Strixes

Alaric V

When the chance came, I jumped on it. I wanted my second chance at life, I had wanted it for so long, but in the silence of my room, when I had nothing else to think about, it came back. I had irreversibly changed four girls and chemically altered their brains to make them fall in love with me.

Mireille described it as love, but could it be called love? Really? Perhaps infatuation would be a better way to describe it, a powerful, unnatural infatuation. The kind that Jim Jones might have brought out in his most devoted followers.

Did that make me like Jones? The leader of some kind of cult. It wasn't just Kaya, Mireille, Nanase, or Yayoi, but there were dozens of people in this compound. Because of my supernaturally good hearing, nothing in the compound was hidden from me. I could hear everyone. Why were all these people here? Was I really running some kind of cult?

I wished I hadn't been distracted in the meeting. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask but I had let myself get distracted. Stupid! Stupid!

They were all gone, so I couldn't ask them now. Mireille and Kaya were investigating a lead on the original reason why we came to Neptune in the first place. Nanase was following up with the incident that left me without most of my memories and Yayoi was playing with her band.

This was part of our cover. When we first decided to come to Neptune, we invented a story that would help us blend in with the locals. Yayoi and Nanase were the Nikaidou sisters, the daughters of a businessman who lost his life at sea. They moved across the country to Neptune to get away from it all. Kaya and I were step-siblings and personal friends of the Nikaidou family. Our parents died on the same rig, and Yayoi adopted us.

In my mind, strixes were alien-influenced vampires. So when these vampires decided that three of them would go to high school, it felt like I was living in some teenage vampire movie. Like Twilight or The Vampire Diaries. Maybe it was just some universal fact that vampires loved high school.

They seemed to think they'd find whatever they were looking for at Venus Academy, but unless they were searching for a student or a staff member, I didn't see how they would. Maybe they were looking for someone, but no one seemed to feel the need to fill me in. Why should they. I wasn't "Damien" the progenitor that turned them. It was just me. Unlucky enough to wind up in the immortal body of my future self, in the middle of some kind of plan.

Was it so unlucky though? I was being given a second chance, even if that meant that I had to live as a space vampire.

My mind felt like a hive of buzzing, angry bees, a hive that refused to calm. One of the maids asked if I wanted dinner and though I wasn't hungry, I was told that I wouldn't ever feel hungry. Only thirst, but I could eat if I wanted, and no matter how much I did eat, I wouldn't get any bigger. Food had been one of my great loves, something I could enjoy no matter how bad my condition got, so the chance to enjoy it without any side effects was something I wasn't going to pass up.

After a bowl of the best fish soup I had ever eaten, the hive refused to calm and I spent the night tossing and turning. trying to get to sleep. My brain wouldn't let me. It kept returning to what Mireille told me. Was it right of me to take advantage of these girls? They didn't have a choice in what they did. They were genetically altered to want to please me. They couldn't give consent to anything in their state.

Yet what choice did I have? It wasn't like I would be able to turn them back. Even if the change wasn't permanent, I had no way to reverse it. And that was a big if. I imagined each of them was hundreds of years old, they had been living like this for longer than I could imagine.

At one point in the night, I went over to the window that overlooked the city below me. The street lights were a strange combination of colors. I expected the standard yellow, but the lights were gold. Not yellow, but bright gold. Gold street lights mixed with purple street lights, creating strange and fascinating scenery. Some streets were more golden than purple and viscera. Neptune at night was beautiful. A lot more pleasing to my eyes than Scottsdale ever had been.

It wasn't until the early morning hours when my exhaustion overpowered my buzzing hive of a brain and I fell into an uneasy sleep. I dreamed a train dropped me off on an abandoned platform.

A kid my age shoved past me and bolted from the train. "What are you waiting for? It's going to start without us!" she yelled. I didn't think when I bolted after her. Running hardly ever presented me with a problem. I was young and fast and I caught up with her in a matter of moments. Before I could ask what she meant, we were off the platform and in the forest beyond.

It was harder to keep up with her then, dodging trees and generally trying to avoid falling flat on my face, but I managed to get there without being a fool of myself. I could see the lights and hear the music before we got there. Right in the middle of the forest, far away from the lights of the platform, was a stage. A band was on stage, strumming out to a strangely catchy version of pop rock. The lead singer was an Asian girl in her early twenties, and to my shock, it was Yayoi.

