"Hah?! You want me to listen to some small girly? What's up with this group anyway? Want me to be a babysitter or what?! Just 'cause I'm the strongest doesn't mean I'm not risking my life out there!", Victoria heard a loud voice from the direction of the podium.

Looking in that direction, she saw Garry coming towards her, followed by two people.

One was the two-meter tall and almost as wide mountain of muscle that was complaining just earlier. The other was a meek girl hiding behind Garry.

"Sorry to tell ya, but you are not.", Garry shot back.

"Not risking my life? I know it's no risk for me. If I have no deadweights too..."

"I mean, you are not the strongest.", Garry tells the man off.

"Sorry about that, Victoria. This guy is Boris. He is one of the few that managed to unlock his Aura and get a grip on controlling it, and since then he thinks he is hot shit. The girl is called Lucy.

The numbers didn't quite work out, so I would like to ask you to take these two and Ferdinand with you."

Victoria wanted to groan in annoyance. Lucy looked like she couldn't hurt a fly, and it would be a surprise if Boris wouldn't become a supreme annoyance, not to mention a risk to her life if she couldn't make him stop trying to be alpha. Alas, she couldn't let it show on her face, public image and all that.

"That means we have to fight against a level four at least, right?", Victoria asks for clarification.

"Yes, and all of you have to stab it at least once.", Garry says, giving Lucy a sideways glance.

Great, and here she had hoped she had misjudged the girl. This was going to get...

"Oi!", Boris interrupts her thoughts: "If anyone should be the leader, it's the strongest one! And that's definitely me! I won't let myself get commanded around by a goddamn bedwarmer!"

If Victoria didn't like the man before, now she hated him. No person with even half a brain would dare to say something that sexist in public.

She walked up to Boris, grabbed his left arm, and turned her back to him.

"Heh, this is not the time for fun roaahhhuuughhhhh!"

Then she proceeded to throw him over her shoulder. The good thing about a public image was, even if she went a bit overboard, no one would mind if the other person was an asshole. And that, he definitely was.

"Soooo, where were we?", Victoria acted as if nothing had happened.

"We were at the point where I was about to tell you that you might have to beat some sense into him. He is strong enough that we can't miss out on him on the front line, but the commander doesn't want to trust him with a group to lead. And Shawn and I already have our own groups to babysit.

It was godsent that you suddenly appeared today."

"You bitch!!!", Boris roars as he throws his fist at Victoria's head.

She took a step back to avoid the fist and then proceeded to kick the man between the legs. Whimpering, Boris went down again, his hands covering his groin. What? Cowardly? It wasn't her fault that men had such a fatal weakness.

"Please make sure he is still healthy by the end of the day. And go collect your weapons in front of the podium.", Garry said before walking off.

"Your name is Lucy, right? I'm Ferdinand, but you can call me Freurghhh.", Freddy got cut off as Victoria grabbed him by the back of his shirt, stopping him from stumbling face-first into the girl's chest.

"Ah! Y-yes. I'm Lucy. A-and you are Victoria, right?", the girl asked. She was looking at Victoria with admiration in her eyes ever since she kicked Boris in the balls.

"Yes, pleased to meet you, Lucy.", she smiled at the girl.

Lucy looked to be around sixteen to seventeen years old. So, not much younger than Victoria herself. But, contrary to Victoria, she was maybe 150 cm tall, though her Asian looking features could be an explanation for that.

"Ferdinand, do you mind picking up the weapons? That way I can familiarize myself with these two for a bit." Victoria asks the boy who was still rubbing his neck where his shirt had cut into it.

"Sure sure, make me do all the work.", he grumbles, but still makes his way to the podium.

"So, Lucy, how long have you been here already?"

"I've only got here yesterday. This is all a bit... overwhelming. Honestly, I'm really scared! Yesterday I was still walking Peppers, my dog, and now? This! I-I really don't know what I'm supposed to..."

"Y-You! You lowly, cowardly wench! Don't think just because you got a lucky hit in you are stronger than me!"

"Could you please stop interrupting? I'm talking with Lucy right now."

Ferdinand was in a bad mood. His day had been going pretty bad all around. First, he lost the chance to become a Hero. Then he stumbled into Victoria, who somehow seemed to be immune to his luck. And while he could see that the way she was training him had been effective, now he even had to do the footwork for her.

Though he did realize that Lucy wasn't the right person for this job, and Boris was still... indisposed. Just thinking about it caused his hand to subconsciously wander to his groin. Poor guy. Though, he kind of did deserve it.

As for Victoria doing it, he did want to talk with Lucy for a bit since she seemed like a nice girl, but he didn't want to be alone with her once Boris stood back up eventually. He would be happy to play the hero in front of a girl normally, but he didn't think that he was quite adequate to deal with someone like that guy.

