My look was priceless as Alaric pinched his nose in frustration.
"Okay. I promise not to give her candy again."
"Sure, sure," I reasoned. "You used to do that all the time when I was a kid."
"You begged me."
"Yes, but I was a kid. You were supposed to shoo me away or something," I reasoned while moving onto the next set of documents. "Now back to the topic at hand. We're not skipping this semester and being stuck at home for weeks on end, which isn't even that bad with my boyfriends and girlfriend, but we all know I'm not going to be focusing on books and notes."
He rolled his eyes and let out a long sigh.
"Fine, but you have to meet me halfway on this one," he reasoned.
"I'm listening." I paused to give him my full attention.
"You'll be allowed to be on campus but any classes dealing with magic are going to be off-limits until you guys are back to an average level."
"That alone feels like it'll take weeks," I acknowledged.
"Maybe, but that only proves how vulnerable you are, and it's not like we have any backup to protect any of you if push comes to shove," he reminded.
"You have a point," I mumbled. "However, if we're allowed to be on campus, what are we going to be doing?"
"You'll be taking supplementary classes. So art, cooking, dance, or instrumental classes. They all will count as credits for this semester and won't require you to use magic. You'll also be able to do your student council duties as well as any investigation reports you'd like to fill out for our meeting at the end of the semester."
"Right, the meeting of doom."
"It's not a meeting of doom," he commented with a bored expression. "We should be grateful that the council is willing to have a meeting with all of us."
"Ya. A meeting with a bunch of seniors with extra shiny magic who we can't one hundred percent trust are on our side after they employed Ross and have been siding with Leonardo, who's a criminal by the way, but of course, we don't have enough evidence to arrest him," I summarized. "And don't get me started on him SUDDENLY being transferred to another school this semester when the R-squad returned for full enrollment here."
He lowered his pen to take his glasses off.
"Jade, I know," he whispered. "However, the way the council works isn't as swift as our agency."
"The way the council works is at a snail’s pace as they observe concrete evidence and testimonies from victims in their own departments. I can only wonder if they're the prime reason Charles has been able to get away with murdering my family by manipulating my shadow, destroying Calvin's life by calling him useless after strenuous training and lab experiments, killing the Maxwells’ mother, and making Lisette into a fucking science project by cutting out her pussy and replacing it with a fucking cock!"
That shut Alaric up while Shadow Jade paused in her spinning to look at me.
"Is Mommy Jade mad?"
"I'm not mad," I reasoned before letting out a troubled sigh. "I'm merely frustrated because we live in a dark world where acts of cruelty get pushed under the rug, but innocent individuals who want to save the world and make it a better place are ridiculed, spit on, discouraged, and set up to fail at the hands of grown-ass adults who should want the best for us."
I paused and crossed my arms over my chest.
"Imagine. Tracker Hive Academy is a school that harbors some of the most gifted students I've seen, and yet they're perceived to be crazy delinquents who can't get into any other school because of their stupid imperfections and lack of control. Do we have a few bad apples that can't follow the rules? Yup, but one semester of being a substitute headmaster made me realize that there are some unique students who want to do more. Who wish to have a future and merely need a role model to follow so they can go above and beyond what society labels them. Many don't have parents or friends who validate them or encourage them to move up, and that's just one of the sick problems with our world that should have been fixed at the very top, which is the council. If they're not willing to see the obvious signs of oppression and their obvious desire to help those with large bank accounts versus doing what's morally right, they might as well step down and let a young council that knows the suffering us young adults are dealing with come to the plate and show what a difference a supportive council would be."
Alaric was pretty silent, and I was shocked by the round of applause that came from behind me. I hadn't even sensed Bianca and Tanner entering the room, but there they were with proud grins on their faces.
"We agree," Tanner responded. "But we can't work towards the goal of replacing the council without taking the steps to prove the amount of deceit going on."
Bianca nodded. "No one's been able to have the backbone to go up against the council. Realize that backbone refers to both magic strengths as a whole and immense wealth."
"It's why we scheduled the meeting to be sometime after this semester. The longer the better. That way we can get enough power on both sides of the spectrum to present a force they'll be worried will replace them if they're not careful. They always say money talks, and with wealth comes power. It's true, especially in our world of magic," Alaric explained
"Then what are we going to do about Leonardo?"
How intriguingly suspicious that Leonardo, who had a falling out with the R-squad, decided to finalize his transfer of both school and departments. It was also interesting how Lisette had no memory about how she even got into the forest.
All she knew was that she was feeling unwell and the next thing she knew she could barely keep her eyes open in the thick forest as the rain began to beat down heavily. It wasn't as though the island had security cameras in the deeper parts of the forest, which meant we had no concrete evidence to prove Leonardo's involvement.
We had multiple testimonies of interference, but we’ll have to work to finding far more evidence that would give this council enough push to act instead of just twiddle their thumbs and say we're targeting people we don't like.
As if that's even a thing in this time and age.
"For now, all we can do is track his movements, which I'm sure Calvin can do with little issue. Zion and Rick are going to aid the security team so they can create a solid plan of security amongst your group as well as the school," Tanner explained. "It would be nice to catch him in the act of plotting something, but for now, I'm sure he's playing it super safe."
"Sounds like a coward to me," I concluded. "Hi, Tanner and Bianca," I finally greeted them. "What are you guys doing here?"
"We came to finalize some paperwork for some transfer students. Seems Tracker Hive is getting popular enough for various students to decide they want to transfer mid-school year.
"Seriously?" I questioned. "Seems suspicious to me."
"Everything is suspicious to you," Tanner teased and walked over to pat my shoulders. "We slightly agree, or at least enough for us to take extra caution with who we accept. There were quite a few applications, so we're trying to get them tackled now before a certain someone is stuck here until two in the morning."