Summer's End 2

Angie stared daggers at me. Mike seemed to also disagree with my last comment as he turned around and faced his desk. Angie, unable to control her emotions or body she just broke down and slumped onto the floor. The already dark room became darker and tighter as if an invisible force blanketed the whole room, adding a feeling of mild claustrophobia.

"She wouldn't, okay? She wouldn't stop being our friend just because she got adopted, okay? Do you hear me, Jason?" Angie cried on the floor.

'I'm an idiot. Of course, I am. I'm nothing but an old man and a fool. Why would I say something like that just because I was angry? These are my friends more than that; they are my family. I know damn well that after Rose got adopted, she never stopped hanging out with us; she never stopped being our friend and family.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a thought: now that I've rejected Rose, would she still be our... no, my friend? In the original timeline, I said yes to Rose, and we dated for two years. Up to the Autumn massacre. After Angie's and Mike's death, I never heard from Rose again until the day that she died.

I've changed the order of events. Is it enough, just saving them? They'll be alive, but the things I will have to do to make them stay that way will change how they feel about me. They will live, but they might not live with me. Is that enough?

Yes! Right now, that is enough!'

"I didn't mean it that way. I was just pissed. Angie, you know that whatever happens, Rose would never leave you, us. We might fight, we might have an awkward phase between us, but she would never abandon us," I said, standing up and placing my arms around the curled-up Angie.

"Of course I wouldn't. Never in a million years!" A soft voice startled us as the door to the room opened. "No matter what happens, if I got adopted or not, if any of you got adopted, or whatever other... conflicts happen between us, I would never turn my back on family." Rose said, still standing under the entrance frame.

"Rosa, you promise, right?" Angie said, popping her head between my arms, her usual mischievous look washed away by tears.

I stood up and stepped back to allow Rose to kneel beside Angie and take my place. The two just stayed on the floor for a few minutes hugging each other; Mike just stayed on his desk with his head down. However much he and Angie fight, they are still the closest friends; he can't handle seeing her cry.

After almost half an hour, they stood up and sat next to each other on the couch; they just sat in complete silence until it became deafening.

"How are things going along?" Angie asked, trying to overcome the awkward silence that had invaded the room.

"Um, good, I guess. They so far seem like really good people. It looks like they already have two adopted children, twins. Haha, they really look a lot like really kind, caring parents," Rose said, trying to be as cheerful as possible.

"Why does it sound like you don't really like them?" Mike asked, lifting his head from his arms.

"Oh, no, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that they are, like, really wealthy. They already have 6-year-old twins. Why would they want a 13-year-old girl from east Athens?" Rose said, looking at Mike, past me.

The moment that Rose entered the room, she tried her best to avoid her gaze from my general direction.

"Ha, that hurts a little. What about us? If people don't want you, then that'll mean they'll never want us." Mike said, with some hints of hostility.

"Oh... I... I didn't... that's," Rose stammered, as she got flustered by Mike's comment.

"No, I'm sorry, I'm still a little in battle mode. I didn't mean that, Rosa." Mike added apologetically in a soft voice. He shifted his gaze down towards the floor.

After Mike's apology, the uncomfortable silence returned to the room, forcing us to marinade in the things we just said only moments ago. We sat like statues as we averted each other's gazes. This went on for 10 minutes as the only sound heard was our breaths synchronized with the tick of the clock.

"This is still gonna be awkward for some time, huh?" Rose finally said, directly staring at me.

"It only happened a month ago. Of course, it's gonna be uncomfortable," I responded, feeling genuinely awkward.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for things to become like this," Rose said softly.

"You have nothing to apologize for. If anyone needs to apologize is me. I could have prevented all of this if I made my intentions clear before," I said, shaking my head.

"Enough, if you two will probably keep apologizing to each other the whole night, if we let you," Angie interrupted, cutting between the two of us. Since Angie was already between us, all she had to do was stand up. "So? If things keep going like this, do you think you'll get adopted?" she added.

"It seems like it. Thankfully, they seem okay with letting me keep going to Autumn until school ends. Although, by the looks of it, Jason would be a better fit with them," Rose said, trying incredibly hard to return some normalcy.

"Whaa, seriously, you're still going on about him. Give it a break, girl," Angie sarcastically said.

