Chapter 5

*Boom!*

Esper was sent flying against the wall of the gymnasium. He hadn't been inside the facility for less than a full 24 hours before he found himself being attacked and thrown around like a rag doll. He looked up at the person in front of him while gasping for air, sweat dripping from his forehead down his nose onto the floor. The same loud commanding voice he's been hearing for the past 45 minutes yet again entered his ears. Speaking the words he came to know all too well. "Again!"

He coughed out a heavy breath. "I-I can't do it." No matter how hard he tried he couldn't calm his mind and focus his power. Even though two hours had past since the last time he saw the Major General. He just couldn't get the conversation they had out of his head. The words shared between the two continued to play over and over inside his head. A never ending cycle.

"Your distracted. In a real battle that'll cost you your life. Even half a second is meaningful."

Tell me about it, he thought condescendingly. As he gathered himself and stood up, dusting off his cloths. "I'm trying Lieutenant Razha."

"Trying isn't good enough." She stated matter of factly. Standing tall in an in all navy blue combat suit holding a wooden staff in her hands. "Your an elite now, awakened or not. Do you understand?"

Esper sighed pitifully. "Yes."

"Good." She nodded pointing the staff once again toward Esper, allowing him to take it and guard. "Again."

Again

Again!

AGAIN

"Cough…..cough..cough." He seemed to get worse as each attempt was executed. He laid on the floor on his back panting heavily, every breath was hoarse and rigid. His whole body was sweaty and exhausted it was very hard to move. And through all this his powers still hadn't activated in the slightest.

"Still very sloppy, no improvement in combat, and zero usage of ability." Esper looked at his instructor their gazes meeting each other. "I'd say you broke a new record here recruit." He didn't know if he should laugh or cry. He's been here for over 5 hours and still there wasn't any progress. A new record indeed.

He sat up leaning against a nearby bench. "I don't get it. I'm doing everything you've told me to do, so why isn't it working."

Razha narrowed her eyes looking Esper up and down as she scrunched her nose in thought. "Maybe…" she paused glancing over at the weapons area. "Perhaps you need a channel."

"A what?"

"A channel." She walked over and squatted down next to him. "It's a guidance. Elites have both energy and aura. Some people confuse the two or think they're the same but they're not. Aura is located through out the body from head to two." She pointed to Espers head and feet then to his stomach. "Your energy is located here. You can run out of energy but you can never run out of Aura, yet at the same time you need both of them." Pointing to herself now, she touched her head then chest. "Think of it like this, Aura is like the brain and energy is the heart. One can't work with out the other, the brain controls the heart and the heart supplies the brain with blood. Energy controls the amount of aura used while aura sustains the body. With out it you die. When you awaken the pain you feel is your body reconstructing itself to support your power so your organs, skeletal, everything changes to fit your ability."

"Why, why do our bodies have to change?"

"Simply put, a mundanes body can not sustain such a large amount of power." She flicked her hand and a balloon appeared. "The air is your aura." She began to infuse her wind power into the balloon slowly but gradually growing it bigger and wider, expanding until it seemed to be on the verge of popping. "With all that aura within the body building up and no out lit, it begins to scratch, and stretch the body, breaking your bones, squashing your organs until…"

*Pop!*

The balloon exploded causing a small powerful wind to blow through the gymnasium rattling all nearby objects. She continued, "Your body explodes both brain and heart. Blood essence and left over aura gets scattered everywhere and the sight of that isn't pleasant at all amongst many other things. In conclusion you die. Same thing if your aura was suddenly extracted from your body, you die. Your aura is your power and it becomes one with your body. So a channel helps you to draw out your ability, guiding both your energy and aura to work in unison. It's like a third arm and that's what you need right now." Razha stood up reaching a hand out to help Esper to his feet. "Tomorrow afternoon I'll teach you all about channeling. You seem tired and hungry the more I look at you. And I take it you haven't ate at all today."

