The Moon Hiding at Dawn

Chapter 3: July

It's the fifth of July and all days before were just plain post-Spyfall boredom, everyone minding their own business again. For the first time in ages, however, Professor Raymond went in class. Middle-aged adult with ponytailed white hair and glasses who always seemed pissed-off with life.

I do faintly remember him as one of the most terrible instructors in this school. Not that because he teaches badly. Quite the opposite since he always makes his lessons to the point that even a stranger could understand. The problem is...

He doesn't really pull punches in his words.

"Sit where you like, bastards. I don't care if you listen or not." He said as he walks towards the prof's desk. "The school is asking... No, I guess it's more of directing your class to handle preparations for the first installation of the 'College Battle Royale' "

"Don't we have the student government for that?" Riz asked

"You're right but those wimps are total amateurs! Considering that we might have visitors from foreign schools to observe our activities." Prof Raymond explained.

Wait, hold on. I'm a bit disgusted by the fact that a college would do this but I'm more curious as to why no one else was shivering with cringe by the event's name. Just saying it is embarrassing enough.

"So, they cling for the top students for help since the teachers would also be amateurs in these things?" Chris said, rubbing more salt to the wound but the professor doesn't mind, I guess. He is one to talk after all.

"Well if you put it that way, most of these people are cowards not wanting payroll to be affected whatsoever. Self-vested assholes."

"But what does that make you then?" Asked Ramus. His first full length statement of July ending up as some sort of an insult.

"The fund you ungrateful puff-heads would be using are my own cash while the official funds are not yet released. Not to mention that I was the only one who had guts to try talk the others out of it. Damn chickens..." A declaration of his that no one dared to reply at anymore.

The rest of the day was spent explaining what the 'College Battle Royale' would be. What was agreed upon is to make it so intense that the intramurals itself would be considered as a great joke. I never attended any of the intramurals ever since so I have no idea on what kind of a standard are we really going for. Nonetheless, I take its as a sort of revenge coming from us as it is mandatory for the intramurals to be done by the teachers with assistance of the student government.

The 'College Battle Royale' would be on August and the whole of July is our preparation time. There's already a separate bank account prepared by our prof for the funds so it's up to us to use it. As for its events, all are purely physical and combative in nature. It would be a three-day and two-night event where the four colleges would fight to capture each other's bases. Only those with four flags, one which is theirs and three taken from other colleges, would be declared winner.

All colleges, may they be business, social sciences, engineering and computer science, or law would have paintball equipment: armor that we will tamper upon for monitoring purposes, and specially engineered paintball guns. I wouldn't really call it paintball though considering the way we would modify it. The guns actually have separate cartridges which doesn't really have anything inside. It's a mechanical thing which has codes that serves as 'bullets' to tell the gun to fire. The projectile isn't actually physical but can be seen as light oscillations. Complicated science-y stuff.

We will be filling the place with holographic devices and sensors to make this possible. Everyone would be equipped with an armor which would display the number of hits a person can still take before being out of the game. Physical attacks are strictly prohibited. Participants won't really need to eliminate every student in a college. Taking their flag is enough although it can still be recovered so long as the game hasn't ended and there are still remaining players in the college.