It was very early in the morning, but a good number of the Elites and Ariel were already inside the school library, which occupied a large expanse in the middle of the school on the third and fourth floors. This was also the location of the Records Office and all of its bookkeeping assets, both public and classified records. The Records Office, as the main function of the Department of the Administration, maintained these assets over the many years of this school’s existence. Some of the records were even given to them by the faculty, allowing the student government access to information on students and student organizations that would not be available in the public domain. In a sense, the Records Office was more of an intelligence agency than a public service.
Public records like the minutes of each convention of the Assembly, attendance sheets, historical records of the Class Wars, among many other records, were out in the open in the library for anybody to inspect. Classified records like personal information on students or intelligence on student clubs or organizations were sealed away in a huge, windowless storage room in the library on the fourth floor, and this was where the children were.
After Kato and Sisi returned Alice to her residence, she didn’t mope over what had transpired in that final hour. Instead, she was already looking ahead to what needed to happen to make her wishes come true. She called a few of her retainers out to their front yard to instruct them to pack as much of her belongings as possible and prepare sufficient funds for her use in the immediate future. As a stakeholder in a huge company, she would never really run out of funds in the long term, but hard cash was always nice and liquid to make things happen at a moment’s notice. Alice then had Kato and Sisi bring her alone to a hotel near a local government office that was conveniently in the general vicinity of Korolev Senior, so that on this morning, she could assume full ownership of her shares without delay and make it to school by herself.
“Kato, I’m sorry I got you involved in this mess.”
“No, it was my decision to break off the engagement. It isn’t your fault.”
“That’s not it. It’s not just about me. It’s about them and their group of people. Now that I’m no longer their ally, they will naturally see me as an enemy, and you’ll definitely be in their sights because you stand on my side.”
“What exactly did you say to Gil this morning? He’s never been so angry before.”
“I’m really happy that you’d say that for me, and I can see why he responded like that. We’re all selfish, aren’t we?”
“That’s why I’m here, almost like I’m running away from home. And it’s not just me who’s in danger. I have no doubt he’ll attack you from his position as marshal or 3-A’s class representative.”
“I won’t be surprised if something happens by tomorrow morning. It’s fair game the moment I finish with the paperwork, after all.”
Once Kato and Sisi got home, he phoned his classmates to prepare and gather the next morning, taking Bianca and Ariel’s advice to do research on their adversaries. Sitting here together with his buddies in the Record Office’s storage room, they continued to read through all the documents on the students of Class A, anything to try and gain an advantage over a class that was bound to defeat their pitiful classmates.
“This is the last of the docs on Class A. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, Ariel.”
Really, only Kato, Eon and Caius had the wits to use this information in a concrete plan. Though Evie, Franco and Yui were also reading through these docs, they couldn’t really contribute much on the strategic front. It had already been more than two hours since the room was first occupied, planning out an imminent confrontation that was supposedly disadvantaged toward Class F.
They were gathered around a tiny desk clustered with coffee mugs that was definitely not meant for six people to sit around, and in time Kato left his comrades inside and was already standing up and pacing back and forth on the ceramic floor among the shelves of books just outside the storage room. Most of the plan was already set in place, and he let the rest of them wrap up the final details as he caught a short break out in the open library.
As the person who was the most knowledgeable of the situation, the responsibility for this conflict ultimately rested on him, and from this burden he felt a great pressure to secure success in his and Alice’s favour. The Class War strategy itself aside, he was also very wary of what Alice’s status would be, now that Alice had cut her ties with Gilbert. News of them breaking off would not be kept secret to the rest of Class A. It was impossible not to be the case with Alice’s newfound course. Not only that, Alice had cut her ties for key members of Class F, a conflict of interest that would definitely not fall on deaf ears among Class A’s leadership.
The lack of sleep also contributed to Kato’s distress, as he had to come to school very early to have this storage room opened. It wasn’t known if time was of the essence, so he had to treat it as if it was the case. Every class above Class E had a restoration of order casus belli against their class, and with Class A’s rep now having a personal motivation to declare war, there was not a second to spare.
To Kato, it wasn’t about the Class Wars itself. It was about Gilbert’s personal beef with him, but if this was going to engulf their classes in war, then so be it. He could only take the challenges as they come.
“Kato, you’re committing your class to Alice?”
“It seems like it, isn’t it? Then again, we’re the only real forces within Class F, so it’s not as bad.”
“Alice is important to you?”
He paused at the question, with Ariel looking up at his face that had black rings around his eyes. On the other hand, the clear golden eyes of Ariel were as alert as they ever were, seemingly unaffected by the early bird call.
“Yeah, she’s a friend.”
She nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. Then, for some reason, she sat on the floor, chin to the knees and feet together. Kato sighed and crouched down to her, who stared back at him intently, her expression sagely calm as usual.
