System Activated: Rise Of The Bullied Student

The Vial

‘I want to avenge my mother’s death…’

The words he’d spoken earlier replayed in Eren’s mind as he watched Silas’s silent form.

He could tell, just from the look the old man wore, that he was in conflict with himself. Was it over the vengeance statement, or something else? Eren had no idea.

When Silas finally spoke, he seemed to weigh his words carefully.

"Vengeance?" He scoffed, turning to look Eren right in the eye. "Can't you see? That is what I have been trying to do for years, without any success. It seems it does not matter what I do, they are always a step ahead. They cleaned it all up such that it was as though it never happened. The people that wanted your mother dead, Eren, are very powerful people."

"I figured as much," Eren told him quietly. His voice was hot with rage.

He caught the worried glance of Silas's aide in the rearview mirror, but thought nothing of it. He turned to Silas and stared at him in contemplation for a short while.

Then he asked, "Silas, who killed my mother?"

"It is not a WHO. It is a THEM, Eren. Your mother's death, and almost mine, was orchestrated by two of the most powerful families out of the six awakened. The Glanvilles and, unsurprisingly, the Winchesters."

Eren glanced at him sharply. "Unsurprisingly?"

Silas smiled with something resembling nostalgia. "Let’s just say your mother had a relationship with the Winchesters very similar to what you had with that bully — Drake. They never agreed on anything. In that way, your soul and hers are the exact same."

So his mother had been bullied too? Wow.

The statement visibly softened Eren’s countenance and the wild rage he held in the moment seemed to grow far more tame.

Silas restrained himself from asking the young man what he had seen in the hatch, but it was difficult. He ached to know after being in the dark about what she had left for her son for so long.

In the end, it was Eren that offered it up to Silas, without him having to ask. He tilted an empty vial to the light coming in from the car's windows.

"I found this in the hatch." He told Silas, handing it over to the professor, who held it very carefully with delicate hands, as though he was worried it would disintegrate any moment from them.

Eren was certain this was not the case. It was hard glass, made to last.

"What did this contain?" The man asked, not looking once at him.

"A potion, I think. Some red liquid."

To this, Silas raised a brow. The hair over his eyebrow climbed higher on his smooth shaved head. "A potion?"

"Yeah," Eren shrugged, suddenly protective of this information again.

Of course, he knew he could trust Silas.

But when it came to his mother — the tape, the note, even the vial — he felt protective of her. He wanted to hold these things, keep them for himself.

They were, after all, nearly all he had of her.

For all he knew, they might have been the last things she touched and interacted with.

It was as though he was rediscovering his mother and, in the process, finding himself again, finding who he used to be before she died, before the children's home. Before Drake. Before everything.

He was not sure what that made him — a coward maybe — or where it placed him; he was only sure he did not want to let go just yet.

Handing the vial over to Silas felt very much like he was already doing so.

Eren forged ahead regardless, attempting to subdue the surge of emotions roiling inside of him.

"She left a note with it, too." He said as offhandedly as he could manage. "It said to consume the red liquid if I wanted to complete my awakening, whatever that means."

What he hoped it meant was that it would make him stronger, quicker, far more resilient than he had ever been.

He would need this strength for what was to come, Eren had long since surmised. His thoughts drifted back to his mother, back to the note she had left him at her laboratory.

Tiger his mother had written. She had called him Tiger most of his childhood.

It was a nickname that just stuck. How she came about it, he could not recall.

And now, the sound of her voice and sight of her scratchy handwriting… They reopened wounds he didn’t know were still quite raw.

The memory of her passing was suddenly too fresh and painful to handle. He swallowed around it, his throat constricting uncomfortably, making breathing difficult.

There was pain, and anger, and hurt that would never fade away. There was also grief, sadness, and guilt. These were emotions he had never gotten over in all those years.

Silas, who was oblivious to the turmoil Eren grappled with internally sniffed at the vial, perhaps to ascertain what liquid it contained. He seemed not to arrive at a definite answer.

"The note," he told Eren, "may I see it?"

Swiftly, Eren pulled the paper from his pocket and handed it over. Just like when he gave Silas the vial, it was a very excruciating transaction.

Silas slipped on his glasses and examined the note with such intensity, it was as if it were some test script he meant to grade. Eren itched to snatch it away from him.

"Of course, she left a potion behind." The man muttered, amusement in his tone. Eren knew not to ask what he meant by that.

Returning the vial to Eren, Silas took off his reading glasses and slipped them into the pocket of his tweed blazer.

Almost at the same moment, the car slowed to a stop, jolting Eren. He looked out of the window to see that they had arrived at Silas's home once again.

Automated gates opened on cue and for the first time, he took the manor in all of its white majesty.

Succulents and ornamental plants covered a great part of the stretch, and at the very center of the space stood a statue: a giant angel made wholly of sun-collecting marble, it wings fanned out like an eagle's in flight, its robes like water, so fluid that for a second, Eren could have sworn it was silk.

They went into the manor together.

Silas glided next to Eren in brooding silence and the aide trailed beside them, his quick footsteps loud and heavy on the tile, punctuating the quietness.

They arrived at the elevator and there was a pause, both contemplating the discoveries they had made in just a few hours.

"So what is the plan, professor?" Eren asked.

"There can be no plan until you are ready.”

Eren’s brows rose in question.

“You need to be prepared for what will definitely come. The Winchesters are a fiendish people. Terrible to keep as friends, even worse to have as one's foes. The Glanvilles may be even worse than the Winchesters. At least, amongst the Winchester, there are deviants. Individuals who do not conform to the norm, who do not look like their rest of the pedigree. The Glanvilles are far too closely knit for any form of division."

"Are you saying I should plan to divide and conquer?" Eren asked, slightly flummoxed.

"No," Silas shook his head vehemently, the light from the chandelier above them gleaming off the smooth surface of his scalp. "Have you not been listening to me? The plan is to get strong first. The only reason the tiger fears fire is the fact that they share the same color, Eren."

Eren found this ironic, particularly Silas's animal of choice. His mother had called him tiger, and for a long time after her death, Eren feared almost everything.

'No more,' he decided at that moment. 'No more'

He smiled dimly at the old man. "One of these days, you will have to start speaking in plain terms."

Silas huffed. "You have to get stronger, Eren. This is a given. If you mean to get vengeance for what they did to your mother, first you have to grow as strong as them.”

"Isn't that what the vial was for?" Eren asked.

"We can’t tell just yet. I have to run some tests on you. Get in the elevator."

Eren stepped into the steel box with Silas following right behind him. "What's up there?"

"You will find out soon enough." The professor answered simply, drifting forward and away from his side.