BANG!
The tray collided with a head of silver hair, clanging loudly enough to alert the whole room.
The room went dead silent; every sound was removed of all capability to make any noise.
The students' heads snapped collectively, all trying to find where the sound originated from.
A dark-haired student stood at the table within the dimmest corner of the room, right behind where a silver-haired student sat at the front of the table.
The dark-haired boy held a metal tray out; his arms extended toward the back of the silver-haired boy's head.
This metal tray had now lost a portion of its shape, no longer holding its purposefully designed form, but now slightly dented inwards where the centre of the surface met with something more durable than itself.
The tray, in the face of Adrian's overwhelming power, was made to look as though it had the malleability of dough.
Adrian's entire body was still, sitting perfectly normally as if nothing had happened at all.
Then his neck began turning ominously, with the capabilities of a rusty mechanical piece.
When part of his side profile was visible, his head stopped, one Tiffany blue eye glinting fiercely over his shoulder toward the boy who struck him.
"Tch, you."
A pause.
"Again."
He muttered under his breath with irritation, recognising the boy who had attacked him previously this morning.
Julius stood behind Adrian, his gaze like a calm sea of liquid amber in a mud cave.
Yet the sides of his face tensed, his jaw clenched a little too tightly, whilst his grip fastened too firmly on the tray.
Across from Adrian, a boy sat with long electric purple hair, half of a dangerous grin visible where his long hair partly cascaded down one side of his face.
"Julius Sparrow..." Tryx mused to himself with a pleased grin.
Finally, the plan the evil boy put together was in motion, pinning the two freshies together whilst subtly keeping the higher quality one under his wing.
This way, he could acclimate both boys to the school, turning flesh blood to dry, whilst seeing for himself how competent the two were.
His grin grew finer.
"Do you want to die!?" Meanwhile, a woman, outraged at Julius, sat to the left of Adrian.
She had medium-length midnight coloured hair that hung in a flowy lob, like a dark sky devoid of any stars.
Her lips were a shade of matte pitch black, with eyes that were as dark as her lips.
One of her thin, dark brows tugged up sharply, her pale face writhing with agitation.
She went to raise her palm toward Julius, first slinging her body over to turn toward the boy, but was interrupted by Adrian rising like a tide from his seat.
WHOOSH!
Something suddenly shot unexpectedly toward Julius, swiping behind Adrian.
Julius's pupils shrank instantly, catching the subtle movement just before it swept toward him, his eyes like a single ant shimmering in the sea of amber.
His body followed with his recognition, jerking back to pull himself out of incoming danger.
Julius shot off his feet.
As he did so, he felt a soft wind blow against his face where something had whipped past his head.
An arm statically hovered in mid-air, facing away from Julius.
Adrian's expression was like a bored man, a sight similar to grey skies.
Suddenly, Adrian blinked with confusion, the dead weight in his face rising abruptly with realisation.
His knuckles twitched as he noticed his arm had met with empty air, not landing on the target he intended to hit.
His eyes swept to the corner of his vision to side-eye the dark-haired boy across from him.
He saw Julius was standing deathly still, an aura of invisible smoke coating him that made it hard to read his next move.
For someone acting with such raw destruction, he was suspiciously calm.
His right hand lingered toward his inside blazer pocket, his left still holding the deformed tray at his side.
His eyes swelled, like a dark amber miasma, flickering with hesitation before settling with burning resolve.
Then, finally, lowering his hand away from his blazer pocket, and away from a certain circular, star-shaped token inside.
Adrian had assumed his backhanded attack was unexpected and would've caught most people off guard.
He had slightly underestimated Julius.
Though actually, unbeknownst to Adrian, he had had no clue just how much he was blindly assuming.
When it came to Julius Sparrow, one could describe the experience to be like shooting in the dark.
For example, Adrian had no clue that Julius was actually mortal.
This meant two things.
If Julius were hit by that backhand attack, his body would no longer have a head on its torso.
Lastly, Adrian was faster than the average human, so Julius's dodging that could only showcase an already impressive fighting ability.
Though Adrian could not read into that, because of his lack of knowledge, he thus mistook Julius's impressive display of defence as only slightly impressive.
Adrian raised his foot now, stepping slightly off balance with one foot in the air, slowly beginning to climb over the bench, when suddenly something flew toward him.
Adrian's tiffany blue eyes widened, instinctively yanking his body back, flexibly leaning his body aside to let the metal go past him.
Adrian had tilted his body back, twisting his body over behind him, his head turned aside as he twisted, looking behind him toward the back wall of the dim corner.
With the position Adrian stood, he had the angle to see what was thrown.
A metal tray flew over Adrian, where he previously stood, crashing into the wall as it narrowly missed a boy with long purple hair.
The boy sat with a narrowed eye, the other eye hidden behind hair, his hand softly gripping his chin as he watched with intrigue.
Adrian's eyes widened in confusion again, staring at the fallen tray with disbelief.
"Is this kid an idiot? Didn't he learn the first time it wouldn't hurt..." Adrian thought to himself, feeling sorry for the boy, whilst he began to straighten himself, if he had known it was the tray, he wouldn't have bothered to dodge.
Though as Adrian turned over again, before he had the chance to recover, he was immediately introduced to new thrown items flung at his face right where he stood back up.
In mid-air, as if in slow motion, flying insanely close toward him were two things.
One was a brown handheld sack that could fit in a pocket, with some speck of light peeking through the fastened knot at the top.
The other was like a round caltrop.
It was a metal ball with black spikes covering the sphere, with a lit spark fizzing between two of the many spikes.
These items had already been in mid-air, in front of Adrian, since he turned around to face them.
Caught off guard, Adrian had no choice but to throw his arms up to brace himself.
But this was what the dark-haired boy, across from him, had wanted from the start, causing his cold, dark amber eyes to glint with an invisible glint before turning away abruptly to sprint out of the cafeteria.
BANG!
The explosion of the caltrop caused the sac and its contents to immediately explode, causing a bright white light to erupt in the cafeteria and blind several students.
Tryx sat at the back of the table, where the corner of the room had become the brightest for one painfully long second.
Just before the explosion, Tryx had watched the exchange for himself.
Julius had acted quickly, throwing a metal tray right when Adrian was off balance, the instant he had tried to step out from the table.
Then, when Adrian instinctively twisted away to avoid it, Julius threw the sack and the explosive caltrop during the small-time window he created by making Adrian turn away by dodging.
It was then that Tryx had noticed a faint light peering through the small hole still visible even after the sack was fastened tight.
Tryx's visible eye had then widened, his eyelid peeling open a banana, immediately diving under the table and bracing his eyes with his arms.
The light wasn't what warned Tryx.
It was a sound, like a buzz, irritable and incredibly faint.
As though it were coming from an insect...
end of chapter 19