“Then that’s settled. As for the situation at hand, there’ll be more than just war, that is certain. A completely separate confrontation, outside of the Class Wars. That part is on you. But if a Class War erupts, you can count on me to help you out.”
The legality of a peace treaty at the end of a Class War was essentially the same as a law passed by the Assembly, and for the making of such a peace treaty, the student council executives presided over this procedure, which was where Ariel and the Jupiter sisters could influence the terms made in the peace.
“The only path is to victory or death, eh?”
“You don’t have a choice, do you? Neither by your own principles nor by the circumstances around the school right now.”
Kato stared back into Ariel’s pensive eyes soberly, expectant of a response. She was just as unperturbed.
“Remember the ridiculous restricted zone you placed on Class E around your classroom? That was effectively a restraining order placed on all forty-something students, a power usually exercised by the courts. A peace treaty is only as powerful as a law passed by the Assembly, and laws that are deemed to contradict the constitution are of no force.”
“So you expect that peace term to be appealed?”
“It conflicts with the principle of freedom of mobility. Sooner or later somebody with a brain would appeal. However, because historically a peace treaty not only legislated but also intermittently exercised the powers of the courts, any appeal would lead to a long court case. And as a student council executive, we’d prefer to keep the powers of the courts within our grasp.”
A mildly sinister smile appeared on her face, akin to the competitor she was against the Elites. Wasn’t this against the constitution? Maybe Ariel was born to be a lawyer. She continued on.
“I assure you they will come up with more ridiculous terms than those. I will try as much as I could to prevent them from making unfair demands, but it’ll be very harsh if you lose hard. For example, they could send some of you into other classes.”
Kato then remembered what Mona said yesterday night. They could really do that in a peace treaty, but of course on reasonable terms. If they lost the war in a crushing defeat, then it was not hard to imagine one or two of Class F’s essential human resources to be uprooted from it.
“I see. Then we’ll have to make sure we don’t lose everything.”
“Tough luck with the quality gap between the two classes. But at the end of the day, it isn’t the war; it’s Alice who’s the key to the endgame. Depending on what’s done to her, the conflict between Class A and Class F would continue beyond this coming war.”
“So you’re saying there’ll probably not be a lasting peace unless something is done about Alice.”
“I mean, she is the cause of the war. Eliminating this cause would naturally lead back to peace between your classes.”
“Well, if she decides to leave for Regia Miriam then everything’ll be over, but it ain’t happening.”
“That’s a problem for you to figure out. Class F’s problems aren’t mine.”
“Wow. Why you gotta be like that.”
“Just keep that in mind. Anything less than a total victory will mean a continuing struggle, until the flames of war are extinguished.”
The other children began piling out of the storage room to find Kato and Ariel sitting on the floor like grade-schoolers, which brought snickers to Eon and Caius. Kato only shrugged as he got up from the floor, and held out his hands to reach Ariel’s outstretched arms to help her up.
“Thanks, Ariel. I can’t believe the day where using connections to positions of power for personal gain has come so fast.”
“Eon, I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not, but I’ll take it anyway. Good luck.”
“Have a little faith in our plans. We aren’t the Elites for nothing.”
Eon and Caius both grinned, almost eager to put their plan into action. Kato was not as giddy as they were, but at the same time felt an indescribable excitement well up inside him, a kind of excitement that was in anticipation of the execution of a well-thought out plan. Regardless of the long-term worries that Ariel spelled out for him, what was in front of him was the fight at hand, and he needed to focus on this as much as he needed to find a lasting political settlement afterwards.
“Then let’s get started. It’s almost time for class.”
The plan for the war wasn’t only on the war itself but also involved the situation around it, and thus the Eternians were camping out in one of the other physics classrooms, empty due to being period one. Kato sat atop a tall stool that he brought before the wide windows that spanned the length of the classroom, eyes peeled and watching over the front gates of Korolev Senior in the distance below him. Evie, on the other hand, just put her head down on one of the counters and was softly dozing away.
From Alice’s conjecture, it was very likely for Gilbert, or Class A for that matter, to take action on Alice and Class F as soon as possible, and Kato agreed with that assessment. Not only that at this moment in time Gilbert would be prone to making decisions on clouded judgment, there was not a moment to waste to assert Class A’s supremacy on the rest of the school. Mona’s faction were the warmongers, so if Gilbert’s personal reason to not rush into war with Class F was gone, there was no more reason not to expect him to cave to the Mona faction’s hawkish demands.
And also from his own experiences, corroborated by the Records Office’s intelligence, Gilbert and Mona were historically allies, and the initial factional separation only existed because they pursued different levers of power within the school. Then, there was a real, personal rift between the two when Alice arrived as Gilbert’s fiancée, to which the two factions actually began to crystallize in real terms over the last year, up until this point. With Alice out of the picture, the two factions could work together once more, likely immediately.
An hour elapsed, almost at the end of the first period, passing the nine o’clock mark by ten, just ten more until the end of first period. The government office that Alice would visit was only a ten minute walk away from Korolev Senior. She planned to visit that office as soon as it opened at eight and then immediately get to school for class, so if all went well, she would arrive at the end of first period.