Esper nodded taking her hand and standing up. Talk about not eating anything today he hadn't ate since the time he awakened. Hungry was an overstatement. With his thin and slender figure he was starving practically. "I can eat a whole village right now." he joked lightly.

Razha laughed. "Me and you both."

Right now on the other side of the country, four cities away in an underground catacombs, there stood a long square table surrounded by a couple of elites and werebeast, each taking a seat anywhere they wanted. One particular purposely sat in the leaders seat plopping his feat on top of the table. His eyes seemed to glow wildly in the dark like a cats. He flicked his pointer finger and the candle lights around the room began to erupt one by one filling the dark room up with light. He yawned tiredly. "It better be a guid reason as tae why ye woke me up 'n' called me 'ere." His voice was smooth like velvet and carried a heavy accent that was likable to the ears.

"Yeah." A little girl across from him agreed. She was no older than 12 her long pink hair were pulled high into two ponytails. She were a pitch black dress with black and white stockings. Decorated with tiny skull ornaments to match her barrettes. She swung her legs back and forth holding a teddy bear with no head in her hands, carrying it close to her body. Her eyes glowed a dull blood red giving off a low level of blood lust. She wiped her tired eyes also seeming to have just woken up. "Couldn't this have waited until tomorrow or something. I was having a good dream you know."

"We we're called here thanks to Viktor and his experiment gone wrong." A female complained.

All eyes glanced to end of the table landing on a young male with forest green hair and deathly pale skin he looked dead, like a complete Zombie but a very good looking one. He put two hands up in a surrender motion showing he had some understanding of this evening's meeting. "It wasn't me who dumped the body there."

"Then who's fault was it. The dead body was in your experiment office yesterday last time I saw it, before it appeared on the news this morning."

"So." Viktor shrugged. "Just because it was in my lab doesn't mean it was me."

"No need to lie."

"Lie." His lips curled into a snarl. "Are you bat shit crazy now Crow? I admit to my work and dangling a rotten body over a pole isn't my doing. The action was tasteless. It was nothing like my style if you ask me it seemed to be Marks work."

"Mark wasn't even here yesterday how cou-"

"Enough!" A dark voice commanded causing all eyes to dart to their left. Meeting a pair of cold blue irises. "We are not here because one of us wanted to toy with the human civilians in City J.

"If we aren't here because of Viktor then why are we here Jesper?" The young child asked her expression showed a hint of puzzlement.

"We are here to send a massage and Mark has already had a head start on that."

"Told you." Viktor stuck his tongue out causing the young women to glare at him.

"There is a war beginning." Jesper pointed out.

"A war? mair lik' a one sided slaughter whin we'r done wit thaim."

"He's right." Mazuko smiled sinisterly an immense amount of blood lust began to leak out filling the whole cave with her dark red aura. Causing her eyes to glow brighter, just the slightest thought of a blood bath sent a thrill of excitement through her small body. "They won't know what hit them. It'll be a full on slaughter, painting oceans and rivers completely red. Humans will soon cease to exist."

They all looked around in a silent agreement. Knowing exactly what to do. Jesper looked towards Viktor. "We're all waiting on you. How are the bodies coming along?"

"I'm closer than I was yesterday. We need new bodies, the other three had the same response. They exploded once a tiny bit of aura touched there skin. I need more subjects to see the missing variable."

"Mark will bring you knew ones."

"And for the disposal?" Viktor asked already knowing the answer but just wanting to make sure. And his guess was right as Jesper responded with the name he expected.

"Mark knows what to do." He looked around meeting everyone's gaze. "Starting tomorrow you each will be given a mission until Zero gives further orders." With that Jesper left, disappearing in his seat like a phantom. Leaving no evidence of him once being there.

"God ah hate whin he does that." Saying that, they all followed suit. In a blink of an eye the candles igniting each fire of light went out and everyone vanished leaving the cave exactly as they found it before they got there. Dark, cold, and empty. This afternoons meeting was quickly adjourn.