Church's Summer

The Emerald Forest

Church woke up, stretching his arms above his head. He glanced around the room, noting the sea of sleeping students. Only a couple had gotten up. Alpha glanced out the windows. The first rays of sunlight were barely showing. Glancing to his right, he found Tai sleeping on another man's stomach. The man's sister —from the looks of it— was watching, unsure what to do.

At lightning speeds Church stood up, rushing over to Tai, where he proceeded to take a shit ton of pictures. 'This is gold. Pure blackmail gold. I can hold this over his head for his entire time here.'

With a shark-like grin that seemed unnatural for his face, he turned to the woman. She only stared back with a questioning look on her face. "You want some blackmail for your brother too?" Church held up his scroll, wiggling it for emphasis.

A second passed before a grin matching Church's flashed across her face and nodded. They traded scroll numbers and Church sent her the photos. "Good choice, blackmail is always better than no blackmail."

The woman hummed, shifting her weight to her other foot. Anyone could obviously see she was uncomfortable with how close Church was to her, but he didn't seem to care. "I... have to agree. You can always use it later on as well."

Church snapped his fingers. "Exactly, no one else understands that. You're the first person I've met here that actually fucking gets having leverage is always beneficial."

She nodded. Clearly she saw the same thing Church did in their peers: arrogance, stupidity, pretentiousness, and most importantly weakness. "Same, everyone else seems to have an ignorant outlook on life. You, you're different though. Did you grow up in the kingdoms?"

The AI flipped his head to the side. "...You could say that. I'm guessing you grew up outside the kingdoms, so I'm not gonna even ask. Do you have a name? If not, I'm gonna make one up and you will probably not like it. Unless you have some weird as shit fetish... You don't, do you?"

She shook her head, her face hardening, but the glint in her eye told him all he needed. "Raven. My name's Raven."

Church gave her a blank stare. "Raven?" A nod. "Like as in the bird?" Another nod. "Sorry, but that's the weirdest fucking name I've heard."

Raven put her hand on her hip, cocking it to the side. "Oh really? Well, what's your name then?"

"Church; the greatest name ever."

Raven gave him the "you fucking shitting me" stare. "You made fun of my name, yet your name's Church? I don't think you can make fun of someone else's name, like seriously just don't."

Alpha scoffed. "Fuck you too." Raven rolled her eyes. Church glanced at the time, giving a nod. "I'm gonna go get food, you can come along if you want to. I don't care."

Raven shook her head. "I should get my brother up. Catch you later."

Church turned away from her, waving his hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah."

Church wondered for but a second if he should wake Tai... but thought better and continued walking away. 'Seriously, Tai isn't my fucking problem. I don't even like him. I hate him. He's like a Tucker that I can't boss around. Well, I never really could boss Tucker around, but my point still stands.'

He headed out, wandering around Beacon looking for the cafeteria. Beacon was a lot bigger than he initially guessed. It was large enough to be a town. Large arcades of arches stood proudly on display; the marble polished to a shine that dared to reflect the sun's rays.

Church saw plenty of first and second years roaming around Beacon, but oddly he didn't see any third or fourth years. They could have just been on missions, yet the probability of them all being on missions at the same time was non-existent. 'God, I'm starting to sound like Delta.'