Nuclear | Edgar x Colette

Weirdly Enough

Edgar POV
"Yo, James, up for an epic showdown?" I asked, spinning the ball on my finger and winking.

"Oh, thank god," Aditi breathed. "I was second away from actually having to compete against him. He would probably trash me like a thousand to zero or something."

"A thousand?" I laughed.

"I don't know anything about basketball, I've told you," Aditi shrugged. "Even the score system."

I shook my head playfully as I turned to face James, who was self-dribbling as a preparation. "Ready?" I asked.

"Ready as I can ever be," James answered. Then the match began.

It was an intense battle as James and I struggled for control of the ball, each scoring points bit by bit. The first three quarters passed in a blur as we fought it out, scoring in the hoops, scoring all kinds of trick shots...

(don't exactly have much idea how to describe a basketball game here, I'm almost as clueless as Aditi 😂)

Finally, the fourth quarter was about to began. I downed a large gulp of water, wiped the sweat of my brow and stole onto the court once again, the basketball in my hand. The current score was at 97 to 106–for now, I was winning. But the tides could turn very fast in fifteen minutes.

We were just about to begin the map when James called out, "Wait! Something's blurring my vision..."

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Aditi rushed to his side as he nearly collapsed.

"Like, there's some sort of green filter blocking out everything I see," James rubbed his eyes furiously. But nothing seemed to be helping.

And all around us, other people were struggling with the same problem too. Hana, Kara, Tim...all of them were rubbing their eyes furiously, like it had been plagued with some green radioactive particles or something.

And then, without warning, my eyes began to become enveloped by the green haze too.

"What's going on?" Hana shouted into the now-cloudy world.

Colette POV
"Okay, I seriously can't sleep right now," I declared to myself. I got up and pushed myself off the bed, styling my hair a bit before I opened the door to find the other kids, wherever they had gone.

"We're going outside for some playtime," I remembered Miss Hana saying. "Today we'll be playing basketball and football."

"That must be where they are right now," I told myself. I opened the door, but backed into my room as I heard a sound from below. When nobody showed their face, I slowly stepped back out and looked down from the parapet.

"Who's that?" I whispered as I spotted a tall man with black hair and a golden nose ring exit a door at the far end of the first floor hallway. I hadn't noticed that door at all.

He wore an armband around his wrist, with the Retropolis symbol etched onto it. He wore a black suit with a bull's skull drawn on it, and his fierce expression seemed rather daunting.

Who even was this guy?

And then I gasped as he raised his shotgun.