“Kato, it’s almost time. We’ll need to move to the alchemy room.”
Evie whined from her awkward sleeping position. Kato nodded at her. One of the alchemy rooms was unoccupied for second period, so they would move there to continue watching over the front gates. The Records Office had the overall school schedule handy, and although it was technically public information and it wasn’t hard to build and tabulate their own spreadsheets without the help of the Records Office, it was nice to have it readily available at a crunch time like this.
“We’ll move out once the bell rings.”
But not a second too soon, their target of interest arrived at the front gates of Korolev Senior in school uniform and a backpack on her, seemingly as if nothing was out of the ordinary. At Kato’s wave, Evie rushed over to the window to watch with him, suddenly wide awake in comparison to her loafing around moments before.
There was a wide expanse between the gates and the great steps to the front doors, out in the open and in broad daylight. However, this was where it happened anyway. Suddenly, four students from the Public Safety Committee appeared from below, ostensibly waiting somewhere inside or on the steps and obscured from third-floor’s view by the protruding overhead roofing over those steps. They were immediately recognized by their red scarves around their left forearms with the PSC symbols sewed on them, buckled on by large paper clips to their cleanse tags, which looked like white bandages but were in fact a heavy plastic-like hybrid material that was similar to what was used to wrap electrical wires. Cleanse tags though were as thin as bandages, so the material bent easily and did not retain its shape, much like real bandages. Though they had smaller badges on their uniforms, those were more for decoration while the red scarves showed that these PSC members were on active duty.
From their vantage point, they saw that the PSC members hurried over to Alice, who barely stepped into Korolev Senior school grounds, and stopped her there as they showed their PSC identification. Alice, seemingly composed, only shook her head disapprovingly and handed over her backpack to them. One of the PSC members then held out their hand, to which Alice took off her cleanse tag and put it into the outstretched hand.
Their cleanse tags around their wrists were by now personalized and had their names stamped on it along with the school faculty’s chop, which made their cleanse tags into official student identification, a requirement for participating in official extracurricular activities. Only after the first convention of the Assembly last Tuesday did the faculty apply this personalization to the students’ cleanse tags. By tradition, the first Assembly marked the start of a new year for student life, which ceremonially affirmed all the rights and privileges of students, and therefore marking the start of operations of official extracurricular activities, like school clubs and student organizations such as the AC and PSC. Although most student organizations still operate before the first convention of the Assembly, as they would naturally be for returning students from last year taking charge for their clubs and so on, those activities would officially be considered as activities operated on the budget from the previous fiscal year.
Most students decorated their cleanse tags with designs of their own choice, as long as it still had a white background and the names and school seal visible. Because it served as a form of student identification, especially with regards to student organizations, it was pretty much a requirement for almost everything in school. For the PSC, if they were to put somebody under arrest, they had the power to confiscate the person’s student identification, which in almost all cases meant their cleanse tag.
Evie’s face turned grim, and Kato nodded in agreement. Handing over the cleanse tag around her wrist meant that the PSC aimed to put her under arrest. It was as they feared. Without even a parting wave, Evie ran out of the empty physics classroom for their homeroom. A successful plan was only as good as its flow of information. The crew back in their homeroom was waiting for Evie’s return before they could take the next course of action.
On the other hand, after the five students below him disappeared underneath the roofing over the front steps, Kato yanked the windows wide open and proceeded to jump out without a second thought. The rush of summer air, today returning to normal after the chilly variations for the past week, blew through his untucked dress shirt breezily, and he landed squarely in the fresh lawn next to the building below him. With his physically superior body, it wasn’t much of a hassle to make the jump, but it was dangerous nonetheless if he wasn’t careful. He made a dash for the steps, disappearing from under the sunlight and into the shadow of the steps’ overhead shelter.
Tailing the group he was following with his sixth sense, he snuck himself silently through the front doors and into the atrium, the grand open expanse that was the main hall of the building. Remaining out of sight of the PSC members surrounding Alice, they escorted her to the east end of the atrium, past the black market and into one of the hallways.
Not taking the great spiral staircase in the centre of the atrium and instead going east could only mean one destination: the Public Safety Committee’s main office on the third floor. The other, previously plausible destination was the faculty’s office, which was on the second floor only a short distance away from one of the exits of the central spiral staircase. Taking great care, he ducked in and out of the various crevices, lockers and doors along the way behind them, and followed them to make sure they actually headed for where he thought they were going.
Throughout, Alice complied with the arrest quietly and obediently, having passed by many first-year classrooms and made a left turn, and then up the staircase that was next to the gymnasium at the end of the hallway. It was nearly the end of the period, but until the bell rings to declare as such, the hallways were as empty as they should be. As Kato predicted, they exited on the third floor to bring her to the PSC main office, only a few rooms away from the stairs’ exit.
