Chevallier

PROLOGUE: the Chevallier is chosen

Saturday.

            Seems just another normal day fit for laziness and procrastination, where sleeping in the afternoon extends well into the night (for me at least) and where waking up to the sound of an alarm clock incites grumbles and more sleep extending well into the afternoon.

            Unfortunately for me, fate has pretty much decided to change my Saturday routine (a.k.a. fuck it up).

            To fully understand the predicament I’m experiencing right now, we should probably rewind time by about ten hours.

            Friday night, 11:00pm.

            Party at full rave as the band on stage plays a very popular rock song that is wholly unknown, but very familiar, to me. I just sat there in one corner, sipping my umpteenth cold beer as my friends chatted around me, or danced, or kissed, or whatever it is that my friends do at parties, I just don’t care. Across from me on the other side of the room are a group of people that, like me, are not joining in on the party. Must be goths judging by their black clothes. They seem to be in deep discussion as they shoot furtive glances at passer-bys and then bending over at something laid out on the table in front of them.

            I shifted in my seat to get a better look at these people and saw to my surprise that they were hardly the neighborhood goths that I pass by everyday on my way to school; in fact, they were more or less familiar to me.

            There’s Bob, the lacrosse player with the big chest and bulging biceps, always the life of every party he went to, showing off and getting a bone or two broken but still managing to smile and laugh through the pain. Patricia, the bubbly cheer leader with blonde hair and positive disposition, always having a clear vision of what she wanted in life and somehow always getting it with very little effort. Mayu the mysterious Asian who always kept to herself and rarely interacts with people save for very few and far in between instances of asking for help, mostly from me. Then, a pretty girl whom I recognize as the new transfer student from Europe; daughter of a respected military general, heiress to a multibillion euro multinational corporation, refined upbringing, all that rich person bullshit.

            In my drunken state, I suddenly find this unlikely group meeting fascinating. Making a decision to discover just what they are up to, I made a lame excuse (“I need some fresh air, I’ll go outside for a while” “Okay bro’ whatever.”), put down the beer bottle I’m holding, reconsidered for a moment and picked it up again. I then walked towards the group, dodging people left and right (and bumping into some) and finally stopping just a few feet from them and sat behind the transfer student, facing Mayu.

            To my annoyance however, my plan epicly failed the moment I started to listen; the music was just too damn loud for me to hear any coherent sentences and instead caught mismatched words like “overdrive”, ‘ultimate” and “spamming”. Interesting, are these guys into some sort of RPG or something?

            I moved my chair a few more feet closer so I was now a few inches away from the transfer student and this time managed to hear them as clearly as if they were speaking beside me, which, practically, what they are doing right now.

            “Look if you insist on me spamming stuff like that over and over again you’ll know pretty well that that will land us into one big clusterfuck of circumstances that will put us in a VERY big disadvantage and a VERY large opening for an ambush.” this was Bob speaking to Mayu in very agitated tones that suggested that he was under a lot of stress.