"Hey, River." I could recognise Ash's voice from across the cafeteria.
She came over and plonked her tray down next to me, smiling at the food heaped on it.
"Chips!" she said happily, shovelling a couple into her mouth.
"How' you doing?" I said cheerfully.
Ash held up a finger as she chewed her food, then spoke, "Good, you?"
"Fine." I said. "Any idea where Ali is?"
"Probably hanging out with some of her new friends." Ash said, slightly sadly.
I felt bad for her: before their powers had come, Ali and Ash had been like sisters to each other. From what I had heard from the two of them and Natasha, they were inseparable back at their orphanage.
I wish I had been at their orphanage, mine wasn't very good, and I got fostered pretty quickly by a couple who hated me and got drunk often, taking out any anger on me.
Paul suddenly appeared behind us and sat down next to Ash.
"Hey, what's up?" he said, seeing her sad face.
"Nothing, Paul," she sighed, "just missing Ali a bit."
"Well that's fair enough, you barely see her anymore." Paul said, putting his arm around her.
"Yeah, I guess." she said, her good mood completely gone.
"What do we have next?" I asked, trying to change the subject so that Ash could stop being sad about it.
"Latin, I think." Paul said, pulling a face.
"What's up with it?" Ash said, "I really like Latin."
"Yeah, same." I agreed.
Paul shrugged, "I guess I just find it boring, I would rather be learning a modern language that I could properly take out into the world."
"But Latin is the basis for a many languages, it is really helpful to learn." Ash said.
"Well, if you really want to do something more useful, then why don't you sign up for some other language?" I said.
Ash grinned.
"Yeah, Paul, you're definitely smart enough." she said.
"I might do..." Paul said.
At the end of their second mission, Paul and Ash had ended up getting together. I still wasn't aware of the circumstances, because Ash didn't like to talk about it, but it changed her. She had become more war-like, less innocent seeming. And yet she was in this new relationship.
I wasn't jealous of her, I just didn't think that Paul was the right person for her. He seemed nice at first but he could actually be quite selfish and vain. I had heard her say some quite mean things to her, as well.
I have to say, I did feel a bit left out where they were always acting so close and I was getting shoved with them a lot. The others who we came into the uni with were in different social groups and I didn't really know anyone else here apart from Ash. I still found it weird, this whole university thing. Everyone here was a spiritus apart from the teachers, which apparently could only come in if they were 'let' in by whatever made only spirituses coming in. They didn't tell us many details, I'm guessing because they didn't want kids with such incredible powers being able to recreate it in some way. Otherwise we would probably know.
"Hey, good love triangle you've got going there." Tefia sat down at the table and grinned at us.
"What do you mean?" I said.