Trailing behind them, Kato watched as they ushered her into the PSC’s home base, an expanse that was as spacious as a couple of classrooms and seemed nothing more than a plain white-collar office space. However, he was only able to take a glimpse of the inside before the doors closed shut on the room and all but one of the escorts broke off from the group and headed west along the hallway.
All of Alice’s escorts were from 3-A, and as students from the same year it wasn’t that hard for Kato to recognize them. At least this time, somehow, he remembered the names from the notes he read this morning, but that was not important. What was important was that they were all from Gilbert’s faction, which meant that it was a possibility that Mona might not be involved in this operation.
There was only one course of action for Kato from this position, and if their projections were correct, then he hoped that his comrades made the best out of their situation. He turned back from the PSC office and into the staircase again, and then clambered himself out of the window and onto the thin ledge between the second and third floors. Standing carefully with his feet parallel to the ledge, the base of his neck barely reached the bottom of the window. Although he was gifted with physical superiority and the strength and dexterity that it came with, it was still a slow and steady shuffle along this ledge. The destination was quite straightforward: one of the windows of the PSC office. He didn’t care that someone might be looking out of a window from the classrooms facing across from him from the west side.
Reaching the first window of the PSC office, he ducked underneath it to make past it, which surprisingly strained his back as he also needed to remain balanced on the ledge. Once he made it to the second window, he took a peek inside from the edge of the window, and although looking in from outside was difficult due to the reflective nature of the outer glass, he was somewhat relieved to see that the Records Office’s intelligence didn’t fail him.
There was a smaller room inside to hold detained students, complete with plain white walls, unmarked lockers and cabinets, ceramic flooring, a small desk with a lamp and a few lawn chairs. One glaring detail out of place was of course the window, but because in the building’s floor plan the PSC office as a whole was supposed to support occupancy, it must abide by safety regulations, which meant that this smaller room had to have a window. Sat alone inside the tiny interrogation room was Alice, who seemed unfazed by the arbitrary arrest. In fact, both Alice and Kato expected it to happen.
There was a thirty-minute period where the PSC needed to charge her with wrongdoing that a teacher had accepted as lawful, or else they must release her. Most likely, there was no real reason to detain her, and Gilbert was only using the PSC’s powers to remove people from school before the commencement of a Class War. At the start of a Class War, only the people with their cleanse tags worn could participate in the war, so by putting key enemies under arrest, their cleanse tags would need to be removed before taken into custody and thus would be unable to participate if a war broke out. Seeing as there was nobody in the room with her, PSC member nor teacher, it was almost certain that Alice was detained for a purpose related to that. This tactic was not unknown, and in fact it was standard for all the past marshals of the PSC.
He tapped on the window lightly, and it immediately caught Alice’s attention. Kato quickly put a finger to his lips to signal to her to remain silent, as was ironically her right in this situation. She shuffled to the window to slowly and quietly slide open the window so that Kato could climb through, who landed inside softly on his feet. From his pocket, he took out a pen and a blank notepad, and passed it to Alice. Evidently, he was letting her ask the first question.
What are you doing here?
You know what’s gonna happen. A siege into a Class War.
But still, why here? You can just fight him, no?
Yes, but the surrounding situation is important too.
She arched her eyebrow, unsure of what he meant. He continued writing on the notepad.
How many are outside there in the office?
Two.
Kato nodded, ripped another sheet of paper from the notepad and shoved it in Alice’s hands before nodding one more time and pocketing the notepad and pen. Then he carefully opened one of the nondescript lockers to insert himself into, and slowly closed the locker door on himself as Alice watched him with mild amusement. Whatever Kato and the Elites were thinking of, they were bound to be ridiculous. She unfurled the piece of paper to see a set of instructions written in Evie’s slanted and elegant handwriting, and only after reading it once, she let out a sigh as her expectations were amply met. She chuckled to herself quietly and folded it into her pocket. The Elites were an amazing bunch of people, she thought.
She moved to the window and slowly put it back in place, leaving no evidence of his break-in. She leaned her forehead into the glass of the window, watching the courtyard below as she collected her thoughts. If Kato was doing something as absurd as barging in and climbing into a hiding spot, she could only imagine what the other Elites were doing.
Not just that, but the whole of last week too flashed by in a blink of an eye. A week ago, it was simply another day in her preordained life as a small gear in the bourgeoisie’s huge contraption, suspended in a state of perpetual emotional slow motion. Today, not only did she break free from her cage, but also found a destination for her flight. That destination, she thought wishfully, could be wherever that man in the locker would bring her to. The bell rang for the end of first period and Alice continued to look out the window at the school grounds, where students flowed in and out of doors to make it to their next period’s class.