Staying out of that seemed like the best option, and so, legwork it was.

When he arrived at the podium, a large crowd had already gathered around the pile of spears as everyone tried to be the first. He could see the two guards somewhere in the mass of bodies, trying to reinstate order though it didn't seem to do anything.

By his guess, it took him almost a quarter of an hour before he finally managed to get back. Only to be greeted by the rather strange sight of Boris trying to lick Victoria's heels. Trying as in, crawling over the ground after a Victoria who was doing her darndest to get away from him.

Taking the chance, Ferdinand walked over to Lucy and said: "I got interrupted earlier, but you can call me Freddy. By the way, do I want to know what happened here?"

"N-no, I don't think so...", the girl answered with a troubled expression on her face.

Whatever it was that happened, must have shaken the heroic image the girl had had of Victoria earlier quite a bit, Ferdinand thought.

Victoria was at her wit's end. She normally had a pretty good tolerance for insults and managed to stay calm, but something about this man just made her extremely uncomfortable, causing her to react unusually violent.

Sure, every single one of Boris's words hit her pride as a woman in the most sexist manner possible. But even then she would try to find more... Diplomatic and subtle ways to release her anger.

But after a while, his behavior made a complete one-eighty. He suddenly started crawling over the ground like a dog, calling her mistress, and tried to lick her shoes, like in some strange BDSM play.

Honestly, it creeped her out. For the first time in a long time, she was completely out of her depth and had absolutely no idea what to do. The only good thing was that he was crawling, and thus not terribly fast.

It was not much later that she noticed Freddy coming back, two long spears on each shoulder.

Now that Lucy wouldn't be left alone, she quickly took the chance to slip away, searching for Garry or the other guard.

"Ah, there they go.", it took Lucy a moment to realize that Freddy was talking to her.

But realizing that didn't mean that she knew how she should react. Lucy had never been good at making conversation, and that hadn't changed since the world had gone crazy. Or maybe it was herself who had finally gone nuts.

Just a few days before the earthquake her psychiatrist had prescribed her a new type of pills in the hope that they would work better. Maybe it were those that caused these hallucinations or something had hit her in the head and now she was in a coma.

No matter what it was, she had a hard time believing that this was reality. Though, she did come to peace with her situation quickly, accepting that whatever it was, she couldn't really do anything about it. At least not as far as she knew.

And now, she hadn't been able to take her pills all day. Victoria, who seemed like the most reliable person she had met until now got driven away by that strange lunatic, and she was all alone with a handsome boy a bit older than her and he was talking to her.

"A... Um, y-yes.", she stammered. Her social anxiety hadn't been this bad in a long time.

At least it made her forget for a moment that they expected her to fight some kind of monster. When she came here the day before, she hadn't run into any of them, so she didn't know what to expect. But that only made it worse as her imagination began to go wild, showing her more and more gruesome and scary picture of beast and masses of tentacles and eyes.

"Are you okay? You don't seem so well?", the boy, Freddy she believed, asked her.

She almost flinched when she felt his hand on her shoulder, she didn't like when people touched her without permission. Him being a boy, only made it worse. But she managed to suppress it. She didn't want him to think that she was strange. Her psychotherapist had told her that doing that was bad for her, that she shouldn't suppress her feelings like that. But she was scared. What if he hated her if she reacted that way?

The moment passed, and she calmed down. After a few moments, his hand stopped making her uncomfortable, instead calming her down. She hadn't felt like this with anyone but her parents until now, but she could tell that he was really truly worried about her. It was strange but comforting.

Maybe it was because this all was her dream? Maybe he was the subconscious interpretation of her invisible friend? An exercise her psychotherapist had given her, where she created an imaginary friend she could entrust with all of her secrets, insecurities, and problems.

No, that couldn't be, that person had always been female. There was no reason why her subconscious would suddenly change their gender. Or was there?

"I-I'm fine. Just a bit nervous is all.", she mumbled an answer. Lost in her thoughts, she had almost forgotten about his question.

"Are the two of you okay? We should get going or else the other groups will take all the easy targets.", Victoria said as she came back.

"What happened to Boris?", Ferdinand asked her, lifting an eyebrow.

"Don't worry about him. Commander Klein will deal with it.", she explained.

"Well, it seems like Lucy is a bit nervous. But you are right, most of the other groups are already on the way."

"Are you really fine?", Victoria asked the girl. Lucy didn't look 'just a bit nervous', but there wasn't a lot she could do about that.

"Y-yeah.", the girl gave her an awkward smile.

"Then, let's go! Freddy, give me one of those spears!"