Hanami Sakura

Lesson 1: What is an Aragami?

Authors Note: The story continues~

The next day after both Akiko's and Kota's first field training, Akiko found herself getting up early and dressed in her more casual wear of a black wild zoisite hoodie and black Maroon pants with boots. She turned off the artificial blinds' morning grassland image and opened them to reveal the real light of the outside world. Watering her plants, brushing her teeth in her bedroom small kitchen sink, and checking her emails at her bedroom terminal were done in quick succession when her stomach growled loudly.

Dropping her head tiredly onto the terminal's screen she moaned, "... Hungry." Turning off the machine, she quickly grabbed hold of her class notebook and was off.

Akiko grabbed a simple breakfast of four ration bars and canned soda from the vending machine, as a few other God Eaters from the common floor, like Kanon Daiba, and Shun Ogawa greeted and walked past her for an early mission with their respective Units and teammates.

"..." Looking up at the vending machine area's clock she yawned. "It's time.."

Stepping into doctor Sakaki's office and lab, Akiko yawned loudly into her hand. Clutching tightly onto her notebook as tired tears appeared in the corner of her eyes. 'Ah~ I really need to work on my insomnia.' She thought.

"Ah, there you are. Good morning Akiko. It's good to see you are still punctual as peruse." Sakaki greeted as he stood before a still very half-asleep Kota, who sat slumped on one of the man's couches.

"Good morning Saka-- I mean Doctor. Kota." Akiko nodded at the two, moving to take her seat on the other end of the L-shaped couch Kota sat on. "I hope I didn't make you wait too long."

"Ah, not at all my dear. Kota here is still in the process of waking after all."

"Cookies!" Kota jolted awake, trying repeatedly to blink the sleep out of his eyes only to groan from the tiredness. "Uh!! And I thought becoming a God Eater meant no more early morning schooling." He moaned.

Sakaki shakes his head at the boy with a frown as Akiko tiredly laughs at the Kotas' complaint. "Cheer up, Kota. At least we don't have exams. And the homeworks pretty light and interesting all things considered." The orange-haired boy barely even responded to his friend's attempt of support as he tried to pinch the sleep out off his face. "Um... Doctor..."

"Yes, better just jump right in before Mr. Kota here ends up falling asleep again." Sakaki sighed, before stepping over to a projection he set up. "As per usual we have a lot of ground to cover. So a quick review shall we. What is an Aragami?" Pulling up an image of the usual small fries of the aragami species onto the screen, Sakaki turned to point. "Ms. Akiko?"

"Um... Do you mean outside what most people think or what Fenrir has classified them?" Akiko asked. Knowing from the few days of lessons Kota and her had been having with the Doctor over the past week that he preferred a show of knowledge unless stated otherwise.

"The first if you will. Mr. Kota, I would recommend actually writing this down if you can't pay attention."

"Gah!" Kota jumped awake scrambling to open his doodled-filled notebook, "Yes sir!"

Taking a deep breath Akiko sighed, "Well... Many things would come to mind when ordinary people think Aragamis. 'Apex predator', 'devourer of mankind', 'Gods given flesh.' Though it should be noted that some from your generation that have survived from before the Great Collapse still call Aragami by the original name most people had given them back when they first started to appear."

"Oh! Oh! I know this one!" Kota excitedly cut in, "There was this old man near my house who always used that term. Back when Aragami first appeared, people didn't really know what to call these monsters. So most everyone just dubbed them Horrors!" He exclaimed, puffing his chest up proudly.