A few minutes ago, Evie returned to the 3-F classroom that was nearing the end of first period. Because homeroom and their homeroom teacher were decided by their first period class, the teacher who occupied the 3-F homeroom was of course Sisi. In the first three periods, they consisted of the core courses that were requirements for the People’s Diploma, alternating from day to day or week to week, depending on what the faculty decision was for the year, and there would be final examinations for each of these courses at the end of the year. After lunch, there were two longer periods for the elective advanced courses. They were run like crash courses with their final examinations happening every three months or so, two electives a semester for a total of six different electives in three semesters a year. The morning classes plus the advanced afternoon classes were both required for the Standard Diploma. There were still a few students on the People’s curriculum, including the Eternian children, but most students in this day and age take as many advanced courses as possible anyway, regardless of which diploma they were ultimately eligible for.
Today, the scene around the 3-F classroom was dire, to say the least. From inside the classroom, the doorways out into the corridor had about a foot of open, indented space before reaching the sliding door because of the thickness of the wall. In those indented spaces, both doors on both ends of the classroom were barricaded with desks and chairs, donated to 3-F’s vanguard by the boys in the class.
Peering into the 3-F classroom from outside were about a dozen PSC members, all of which were from Class 3-A, including Gilbert and his right-hand man, Stephen, who were at the doorway on the chalkboard’s side. Glaring back at them from behind the barricade were Evie and Eon, both unrepentant at their handiwork.
It was a miracle that they got a physical barricade up as soon as Evie and Kato saw the PSC jump into action against Alice. Evie ran back to their classroom to get the class to begin setting it up, and had them finish the job by the time the PSC, who were waiting for a signal from ground floor, made it to their classroom from wherever they were camping at, most likely the PSC office or 3-A’s own classroom.
“I repeat: Evianna Kirin Misaya; Eon Atelier Koziko; Caius Magellan Evans; Franco Adrian Atkinson; Ms Elizabeth Miklos Romana; you are hereby defying arrest by the PSC. The charges against you are for the illegal organization and assembly of students.
“This is your final warning. If you do not comply, we will have no choice but to use force.”
Stephen blared from a handheld loudspeaker, with two of his colleagues having a huge black flag raised in the air beside him as a clear signal that this was indeed the final warning. As expected, the PSC went after key members of Class 3-F at the same time that Alice showed up to school. What was unexpected was that even Sisi was named in the group of people they wanted to arrest, ostensibly to prevent Sisi from abusing the Duel mechanism of the Class Wars. There were many instances of the PSC laying charges against a teacher in Korolev Senior’s history, and for the purposes of a Class War as well. But unless it was a real problem, nothing ever came of it, and if it was indeed a real problem, the rest of the faculty would take action as well.
Students from nearby classes had gathered around here since the first period ended, albeit at a distance to observe the siege. Outside of the alchemy classrooms, use of non-pre-programmed alchemy was prohibited so many things were done using conventional methods, including how the PSC operated. Two new members arrived on site carrying a large trunk with them, and in no time the siegers unpacked its contents to distribute among its ranks. They were quickly equipped with body armour, helmets, goggles, riot shields and even a few launchers that lobbed nonlethal rounds like sandbags. The bell rang for the start of second period, but the siege was not going to be lifted.
Inside the classroom, there was a clearing in the middle where the desks used to be, and was now occupied by a jumble of strange supplies that looked like the front to a very odd garage sale, which Class F had gathered and prepared from different places around the school throughout first period. The students wore surgical face masks over their nose and mouth, swimming goggles over their eyes, as well as yellow heavy-duty helmets over their heads. Among some of the Elites were small megaphones that alchemically projected their voices when they spoke into it. However, it was Sisi with an old-school megaphone that made a reply.
“Our response is: we will not back down, until all our demands are met.”
And then, over the mound of desks and chairs, they threw eggs at the officers of the PSC standing with their transparent riot shields up, covering them with the gooey mess of egg white, yoke and shell fragments. Some landed on the ground, splashing its contents everywhere and dirtying the corridor. Among the pile of supplies were more eggs and other groceries, and runners quickly moved in and out to keep up the barrage of expired food.
They had, of course, been having a standoff for some time. In the past week, after the introduction of the Act of Neutrality to the Assembly, there was a big reaction to the new policy from the lower classes of all years. The Elites’ classmates in Class F in particular agitated heavily against the draft bill since last Tuesday, and began distributing pamphlets across the school to garner support among the students to resist the passage of this law. From the regime’s perspective, this kind of student activism was deliberate action to distribute seditious material to incite a rebellion to overthrow the regime, and thus was a movement that needed to be crushed. There were already a few scuffles last week between the PSC and students from different classes on this issue.
Despite this police action being a personal vendetta by Gilbert against Kato, it was also convenient to strike down this base of instability to Class A’s hold on power. This was all done in spite of Gilbert publicly criticizing the law during the convention, but if anyone had been around long enough, it was easy to see that it was merely resistance against the Mona faction rather than the substance of the new policy. As a result, general discourse outside of Class A always treated Class A as if it was a single homogenous unit.
