Papercuts || Empires S1 - HIATUS

11: Combat

Katherine had been training her combat over the summer, she was more than excited about P.E class today! They were gonna test her skills!

The female was in the locker room, putting on her new P.E clothes she had bought herself. It was in all black, but the coach wouldn't mind hopefully. Katherine took the two hair-ties on her wrist and tied her hair into a high-ponytail.

"You're excited for P.E? Running always tires me out." Lizzie asked as she shape-shifted into her 'human' form so she could wear her normal P.E clothes. "I trained for this! I wanna be able to show what I did over the summer!" Katherine grinned as she got out her wooden training sword they were told to bring.

"I was busy watching Joel build... You gotta teach me what you learned over the summer!" Lizzie matched her enthusiasm as they exited the locker room together to stand with their group, awaiting their instructions.

Katherine smiled as she held out her hand for her opponent, the new kid Oli. "Man, you're so good at sword-fighting. I couldn't beat you in a million years!" Oli smiled playfully as he took her hand, standing up and dusting off his basketball shorts. "You put up a good fight, you should be lighter on your feet though."

"Combat's not really my shtick... but I'll take that advice anyway." Katherine walked over to their gymnasiums stage, it was built in and often used for the freshmen's acting and music performances. She grabbed her water bottle, opening it to take a sip.

Oli picked up his scrunched up plastic water-bottle, drinking the rest of the water. The male noticed a girl with black hair staring at him, the girl had blue and yellow parrot wings. "Who's that—?" He asked Katherine, feeling a bit judged by the girl's obvious gaze.

"Her? She's Shelby's cousin, Cora. You wanna go talk to her? She seemed interested." Oli blinked, did this girl like him? If you were to ask him to rate himself out of ten, he would be a solid 8.8. Oli smiled at the image of this girl actually being interested in him, school was gonna be more fun than he thought!

"I wanna play hard to get, that's hot, right?" Oli asked Katherine, the female snorted. "Cora's— Dude, Cora's les. I don't think playing hard to get is hot in her case." Oli frowned, "Aw... I wanted to be the cool male lead in a movie!"

Oli found himself walking around aimlessly in the cafeteria, his mother told him to 'go out there!' and 'make friends to eat lunch with instead of eating in the washroom!' Personally Oli thought eating in the washroom was main character vibes, but his mother thought it was loser vibes.

The male held his lunch bag, it was one he had for all of grade school and high school so far. Oli looked around for anyone he recognized from classes that he could talk to, anyone nice enough.

Oli spotted a certain black haired girl from his PE class! The male smiled and decided Katherine was nice, right? He walked over to where Katherine sat with another, shorter girl, and Pix! Another student he knew!

"Hi! I was wondering if I could sit with you guys—?" He applauded himself for sounding confident and not creepy. "Of course! We're always looking for new members of our table after Pearl transferred." The short girl smiled as Oli sat down beside Pixlriffs.

"Yeah, our table's chill compared to the other junior tables. Pix bounces back and forth from here to Lizzie's table, we need some drama once and a while, don't we?" Katherine held a peach juice box, the straw was flat, meaning she had been biting on it.

"How many other tables are there—?"

"There's Cora's friends, there's the demons + Gem, there's Lizzie and friends— ooh— and the redstone kids! Everyone else is in like club-tables." The short girl exclaimed, motioning around to the different groups. "Why the names...?"

"Lizzie and friends is because Lizzie wanted to be their representative, it was almost called Scott and fiends, but Jimmy didn't like that one. The demons are Xornoth, Joey, and Fwhip, plus Gem and that new girl now because they're somehow friends."

"Hold up— Fwhip and Xornoth...? He told me to stay away from Xornoth!" Oli was confused, Pix clicked his tongue. "Yeah, they're only kinda 'friends' when Joey's around. One time when Joey was away because he was sick, Xornoth punched Gemini in the face and an entire food fight broke out." Oli looked over to their table, Xornoth was... quirky?

"Why are they still... pretending to be friends—?"

"Besides the twins, Joey doesn't really have much friends. Xornoth's been his boyfriend since he transferred, so it's hard to break I think. It's between his friends and Xornoth. Pearl used to calm them down between them, but she's gone now." Pixlriffs elaborated further, Oli kept his eyes on Xornoth.

"He talks to me sometimes!" Katherine smiled softly, "During school hours, after school I mean. If you want like a good friendship, it's pretty hard to be limited to school nowadays." Pixl told the female who just shrugged.

(A.N: guys if ur having trouble making friends, when you do make friends don't ghost them— I did a thing when covid started bc I didnt want too much screentime and they were being a little mean to me bc 'I suck at drawing,' and i ended up with no friends irl for like 2 years until june lol)

This school was interesting, although if some girls were interested in him it would be even better.