"No, I mean seriously. They are both Adventures; although Miranda is retired, they are really into Mana and Arcane Theory. They even start losing themselves when they start talking about it; it's surreal," Rose explained, with a slight blush on her cheeks.

"Thanks but no thanks. I'm not the biggest fan of Adventures. I have the corps in my blood. If we meet, we'd probably end up fighting." I responded.

'I remember my first meeting with them back then. We ended up in quite a heated debate. Things only got worse when we met later on when I was already in the Army.'

"I don't doubt that. You have quite the reputation of starting fights," Rose added.

"Again, I didn't start that fight!" I subconsciously said.

"Sure you didn't. If you say so," Angie added.

"Fine, whatever, I'm gonna go to sleep," I finally said in defeat. Seeing Mike and Rose start to laugh along with Angie.

----

The late summer breeze blew through the early Tennessee morning, welcoming a brand new school year. The four of us were wearing our new high school uniforms, denoting our new status as high school freshmen. The school uniforms were incredibly similar to their middle school counterparts, except for the pants now had a burnt-orange side stripe, and we were allowed to use any color dress shirt we wanted. As for the blazer, the only change was the sewn-in patch with the school's logo, in contrast to the print it had before.

Although last night's conversation was awkward, it allowed all of us to release some of our pent-up frustrations, allowing us to walk together to school like always.

The Highschool building was located on the south entrance, with the sports stadium located on the east end, just above the ample parking space. The theater and auditorium resided on the west end. The gymnasium took residence on the north end, while the cafeteria was placed in the center of the surprisingly square property. The middle school was across the street south of the high school with a mirrored layout only smaller in size.

'I've thought about this layout for a long time. It's surprisingly straightforward, following the cardinal directions, making my job easier. I need to do everything in my power to stop the Red Gate from taking any casualties.'

So far, my plan is astonishingly simple; I'll pull the fire alarm 10 minutes before the Red Gate is supposed to appear, forcing all school faculty and students to migrate to the stadium. On average, it takes no more than 3 minutes for everyone to present themselves for roll-call. Even if it's discovered that the alarm was falsely pulled, it's mandatory school regulation to wait a minimum of 15 minutes before they can start taking students back into the building. This gives me around 8 minutes of leeway in case anything doesn't go as my memory dictates.

'But there's one snag in that beautifully laid-out plan; I have no freaking clue where the Red Gate will appear. I know the exact moment the Gate breaks 11:56 a.m. But its location is still a mystery to me. What good is it if I send everyone to the stadium only for that to be where the Gate is; I'll be sending everyone into a slaughterhouse?'

Additionally, my goal is not only to get people away from the Gate; it's to stop the Otherworlders from advancing. If there's no one to stand in their way, they'll march on, killing everyone in their path. At that point, I would have only extended the lives of my classmates by a few minutes. It takes, on average, in school areas around 5 minutes for the Gate Response and Defence unit to arrive. In those five minutes, hundreds could die.

"Hey, what's up with you? Getting emotional over the fact that you somehow managed to make it to freshman year?" Mike's cheerful voice snapped me out of the clouds.

I had seemed to have stopped in front of the school gates, as my mind wondered. Mike, Angie, and Rose seem to also stop waiting for me. It had been no more than 15 seconds since I stopped.

"Yeah, yeah. But if we're talking about grades, you had them worse than me," I joked back.

"Who cares about grades? You had one strike left before you were forced to repeat the year," Mike added.

"Stikes don't make you repeat a year, moron," Angie responded.

"Sure, sure, if you say so," Mika added.

"We're gonna be late for our first day of school if we stay here any longer." Rose said, bringing us out of our conversation.

We began to walk again towards the school's cafeteria for first-day orientation. The walkways and green were filled with baby-faced freshmen lost and seasoned upperclassmen ignoring their pleas. We continued to walk with me, somehow taking over as guide, when suddenly out of nowhere I stopped as if I had just hit an invisible wall.

'No, it can't be. That smell, what the hell is it doing here? Where did it come from? Where is it?'

In a panic, I started to look around me, trying my best not to alert anyone, but the trio was quite perceptive. I had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, causing Angie and Mike to plow straight into me, but before they could complain, they saw my panic-stricken face and didn't know what to do.

'Fuck, I lost it. No, it's too early. They shouldn't be here; those things can't be here now. But that smell, I could never forget it. It's definitely them. That's the smell of the Lust Daemon. The minions of the Empress of Lust should have first appeared in the year 2122.