In a strange set of precedent and laws from the distant past, portions of administrative authority that was supposed to be the student council’s were bestowed upon the PSC and the AC instead, and in turn they were de facto responsible only to the Assembly rather than the student council. Since Class A almost always controlled a majority in the Assembly and controlled the PSC and AC by corollary, even if the directly elected student council president and therefore the student council escaped their grasp, they were still well in control of student affairs.
Among the dissenting material from Class F was a call for a series of demands against the Assembly, and therefore the PSC and AC through association. The first was the withdrawal of the Act; the second was the retraction of the characterisation of social activism as “seditious”, as they had been accused of by the PSC last week; the third was the exoneration of students who were charged with offences that were politically motivated; the fourth was the establishment of an independent commission to watch the PSC’s use and abuse of power; and the fifth was the resignation of Gilbert de Lafayette as PSC marshal as well as the implementation of direct elections to the Assembly. Needless to say, none of these demands were friendly to the PSC.
“What the hell?”
“Fuck, this is disgusting.”
Curses from the PSC members in gear flew across the hallway that was not only covered in bits of egg but also milk and bread to complement the messiness. Eventually, the cardboard containers were chucked outside at the PSC as well, emptying the stock of food that Class F students had taken from the school cafeteria.
“Eon, we’re out of food. What’s next?”
From the other door’s barricade was a call from a tomboyish blonde girl on the front line, Chantal Delacroix, who was one of the students with leadership roles pushing for the resistance against the proposed policy. She, Franco and several others manned the other barricade together.
“We keep going with the next thing. Caius! Yui!”
Meanwhile, some of the non-combatants like Caius and Yui remained in the centre of the classroom, distributing supplies to the troops from the pile of rubbish. Together with some of their classmates, they tossed some plastic water bottles to the men of both barricades.
The barricaders in turn also had handy stationery of their own with them, so instead of just unscrewing the cap off those half-filled water bottles, they used scissors to cut the bottle in half like a sausage, poured half its contents into the other half, and sparsely stuffed the openings with newspaper shreds to lightly plug it. Once that was done, they tossed it over the barricade like a shot put, its contents spilling out along with the shreds of newspaper.
Although they could have been nastier, the bottles’ contents were merely regular paint that they took en masse from the art classroom and filled up in empty water bottles. It could have been something as dangerous as gasoline to make petrol bombs, but they would get in deep trouble with the faculty for sure if they escalated to that level of resistance.
“Eat shit!”
“Fuck ya bastards!”
Under the cries of the protestors, the paint splattered all over the walls, the floor and the riot shields on the other side of the barricade, with the shreds of paper contributing to the spread of the mess, obscuring the views of the PSC officers from behind the transparent riot shields. The paint and the eggs fusing together with the scrap newspapers and other foods was not only putrid and disgusting, but it also hampered their operations just as much. Hiding behind the riot shields the whole time, their persons didn’t get terribly dirty, but their surroundings turned into a disaster scene left behind by a manmade hurricane without being able to do anything. The moment the barrage from Class F let up, Stephen issued an order immediately.
“Ready your arms! Sand first! Fire at will!”
Not a moment too soon, to take advantage of the lapse, those with firearms aimed their weapons from behind the stained riot shields. They had a variety of ammunition in the bags tightly bound over their chests, slugs that they would load at the breech of their launchers for it to hurl inside the 3-F classroom.
“Umbrellas, men!”
The barricaded Class F students also heard the command from Stephen, and they too spent no time to change tactics. Hearing Chantal’s cry, those who were sitting right up at the barricade picked up the pre-prepared umbrellas on the ground next to them. Stopped with the paint-throwing, they immediately opened them up and took shelter underneath.
One after another, the PSC officers fired slugs from their grenade launchers over both barricades and straight at the ceiling inside the classroom, where they exploded on impact and showered sand over the Class F students. The umbrellas protected them from the immediate avalanche of sand, but it nonetheless seeped through between the edges of the umbrellas and still kicked up a dusty storm underneath. The barrage of sand slugs continued relentlessly, and eventually the dust clouds reached the windows on the far side of the classroom where the rest of the non-combatants of Class F were gathered, staying away from the front line.
“Quick! Open the windows!”
“Ugh, I need goggles too, not just a mask.”
“Man, my hair is filled with sand now.”
“This is too much sand.”
In a low ceiling setting like this, sand slugs were used first to disorient the rebels and cause maximum chaos and confusion with minimal harm. If this was the gymnasium, the atrium or the theatre, sand slugs would have to be fired ballistically and timed to explode in midair, which was less accurate than having it disperse on impact with the ceiling. Sand slugs often did not affect the core members of a protest, but it would demoralize and disperse the less committed to the cause, and the complaints from the back of the classroom were a statement of that effectiveness.
The PSC officers took turns firing into the classroom, one stepping forward to shoot as the other retreated to reload. Another coffin-sized trunk was shipped to the site of the siege from the PSC’s office, and those holding onto the riot control firearms resupplied themselves with more ammunition from the new trunk.
