Matt

Chapter 12- The Meetup

It was cloudy again today. I hadn't noticed it yesterday, but it was cloudy then, too, wasn't it? I had almost no doubt that it was a bit of the other world leaking into ours. I had wondered as to how many more days it would be before we would see the sun again. I almost wondered if it would ever be sunny again.

Never mind. My mind is just going off on a tangent. I was just trying to keep my mind occupied while walking to the café. I was almost there now. For obvious reasons, the recent events had reached a level of seriousness great enough to require this meeting. To be honest, I was curious as to what the others had to say about the recent events.

When I finally entered the door to the café, it took a moment to locate the others. As expected, I found that all three had beaten me here and were sitting at a window booth. When I approached them, I noticed that Alex looked considerably exhausted. He didn't come to school yesterday either. He must've taken another day off from school in order to recover from his recent 'adventure' in Eorzea.

The moment Clara saw my face, she gave an expression of horror. "Oh my goodness, Matt! Are you okay?" She got up from her seat and rushed up to me to get a closer look. "What happened to you?!"

I gave her a reassuring smile. "I'm okay. It's not as bad as it looks." That was kind of a lie. It still hurts quite a bit.

Clara looked at my eye carefully before sighing miserably. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there to help." She almost looked like she was going to cry.

You're overreacting. There wasn't a whole lot you could have done to help, anyway. "I said I'm okay. There's no need to cry. Thank you for your concern, though."

Clara swallowed hard and nodded. After that, she and I sat down next to each other. Alex was directly on the other side of me, and Alexis was sitting near the window.

Alex was to first to speak after we sat down. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

I narrowed my eyes at him when he said that. No, the weather was not nice. "I doubt you called this meeting so that we could just talk about the weather."

"Indeed," said Alex with a smirk. "I just thought I'd try to break the ice with a simple question. The question was ironic, of course, since the weather was indeed not nice at all. In fact, it's quite depressing. I'm sure you've already suspected that the weather is linked to Serena."

"Yup," I said as I sat back.

"Perhaps now would be the best time for you to inform the rest of us of what has been happening on your end."

I began to explain to Clara and Alexis as to what happened last Monday and what was going to happen this Saturday. I told them about Serena's parents discovering the FSC, her dad banning Serena from going to it, the assault I received from John, and the need for us to come up with a plan for this Saturday. Clara had her hands on her mouth as I described the details of what happened Monday, making me almost feel bad for saying them. It was really cute of her to act like that.

"And that's everything." I said.

Alex was the first to speak. "As I told you during our phone call, my group could not hold off the monsters until you intervened. For a moment... I really thought that the end was coming." He sighed.

I was a bit shocked to find that Alex was almost ready to give up for a moment.

I turned to Alexis after Alex was done speaking. "What did your group think about all this?"

Alexis crossed her arms before speaking, "We of the voidsent still cannot explain the portal phenomenon between these two worlds. Our diminished abilities here are due to the severe lack of eather. That fact leads us to believe that if anything were to cross over to this realm that the threat wouldn't be great."