Arriving at School, Gary was happy to see that everyone was okay. He was partially worried that perhaps Innu would have run away after seeing what happened. Sure, they were all somewhat involved in the underworld, but Gary knew exactly what it was like to see a dead body.
It was a memory that not only wouldn’t, but just couldn’t get out of one’s head, although perhaps Gary had it worse because he had gone through worse things. Which was why, although Innu was in the class and had his head down on his desk. Gary wasn’t going to disturb him or give him a hard time.
When Gary came close, Innu did lift his head and took a peak, before placing it back down again.
“How come I feel like shit, while you look like some type of golden boy… am I that tired?” Innu mumbled.
The thing was, it wasn’t only him that noticed. Soon many of those in the room couldn’t stop staring at Gary. Something seemed celery different about him.
“Did he get a new haircut or something?” One of the students asked.
“No, he still has that same stupid green hair, but he really looks different, did he get plastic surgery maybe?.”
“Nah, it’s not plastic surgery, look at his body, he’s been working out. His clothes are bulging, I think you can see his muscles.”
After hearing what everyone was saying, Innu lifted his head and rubbed his eyes slightly. He wasn’t imagining things, Gary really did look great after everything that had happened.
‘Did that black blood turn him into some kind of superhero or something?!’ Innu couldn’t believe it. ‘If I had known, I might have also taken some… although… no, his hair seems to be fine.’
Gary hadn’t really expected that he would gather this much attention, or for so many people to notice, and he wasn’t used to the stares, he was even avoiding their gaze a bit, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t like all the praises he was getting and because of it, he thought to look in the direction where Xin was.
For a second, he saw her glancing his way, before quickly turning around.
‘Oh… I didn’t expect that.’
“Hey, Gary right, the two of us don’t talk much but look at you.” A girl came over to talk to him. She stroked her hair putting it behind her shoulder, revealing her ear. It was Tiffany. She had gotten incredibly close to the point where Gary was uncomfortable.
“The superstar of the rugby team, and now look at you, it looks like you’ve been working out, but how did you get like that so fast?”
Gary nervously chuckled as she pushed her body up against his and started to feel up his arm. She had felt around his biceps, and even Tiffany seemed surprised by how large and hard it was.
“I think it’s just a growth spurt.” Gary mumbled.
The door slid open and Tom could be seen entering. He had entered through the back door rather than the front door, which meant he was near to his seat and could see Gary being red-faced while also being held onto by what Tom would refer to as a leach.
“Hey Tiffany, do you know my name?” Tom asked as he slammed his bag down on the table. It looked like she truly froze for a second as she tried to remember it.
“Ah, I’m a bit of a ditz.” She excused herself, knocking herself on the head in a cute fashion. “This brain of mine is freezing.”
“Yeah, we sit next to each other in geography, and we’ve been in the same class as each other for four years. Anyway, Gary’s mine.” Tom declared, licking his lips.
It was then that Tiffany let go of Gary’s arm, as she had all sorts of thoughts running through her head.
“Wait, you mean, he’s…”
Tom just folded his arms, nodding his head up and down, and eventually she decided to awkwardly leave. Which immediately made both Tom and Gary burst out in laughter.
“Well, I didn’t expect you to come up with something like that.” Gary wiped a tear from his eye, as he pounded Tom on the shoulder, who flinched at his action.
“Not my fault if she misunderstands. Anyway, what the hell happened to you? Yesterday you asked me about a game, not telling me anything about what happened, and now you look like a jock who never leaves the gym. Be honest, did you get transported into a game world, and then it spewed you out based on your Class?” Tom asked sceptically.
“Nah, it’s just a growth spurt.” Gary insisted, although it was scary how close to the truth Tom’s joke was. As his best friend, Tom knew Gary for a long time, and in the past he used to be only slightly taller than himself. For him to experience such a growth spurt seemed somewhat ridiculous, and far too coincidental.. but he assumed that it might have something to do with him being a Werewolf.
As lesson’s went on, it was time for the group to have a bit of self study and during this time Innu was fast asleep snoring away. Using this time, Gary believed it was a good chance to ask Tom a few questions.
“I remember you saying that your parent’s work is related to Altered. That should mean they know a lot about beasts, right? Like the beasts that Altered DNA comes from and so on?” Gary asked.
Tom nodded, but honestly he knew very little more than that about what his parents did.
“What I wanted to know was… do you know if there are still any beasts out there? I’m not talking about Altered, but real beasts.” The reason Gary asked this was due to his current grade.
To get stat points, there was one way, and that was to kill and eat beasts. To Gary this was more peace of mind for him than humans or Altered. The problem was beasts no longer existed or roamed the Earth so where would he find one? He hoped that Tom might know more, if not there was also Blake… but he doubted the Altered Hunter would share that knowledge with him.
“I have no idea. I mean, I’ve never seen one, have you? Or one on the news, but I’ll ask them. It will be a simple question to ask them and I can tell you tomorrow. Now I want you to tell me something. What happened yesterday? After I took that woman to the hospital, I mean?”
There was a pause before Gary answered, he had somewhat forgotten that Tom had been there yesterday, but if he told Tom everything would he believe him, and wouldn’t that involve him with gang matters.
“We tried finding out who really did that to the club. In the end…we found Marie, but she was badly hurt, so we took her to the hospital after. Anyway, because of the state of the club I have no job for a few days, but I did want to test out a few things with you.” Gary placed his hand covering his mouth, and mouthed out the words ‘Werewolf.’
This part was true, and since he wouldn’t be going to the club today, he thought he could at least test out his new skills, which conveniently meant they would be spending time together.
His best friend nodded and got back to studying, but he knew once again that his friend had lied to him. This morning, Tom had decided to surf a certain section of what was known as the Dark Web. It was a special part of the Internet that many criminal organisations used, and there were plenty of forums on there as well.
The reason he had been so late, today, was because he had found a particularly interesting discussion. It was theories as to what happened that might have led to the apparent annihilation of the grey colour gang in Slough.
‘Gary, was that you?’ Tom wondered.
*******
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