“There are no rioters, only tyranny of the Assembly!”
“Glory to Korolev, revolution of our times!”
From under the umbrellas, the Class F students repeatedly chanted slogans in their continuing resistance, including Caius on his megaphone aimed out of the window, virtually broadcasting to their sector of the school. The sand slugs, as expected, did not confuse or deter most of Class F. The sand slugs were most effective in dispersing ragtag bands of poorly organized unrest, and Class F was clearly too organized to expect that to work. Instead, it was only a formality to escalate the use of force.
“Cease immediately! Those are political slogans! You do not have a permit to publicly promote it at this time and place!”
“Shut the fuck up, or else you’ll be getting more than just sand!”
Similarly, the PSC shouted out warnings over Class F’s voices with their own megaphones, and of course immediately after raising another black flag, the officers began a second barrage of fire, this time launching real smoke grenades into the classroom. Instantly, visibility inside the classroom was reduced to less than an arm’s length in the front, causing some panic and confusion among the besieged. However, they remained fairly disciplined and expected the smoke grenades, so they and a few of the sitters in the middle of the classroom took action. Pedestal fans powered by alchemical engines (or colloquially, magic batteries) that were placed throughout the classroom were turned on and dialled to the maximum in order to circulate wind currents that would eventually carry the opaque smoke out the open windows.
“There is no sedition, only police brutality!”
“Withdraw the bill! End the Assembly’s dictatorship!”
“Bring the Public Safety Crooks to justice!”
The effect was immediate, and although visibility was still very much reduced it was no longer much of an impediment to their operations, including the chanting of slogans. The PSC continued to unleash smoke rounds into the classroom, but after a while it was obvious that the volume was not enough as they turned on even more fans, stolen from many, many classrooms across the school.
On the other hand, the wind kicked up a sandstorm that prompted the students to readjust their goggles and face masks, and those who still had not worn them must do so now. With an acceptable level of visibility, a few students with gas masks stolen from the chemistry classroom instead of the regular surgical face masks went ahead and picked up the smoke rounds with plastic gloves, also stolen from the chemistry classroom, and hurled the smoking chunk of metal and plastic back over the barricade, smoking up the hallways as well.
With the barricaded students distracted, some of the PSC officers tried to approach the barricade to dismantle it by hand, but they were still met with metre sticks poking out from the gaps between the stacked desks and chairs, some of which at its ends were duct-taped with sharp metal barbs, possibly stolen from the rooftop, making the PSC retreat back behind their riot shields.
“Use tear gas!”
It wasn’t hard for Stephen to see the adaptation in strategy inside the 3-F classroom, and he responded in earnest. The formations that the PSC took were very tight so the subsiding smoke rounds had not much effect on them, though it was harder to see where the top of the barricade was. Quickly, they changed out the ammunition in their launchers to tear gas canisters, and without delay they slung them over the barricade, its chemical contents diffusing into the air inside the classroom.
“Turn them off! Turn ‘em all off!”
“I know, I know! I’m on it!”
The fans made the situation worse. The low-concentrate chemical particles that continuously sprayed out from the new rounds permeated the classroom in no time, and it didn’t take long for it to lock Class F down in fits of coughing and sneezing, the irritant agents working its magic on the nose and lungs despite the masks. Exposed skin also took a painful toll with the chemicals, and a couple of students who didn’t have the greatest respiratory health began convulsing, so a few comrades had to take them to the open window to get a bit of fresh air. Others who saw the tear gas immediately mashed the off buttons on the fans in an attempt to minimize the gaseous spread, but otherwise the united front was momentarily paralyzed with most everyone’s bodies involuntarily reacting to the tear gas. After all, most of their equipment was makeshift at best, and this was only against a very weak variant of tear gas manufactured for true non-lethal crowd control.
“Tighten up everything! Don’t expose your eyes and nose!”
“I’ve got this! Let’s go! Make way for me!”
Kirill was one of the runners fully covered up who had been throwing back the smoke grenades with his head and face completely hidden behind scarves, goggles and a gas mask. Along with the other runners they already wore a long-sleeved sweater and boots to cover up all exposed skin, expecting the confrontation to escalate from the very start. Although less equipped, the students not so handicapped by the tear gas also helped Kirill and his little squad with countering the tear gas, either by attempting to throw the canisters back over the barricade, or temporarily stunting its spread by using pots appropriated from the home economics classroom to clamp on top of the canisters, and then dragged it along the floor toward the window so they could quickly pluck it out from underneath and toss it out into the courtyard below.
