"What the hell..." Lera muttered as she turned to face Wu who looked back at her, "You trust him?!" "I didn't really..." Wu said when suddenly, another figure emerged from the shadows. "But I did," Ita said, stepping forward as Lera turned to look at her. She wasn't there at the Ville College when Charlie was all on his antics, and she had no idea of the brief history between Ita and Charlie, "I still hate you for what you did, Charlie. But I am not doing this for you." Charlie looked at Ita with a pained expression, and he nodded in understanding. Going back in time, right as Lera's facing off against Yuna, and Wu's investigating the truths about PORA, Ita and the other students were simply watching the tournament from the common room of the Ville college. That was when Charlie stumbled back in with his body battered and bruised. "What the hell..." Ita shot up from her seat and leaped over to the door as Charlie collapsed into a pool of blood with Olivia rushing to his side, "Is he bringing trouble back now?" "No!" Olivia said, putting her hands up and shielding herself around Charlie as Ita approached, "We...we have heard rumors of some things happening in the dark...So Charlie went to find it out." "Where?" Ita said, her arms crossed as Olivia hovered her hand over Charlie and started applying a healing Cast. "The Union." Charlie said, grunting out the words before he rolled around, "They...they have been subtly changing ever since my sister became a member of the Boarded and joined them...and they were planning something for sure. They are going to go for her during the tournament." "But why?" Ita asked when Charlie reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper with a roughly copied drawing. Over it laid a symbol of a bloody rose. "PORA." Charlie said, sitting up gingerly, "I didn't think they were real, but they reached out to my sister once when we first entered the Academy. But now...they have grown much bigger. I know I have been a piece of shit to you, Ita, and I am not asking for your forgiveness, but...could you help my sister out?" Ita glanced towards Charlie, and all of the ugly faces of his past came flooding back in her memory. "I am nothing, but my sister...she's a pride and joy of the family." Charlie said, lowering his head, "I can never say it to her face...but I care about her, and I don't want the PORA to get their hands on her." "So if you are saying that the PORA has infiltrated the Union, where the Boarded ones are members of, how did you expect us to be able to fight back?" Ita asked. "I...don't know..." Charlie said, "We need someone that can get anywhere without being detected, someone that exists outside of the system and the prying eyes of PORA. Someone..." Then, he suddenly raised his head as both of them realized where that line of thought leads to. And thus, the two of them waited at Wu's hideout for his return. "And that's all that's happening now." Wu said, looking towards Ita and Wu, "We were investigating PORA in Varous, and a lead brought us here too. So for now, we share the same goal." "Like you said before, if the PORA is directly tied to the Union, then we are hopelessly under-powered." Lera said, showing Ita her latest bruise from the battle with Yuna, "We want to fight, but we can't do it directly right now. We need to muster our forces." "But my sister can't afford to wait that long!" Charlie said when Wu raised a hand. "The PORA's first goals are to still remain in the dark for the majority of students. That's why their recruitment strategies are to exploit the losers of the tournaments. The ones they deemed interesting, that is." Wu said as Lera puffed her cheek up, "So long as your sister keeps on winning, they won't be able to target her during the Winter Wars." She felt a little annoyed by Wu's comment, but it's not like she would like to be on the radar of the PORA anyway. "So...who else do we know that they are targeting?" Ita asked, bringing the attention back to the matter at hand, "If we are trying to stop them, then we will need to save more than just your sister." "...From what I have gathered..." Wu thought back to the list of fixed matches he collected from the giant girl, but after comparing the results of what actually happened and what the PORA intended for it to happen, it appeared that the first round simply filters out all of the more irrelevant of characters. Again, Lera felt annoyed by Wu's phrasing, though that merely gave her more resolve to fight. "Well...from what I have gathered, they are supposedly interested in everybody that's still remaining in the tournament..." Wu sighed and shook his head. He thought he could have gathered intelligence of more value, but