“I enjoyed your company today captain. I hope to get to know you better, and for you to get to know me better as well. Would you be interested in dinner this weekend?” Laico asked, smiling.

…

“This bastard!” Old Wayfinder cursed.

On his laptop he was seeing a livestream from one of Torra’s microcams that was following his daughter.

He thought he had taught her how to manage her emotions and stay in control of every situation. Yet she was being so obviously played with by this Laico character he was going to lose all the hair he had left!

First, everything was going alright. He had tried to touch her hand when he offered to help her off her seat and she got off on her own.

When they went for a walk along the streets to the waterfront she had stayed 6 feet behind him and narrowed her eyes everytime he turned to smile at her.

But then he had cracked a joke from her favorite movie. She couldn’t hold back a short giggle. That was all it took. It put a crack in her defenses.

Somehow after that she had allowed herself to be led by him on a nearly hour long walk around the waterfront. Every fifteen minutes the distance between the two shortened by a foot, literally!

Finally, he had asked her where she lived. Old Wayfinder was so happy that he had finally made a mistake. Asking her that was tantamount to reminding her that was a crazy class 13 who had stalked all of her habits!

She had briefly narrowed her eyes and said, “You already know, don’t you?”

He had been so excited! So EXCITED!

But then his hopes were dashed.

“Every person deserves their own private space. Just because we can intrude upon it, doesn’t mean we should. I only observe you in places where others can as well. So I really don’t know where you’re living,” he stated. Old Wayfinder didn’t believe him. But his daughter fell for it! She thought that was sincerity! What… The… Actual… F***!

Then she guided the tiger to her doorstep!

…

“Old Wayfinder is going to be livid, and is unlikely to help you in backstabbing me anymore,” Torra said.

Across from him Sally was tinkering with a machine he had prohibited her from accessing.

Alarmed, Sally spun around and saw Torra standing there calmly looking at a tablet.

He turned his head to look her in the eyes with a playful smile. “Did you think I didn’t notice the 14 traps you made?”

“Oh wait, you think you’ve only made 3. Right, right. I forget you class 12s have inferior creativity,” Torra sighed and shook his head as he walked away from Sally towards where the Old Man had been assigned to come up with a solution that involved dating and social sciences to save or destroy the world.

So far from his reading he had discovered a total of 10. Torra had extrapolated 250 from his 10 and created various nuances to each plan. He was really guiding the old man. When Sally saw them work she was honestly a bit jealous.

Originally all three of them thought they weren’t much behind Torra in terms of their abilities. But he had soundly defeated them in all scientific disciplines and even taught them so much. The Old Man was certainly enjoying the tutoring from the class 13 Torra. She had never seen him so excited about anything before.

Maybe… Just maybe if it had been Torra that was working on her project, he would have made plans that could keep up with the world’s changes. The fact that he had seen through her attempts to backstab him proved that at the very minimum, he would not have been backstabbed like she had.

Even if the one who was backstabbing him was close to him.

She lowered her head in mirth. Such thoughts were pointless. He had no need for people. That’s why he was trying to turn everyone into birds. He had only set them free and brought them here because of the other class 13.

She was now a piece in a war where both sides could read each other's minds based on the smallest gestures or glances. Yes, Torra didn’t know what Laico or whatever his name was’s project was, but he had already said with certainty that Laico’s project involved social sciences.

His reasoning didn’t make much sense, but his confidence was rather high.

“Even if Laico isn’t his real name, it is his title. This is his way of declaring himself. At our level, only other people at our level could prove interesting beyond our projects. So our name is based on our project. Although this could be a confusion tactic, the likelihood isn’t high. He had no reason to even reveal himself or let me bring you three out if he didn’t want to even the playing field for our intellectual duel.”

Laico S. Social.

Torra P. Parrot.