The crowd was made up of teenagers and young adults. I couldn't see anyone that looked older. Where the hell had I ended up? A clandestine concert in the middle of the forest? Was this a movie?

"Yo!" a guy I didn't know came up to me, pressing a cup into my hand. It was full of beer. Yep, this was like a bad teen flick. The beer was good, though. I blame what happened next on the beer because I didn't have a clear head. Sure, it was like a bad teen movie, but I never got to have this kind of experience, I never even had a beer, and I didn't want to think about my mom. So I drank and drank some more until my head felt a little too light and everything was funny. I was chanting with the crowd as the music boomed and everything began to blare together.

I woke up to the pitter-patter of rain the next morning. Looking out my window, I could see the street far below, the trees and ground below were soaked with water. The calendar in the corner of my vision told me it was January 6th, 2713, a Monday. It was 6:37. Mireille said Venus Academy started at 8:00, so I had to get up.

One of the maids came in and even though I was buck naked, she didn't bat an eye. In her arms with two towels and an assortment of soaps and shampoos, which she left in the bathroom that was connected to my room.

The compound had three stories and I lived at the very top. When I came downstairs, Kaya, Nanase, and Yayoi were waiting for me. The Yayoi in my dream was a little older than the one I was looking at.

The table was full of waffles, sausages, pancakes, eggs (sunny side up and scrambled), bacon, toast, and various juices. Though the three of them were sitting at the table, none of them bothered to touch any of the food. I still didn't feel hungry, but the scent of breakfast was already filling the compound and it made my mouth water.

As I loaded up a plat, I looked at Yayoi, the oldest one of us at the table. At least physically. "Where is Mireille?"

"She is at Venus Academy. She is a French teacher there."

"Aren't you posing as a teacher?"

"Plans have been changed. We decided that it would be best if one of us remained here. To react if needs be and to protect the compound."

"Protect it from what?"

"Two other progenitors are in the city, and they have brought their courts with them. At least a portion, though all of their knights. Neptune is home to a very large, very strong lycan pack. Not to mention that every city on Artemis is filled with titans."

I would have to take her word for it. When I finished breakfast, Kaya and Nanase showed me to the parking garage. There were seven cars and one motorcycle, with most of the cars being sleek sports cars. Though they looked like Ferraris and Lamborghinis, they were in fact other brands.

Since Earth and the companies that made those sports cars were over two hundred years away, the governments of Artemis came together and allowed companies to bid for the designs of car and bike brands. Which was why there were cars that looked like they belonged in the nineteen twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties were on the same roads as those from the two thousand. Despite that, they were all solar-powered just like everything else on Artemis was, as well as being modern cars under the hood.

I had always wanted to drive a Ferrari, but Yayoi insisted we take the Gaze. It was a model 204 and looked like Volvo XC60. "For now, we want to remain inconspicuous."

Nanase snorted. "We're supposed to be rich and Neptune is one of the richest cities in Aquroya. You know there's going to be plenty of Skyriders and Cromwells."

"The point stands that we want to remain inconspicuous for now. We don't want Sword coming down on us. And we don't want to attract the packs and the other court's attention. Take the Gaze."

She didn't make it sound like an order, but it was a command nonetheless. I didn't know if the knights had an internal standing, but if they did, Yayoi outranked Nanase and Kaya.

I wanted to drive, but because of my condition, I had never learned. Yayoi promised she would arrange driving lessons for me. So I took the passenger side, glad to note that the driver's side was on the left of the car and we drove on the right side of the road. Though in Kingsland, that was all the opposite.

"Why do I have to ride in the back?" Kaya demanded.

"Because I'm driving," Nanase said, smugness laced in her voice. "That's why."

As we descended the mountain into the crater, I got a better look at Neptune for the first time. It really was like a fusion of Paris and Tokyo, my two favorite cities. The glistening skyscrapers and green trees of Tokyo mixed perfectly with the slender streets and architecture that had made Paris famous the world over.

As we drove through the city, I searched the web for a site like Wikipedia and came upon the Encyclopedia of Artemis, or EOA for short. It was this world's version of Wikipedia. It was still a strange experience, searching the web not through a device, but through the display of my linker. It reminded me again that we were living in the future.