that's just how fate is that day, "I don't think I have anything too helpful..." "I do." Charlie said, "That was one of my main goals of sneaking into the Union library. They have a list of at least ten Wave users, and I recorded the names here." Taking out a rough piece of fabric with messy writing all over it, Charlie than laid it all out to the group. Out of the ten names, the more notable ones are that of Ver, Fatera, Lily, and Yuna. Nobody has any idea of who the rest of the people are. "You mentioned they wanted to convert your sister, what does that mean?" Lera asked. "Full set of Casts embedded into the body of the user which grants them insane strength and power." Charlie said, "In exchange for control." "And a fail-safe." Wu added, thinking to how the girl's suicide Cast activated, "Yet...we still don't know what the PORA actually want...I hate this." "There is nothing we can change right now..." Lera said with a sigh, "For now, we will just have to take this fight one step at a time." "Well, fortunately, Ver's battle will be the first one again in round two." Wu said, "So we can warn her of what might happen. In the meanwhile...let's get ready for battle." "The water's muddy, and a monster lurks within. Be on guard. Keep winning." That was the latest message sent towards Ver, and her eyebrows danced a few times as she tried to recall what each of the phrases meant when Fatera budged into her room. "Huh?" Fatera asked, bunching her head close and reading the message, "I don't remember anything about muddy waters..." "Maybe Wu's just giving me a hint that he hates me." The Kraken said, throwing his unhelpful input into the conversation. "Nah...I think he just meant for us to be careful..." Ver shrugged, "Well, I am going to go all the way and win it all. So it doesn't really matter." "Nope!" Fatera flexed her arms and tugged her tank top briefly, "I am the one that wins! Wanna go take a bath?" "Didn't we just take one this morning?" Ver asked when Fatera reached forward and gripped around her arm. "Come ooooon! I don't wanna be alone." Fatera said, dragging her across the flooring as she frowned. Then, as they finally made their way to the entrance into the bathes, a rush of heated steam nearly blew them both over. "Hehehehe...Lily Watts, the One with Perfect Synchrony..." A tattooed man said with a menacing over his face as he marched down the steps into the mixed bathes, "Why are you so...beautiful..." "Stop looking at me like that..." Lily said, her face red and her body on fire, "I...get too embarrassed!" "Um...what the fuck is going on here..." Fatera and Ver's eyes became two massive O's as the other bath takers hurried their ways out of this place. "That's...Lily Watt's crush..." Another student said, wrapping a towel around her body as she ran, "Legend says it that whenever she flirts with someone else, everybody else gets burned!" "Ah." Fatera's eyebrows twitched a few times, and she finally let go of Ver's arm. "What, you scared?" Ver asked. "Yep." Fatera admitted, "Secondary embarrassment. I...just can't..." Another burst of steam came through as the tattooed man stood up, exposing his muscular trunk and lower half to her as Lily covered her flaming face with her hand, though her eyes slipped right through the gaps in her fingers as she swallowed hard. "I think someone's about to have a great night." Ver smiled, getting up and giving Lily some privacy. That night, the Winter Wars Resort shook as if there's a mini-earthquake going on. "Hehehe...at least the kids are having fun." John King, the first placed Wave user on the Board, stretched his arms and yawned after yet another long day of work. Then, he slowly rose up and headed to a book shelve in his office before picking out a Book of Casts. Slicing his thumb across a sharpened metal edge attached to the cover of the book, he then unlocked the contents within by pressing his bloody thumbprint into the cover of the book, activating a security Cast with an injection of his Wave and blood. "Alert the headquarters. Jing has failed in her mission, so I will be taking over with the recruitment process." John said, his voice low as a communication Cast lit up on the first page, "I would like to request the activation of several Executors to deal with a...pest problem." "Understood. Permission granted, action noted." Another voice came through the other end, "On another note. The Grand Commander is coming to the Academy." John's eyes opened wide, and lines of cold sweat started forming over his forehead immediately. "Was it...was it because of her wrongdoings?" There was no response from the other side, and John slowly dropped down onto his knees, surrounded by an endless sense of dread.