinch. Everyone looked at each other.

"It's all right, status ok." Cécile said as she deactivated the shield. "Well everyone except for the poor bird."

"Nobody touches anything, they can still explode, security, neutralize them." Sat said as he sprayed the drone parts with a special gun and the parts were covered in a jelly-like substance. Cécile joined them.

Surprisingly everyone was not much bothered after the incident. Like everyone was still taken aback, but after this encounter, it was expected that they'd be on their knees and some would be unconscious. Well the natural reaction was found in team Gaia. They stood like statues, totally frozen.

Emma spoke first. "The bird" and she pointed at the bird. It was trying to move its wing slowly.

"Emma, it's a lost cause." Lucy comforted her. Hearing that, Emma started walking towards the bird as it was still slowly trying to move the wings.

"Emma don't go...ah my legs are frozen. Can any of you stop her?" Lucy turned to her team members in a dim voice.

"My legs gave up." Rick gave up standing and sat on the ground. Some of the students had already sat and started chatting like nothing happened.

"Man it's been so long since a bird is seen in our institute."

"Yeah right? And it got murdered the very day it came."

"Yeah no wonder they decided to leave us lol."

Everyone was chit chatting and our friends were listening and calming themselves down. Emma has already reached the bird and was examining the badly wounded bird.

Lucy was staring at the sky. Rick was trying to find ways to join the student group that was chatting. Alex was lost in his thoughts, of course negative. But still some of the chats came to his ears. "Hey sorry to interrupt, but are birds rare here?" Alex asked the group that was busy chatting.

"You're one of the new guys right? Welcome to Mars, this is just the start."

"Yeah, you'll see 'em outside but not on campus."

And they continued their chat again.

Alex felt something was off. As he calculated the possibility a chill ran down his spine, as he quickly turned towards Ravi, he saw Ravi staring at Emma with fixed eyes. "FUU" "EM-" *BOOOOM* He tried to call out Emma but suddenly a bright light was seen in front of Emma and it exploded violently. In a split second, Emma was sent flying towards the bus and *CLANGG*, a metal bending sound was heard as Emma was totally pinned into the bus, and slowly she fell from the bus wall to the ground like a bug that was killed on the wall.

Everyone was surprised with the course of action. Their brain stopped working. Suddenly a laughing voice was heard.

"Hahaha, oh my, you did good man, you have my respect. This attack had the power to kill at least 100 trained soldiers. You did quite well for the practice. Not gonna lie, I was afraid that the practice will end with zero casualties, well one is better than nothing. Ha ha ha!" It was one of the remaining big drone pieces.