By this time the PSC was in full gear and like the smoke grenades, the returning tear gas did not obstruct their activities too much, if at all. A couple of them needed to cover up some more and rest up from the initial respiratory reactions, but they were more or less still in control. However, the spread of the tear gas scared off a bunch of the bystanders, except of course students from the newspaper club who were also in their own versions of full gear. Interestingly, although they were colloquially called the newspaper club, they were in fact not a school club by the student government’s definition since they were not funded by the student government. Instead, they were an entity known as a non-partisan union, which was basically something like a school club that was registered through the faculty instead of the student government, and its budget was determined through the faculty by decree. Some called these organizations as puppets of the faculty members who wanted to meddle in student affairs, but mostly they were merely clubs that were marginalized due to their public opposition to the student government, including the former newspaper club.
“We’re almost there! Keep firing!”
Stephen, now sufficiently covered up, spoke into the microphone in his face mask to his troops. The PSC continued firing tear gas into the classroom, sustaining the panic and chaos within it.
Not all of Class F was as hardcore as those who stood right at the barricade chanting and throwing trash at the PSC members, who were really just students from another class. Although pretty much the entirety of the class were indeed radicals who aligned with the Elites quite well, there were still some who were far away enough from the Elites’ orbit that they took on different roles in the struggle. They didn’t oppose the radicals, but they sure didn’t support them to the point of eating tear gas with them, and to that end they took on the responsibility of evacuating those who had bad reactions to the tear gas.
A retractable stepladder was extended out of the window to reach the grass below, and together with their backpacks and belongings the neutral party of Class F slowly evacuated from their chaotic homeroom to ground level in orderly fashion, leaving their radical classmates behind. Some students from other classes were already down below, originally watching in curiosity of the smoking classroom and the political messages being broadcasted, but now ready to lend a hand to the escapees as they descended from the smoking window.
A few PSC members were also waiting below, and clearly they were sceptical of the intentions of the Class F students crawling out, even in the presence of a teacher who was also down there.
“What do you want? We’re being forced away by the tear gas, exactly as you’ve got us to.”
“In all fairness, we still need to make sure you’re not contributing to the rebellion in Class F. We’ll need to check you before letting you go.”
“Fuck off! You guys have already got away with enough abuses of power!” “That’s right. Your warrant this time is only against the Elites, and for obvious reasons. We’re not dumb, retards.”
“Hey! This is a zone of operation! We have every right to stop any student in the vicinity for cooperation or arrest.”
“And we’re not helping you nor preventing you from charging into our classroom.”
“Now let’s calm down, everyone. Nothing is allowed to happen here except for the safe evacuation of these students. I do not want to see any measure made by the PSC here related to the political nature of this siege, and that is final. Do you hear me?”
“…understood, Mr Khosa.”
At the stern request of Class 3-E’s homeroom teacher, the PSC members backed off from the group of Class F students and bystanders from other classes, but the atmosphere remained tense between the PSC and the others. They were fortunate that Mr Khosa was around to put a brake on the PSC. The grouping was actually somewhat far from the base of the stepladder as the tear gas canisters that were thrown out of the classroom window were still discharging its noxious gases on the open school grounds.
Then, two students with face masks on suddenly appeared from around the corner and made a desperate dash for the stepladder. With the boy carrying the girl on his back, somehow they were able to approach the base of the ladder without being noticed, disappearing into the clouds of smoke and tear gas that continued to billow out from the canisters scattered on the ground around them. They hopped on the ladder in a brisk and before the PSC members could reach out to restrain them, they were already well off the ground.
“Wait! Stop this instant!”
The boy and girl ignored the cry from the PSC member, instead quickly scaling the ladder so that they were enough rungs up by the time the PSC members recovered from their surprise to take any further action than a verbal command. The Class F students looked on silently without comment, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary, or worse, as if they anticipated this to happen.
“Suck my dick!”
Following behind the girl, the boy taunted the PSC members below him. It provoked their anger, but Mr Khosa prevented them from approaching the ladder, giving the two the chance to climb to the third floor for the 3-F classroom. The two scaling the ladder could hear their former enemy class’ teacher holding the PSC back.
“Don’t even think about touching the ladder, now that they’ve already climbed on. If you do so, it’ll be a very serious offence to the school.”
The girl ahead of the boy looked back with a long shadow of disgust on her face. Half of it was from the obnoxious jeer, and the other half was from the boy ogling at what was beneath her skirt. However, her character was not close to innocent enough to care about it, as long as she was confident she could clap back at him in return.
“Kato, that wasn’t necessary, was it?”
“It wasn’t, but something just compelled me to do it, Alice.”
“Remind me to pinch you later.”
“Why in the world would I ever remind you to do that?”
Sneering at each other, the two misfits were as sharp as ever. Alice never thought that things would blow up into these proportions, but it did, and secretly she welcomed it warmly. It was infinitely more fun than her own mundane, previous life as a powerless member of the Westgrove family, and somehow she felt this was still too surreal despite the very real change in her life’s and her heart’s path. And this euphoric sensation, the anticipation of finally finding something to be real, gave her the motivation to climb straight into the midst of this battle, and true to her style, in full force and without hesitation.