If an Incubus is here, that means a Succubus is nearby; they always work in pairs. I need to kill them now! Those fuckers can not be allowed to live.'

The Lust Daemons were a species of Otherworlders who specialized in infiltration and espionage. They embed themself in organizations, institutions, and corporations, to steal information and/or to establish themselves in positions of authority to manipulate and dictate the actions of said group. Like their mythological counterparts, they only hypnotize or mesmerize with magic to suck the life force or mana out of their prey.

'Shit! Angie and Rose are in trouble. Incubuses go after girls with high mana reservoirs, and those two are leaking mana by the liters. They are the perfect targets for it. Mike should be fine Incubuses only go after males in extreme circumstances; the Succubus, on the other hand, could be a problem.

I need to warn them; but how, I can't exactly tell them that a monster that no one has ever encountered, except for me because I'm from the future, is going to be trying to go after them to suck them dry if their mana or make them into its thralls.'

My mind began to race, unable to stop itself from overthinking. Mike, Angie, and Rose couldn't help but worry as they couldn't bring me out of my head.

'The main problem is Rose; she has more than quadrupled the mana that Angie. Angie, in terms of mana, is average, within the 10th Rank. Rose is a slight freak of nature; she'll be a goddamn floodlight in the dark to that beast.'

"Rose, come with me for a sec," I said, grabbing Rose by the wrist and dragging her behind me.

"What? Wait, WHAT!?" Rose complained, shocked by the sudden development.

"You two on ahead, we'll catch up, If we don't get our schedules for us."

I brought Rose into the school building, all the way to an empty classroom.

"Jay, what's this? Why did you bring me in here?" Rose looked around nervously, her face flushed.

"Okay, Um. How the hell am I going to explain this?" I said to myself. "Rose, I need you to listen to me very carefully. There's a creature, an Otherworlder, in the school right now," I started.

"What? What are you talking about? If this is some kinda joke or prank..." Rose asked, looking around with even more worry. But seeing the grave look in my eyes, she seemed to understand this was no joke, "Jason, if you're serious, why are you telling me and not alerting the school of the authorities?"

"They won't believe me, just like you don't believe me even though you want to. This creature can make itself look indistinguishable from a regular human being. It has the ability to make people do anything and everything that they want; they make them thralls/slaves. They are called Incubus or Succubus, where the only discernible difference is their food; Incubuses feed mainly on women, while Succubuses feed on men." I explained as clearly as I could.

"Hold up. You're telling me that there are monsters here that feed on people, yet we can even identify them? Then how did you find them?" Rose asked.

"I've encountered these creatures before. I can tell them apart by their smell. When they're distracted or when they want to hypnotize their prey, they release an aerosolized spell filled with magically enhanced hormones and pheromones. The Incubus smell is specifically tailored to attract and influence females, but as a consequence, it repels males since they are seen as competition.

Had it been a Succubus, I probably would have fallen under its spell; thankfully, it was an Incubus. Its smell activated my male fight instincts. Since they always work in pairs, one Succubus, and one Incubus, we need to be careful. Since the two of us have higher quality mana, we will be their primary targets." I responded and explained.

"Wait, a succubus will hypnotize you and be able to make you do anything it wants?" Rose asked, her pink face turning bright red.

"Focus, Rose. I need you to stay alert; if any person starts looking too suspicious, you need to tell me. Coincidently, if I happen to fall under the spell of a succubus, I'm gonna need your help," I added, grabbing her shoulders.

"My help?" Rose asked softly, the color returning to her face.

"The only thing that can neutralize the magic of these creatures is to give the infected what it wants. A kiss will be enough to bring the other person out of the spell. If it's a low-level Otherworlder, if it's a high-level, stay as far away as you can, and if you get the chance, kill me." I said resolutely.

"What? Kiss you? What, never mind that, what do you mean, kill you?" Rose asked her face and mind doing acrobatic flips, trying to process everything I just told her.

"I'll explain after school in more detail; for now, go about your day like normal," I said, looking at my watch and walking out of the classroom.

"How can I do that when you dropped a bomb on me like that?"Rose said half to herself, half to me. " Idiot, kiss you, the hell do you mean kiss you?" she added softly only to herself.