I searched for Neptune and found the predominant article. Neptune was founded in 2331, by a Japanese husband and French wife, who had been unfrozen thirty-one years earlier. They lived in Paris and Tokyo, and according to the article, had favorable opinions of the cities. When they received a grant from General Solar, the largest corporation at the time, they set to build the city. It had been planned originally to incorporate it as part of Deseret Province, but Deseret was English speaking and at the time, Neptune was primarily filled with French and Japanese speakers. Today there is an even amount among the three languages, when it was first built there wasn't, so Neptune became the first Autonomous City.

Followed shortly by Pluto, but since I didn't live there, it didn't interest me as much. I closed the article.

I would have to stop in at the main office and get my schedule and a map of the school. From what I learned about the school online, Venus Academy had a European-style schedule, so I would be given one schedule for each day.

The school campus was surrounded by a four-meter-high wall, with one gate leading in and out of the school. The only other entrance and exit was the back, where only staff were allowed to enter.

There was a plaque on either side of the gate with the name of the school written in the official three languages of Aquroya:

Venus Academy

Académie Vénus

Kanaboshi Gakuen

Since there was only one way in and out of the school and over four thousand students, it was hectic to get in and out each day. The gate had a car lane and two-foot traffic lanes, which meant it was easier for students to get inside on foot.

Evergreen oak and Sakura trees dotted the grounds, covering up lush, green grass. There were two parking lots on the school ground: the smaller teacher's lot and the much larger student parking lot. With so many cars, it could be annoying to find a space, so I was glad I got to school early.

As we drove to the student parking lot, I took notice of the nine buildings on the school grounds. Two were gymnasiums, with sports fields and tracks outside next to them. One looked like a silicon valley office building, with blue tinted glass. There was more glass than steel as far as I could see and it was four stories.

The last three buildings looked like stereotypical Japanese school buildings, straight out of an anime. Though it was more colorful than the real deal, I would say.

The letter the school sent us said the glass building was the office, so we parked as close as we could. Grabbing my umbrella, I jogged over to the building, Nanase and Kaya hot on my heels. At first, I assumed I got the wrong place. The cafeteria was located on the bottom level of the office, while the other two levels served the administration, according to the secretary by the door.

When we got to the second floor, the bell rang for school to start. The secretary in the front office looked up at me when I came in.

"I'm Alaric Lightwood."

"And I'm Kaya Lightwood. This is Nanase Nikaidou. We're new students."

She nodded and pointed down the hall. "The dean's office."

When we told him who we were, the dean pulled out a group of papers and slid it across the table "This pamphlet is the map of the school, though you don't have to rely on this map completely. This paper is your schedule for Monday, this one is Tuesday, this one is Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each day you will need to get your professors these slips and deliver them back to the office."

"Alright." I took my schedules and slipped the other papers into my book bag.

"Do you have all the books?"

"Yes sir." The school had sent us PDFs of each textbook we would need, so we had them ready on the go.

"That's all. Please have a good day." His smile was way too bright.

"You too," Nanase said, shuffling her papers into her bag.

I looked at the pamphlet he gave us.

"Building X. I have homeroom and French 6 AP... Building X?" Why was the building letter? I looked through the rest of my schedules and saw that I had classes in buildings B and Z as well. "Are all the buildings lettered?"

"Every building but the gyms and the office," Kaya said. "There's the office, Gym 1, and Gym 2. Buildings A and B are English Language courses. Buildings C and X are French Language Courses. Y and Z are Japanese Language courses."

I nodded. "So I'll attend classes in all six buildings?"

Nanase "No. You don't have any classes in buildings A, C, or Y. A, C, and Y are for First, Second, and Third Formers. B, X, and Z are for Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Formers. Since we're Sixth Formers, we will be in the latter buildings. Didn't you read the P*F the academy sent us?"

Truth be told, I hadn't. Last night, my mind had been elsewhere.

"I did read that unless you transfer in from Minerva Elementary School, you had to pass an entrance exam."

Minerva was the elementary school affiliated with Venus.

"We did. As far as the school knows. We have a powerful hypnotic titan on staff who convinced the representatives who came to our house that we ace the entrance exam.

That explained that. "I don't know how to tell you this, but I don't speak French. So taking a sixth former AP class might be beyond me."

Kaya and Nanase exchanged looks. "Damien could speak every language spoken on Artemis. So you should be able to," Kaya declared.

"Is that how it works?"

"The hell if I know."

"... Wow. You're so helpful."

***

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