Alyssa stood there, not a single coherent thought forming in her head. What had happened? How had her cute Pebbles stopped that ’thing’. Her thoughts were cut short when her body moved on its own to sprint at Pebbles for a big hug. Pebbles gave a satisfied squeak as it was held tight between Alyssa’s arms.

As Alyssa was busy hugging Pebbles, Yakov stomped over to Dinesh and the teacher from the Empire.

“What the fuck were you doing? How about instead of flirting you do your job and keep the students safe.”

Dinesh seemed to be lost for words so the other teacher stepped in.

“You’re Yakov, right? I’m Irene. You see we weren’t flirting but trading job experiences to teach you better. And regarding the situation, we can’t just stop fights because of minor discrepancies or we’d have to stop every second fight, you see?”

Yakov’s head went red as he almost seemed to overflow with anger.

“’Minor discrepancies’ you say? Everyone could see that he wanted to seriously harm her. Alyssa almost DIED for god’s sake!”

Irene and several others from the Empire got a serious look when Yakov mentioned the word ’god’ so casually, but before anybody could say anything Vasil, the one who had created all this mess spoke with his head down.

“I’m s-sorry. I-I-I didn’t mean to… I wasn’t trying… I just was suddenly so angry and just-just… thought and then… then I…”

The rest was incomprehensible gibberish as Vasil collapsed into a sobbing mess. Moyra came forward, now with a very serious look in her face.

“I think we should all calm down for a moment. It’s obvious that something is not right as someone with strategic training and combat experience like Vasil shouldn’t become a hothead from one moment to another. We should send reports to our respective superiors and set an investigative team on this case.”

While Irene agreed and made her way to the rest of the students to inform that the joint training was over for the moment, Dinesh looked slightly panicked, probably because the granddaughter of one of the heroes almost died under his watch. An official report would mean a demotion and that was the best-case scenario as the clans took such things very seriously.

Moyra, seeing Dinesh’s reaction couldn’t help but smile.

“Don’t be so tense. While it is a rather shitty situation it only happened between two students. It shouldn’t have any effect on the relations between the Empire and you.”

Both Dinesh and Yakov looked at Moyra like she was an idiot before Yakov answered her with a wry smile.

“Yeah sure. It’s not a big problem that a guest of the Empire tried to kill Alyssa Barkas, granddaughter of Henry Barkas. No problem at all. I’m sure that the Barkas clan will just sit back and do nothing.”

A disbelieving look replaced Moyra’s smile.

“Well, shit... What now?”

Yakov and Dinesh looked at each other then back at Moyra and shrugged their shoulders.

“We’re fucked?”, commented Dinesh to what Yakov just scoffed.

“You mean you are fucked. And what happens with the relations between us and your Empire… well depends what Henry Barkas decides to do.”

Dinesh seemed relieved by this.

“As far as I know he doesn’t really care for her, so if the Empire gives a good enough reason to overlook this insult everything should be ok.”

Moyra nodded to this and walked over to Irene to discuss further procedures while Yakov just shook his head and mumbled to himself.

“You have no idea how wrong you are.”

--- --- ---

Aaron sipped on his tea as he watched the people sitting in front of him. He had always heard that ’newcomers’ were very weak when they appeared as the world they came from, and thus their power system, was often completely different from this world. But as he looked at the five ’heroes’ before him he couldn’t help but think what a load of bullshit that was as they practically oozed out power.

He appraised them and looked back at what he already knew of them.

To the left was Tu Yuen also known as ’Symphony’, a knight and cultivator that used sound-based attacks as a distraction to then bludgeon her enemies to death with her weapon which was a cross between a hammer and some sort of strange instrument. She had black hair that was held together in a bun by two sticks and two friendly looking brown eyes that made him question how her fighting style could be as brutal as it was described.

Next to her sat a towering mass of muscle also known as Bran ’Smith’ Crow. His chaotic long red hair together with his full beard and the dark rings under his bright green eyes made him look like one of those uncultured mercenaries, which was funny considering his position as lead scientist for magical constructs. He was a knight and a magus and used his magical creations to fight. His choice of weapon was a rune powered suit which he used to rampage through the battlefield and turrets, lots and lots of turrets.

To the right sat a ’woman’ that Aaron could only describe only as beautiful with her perfect body proportions, long glistening blond hair and bright blue eyes. Her name was Sofya ’Trickster’ Fyodorov formerly known as Rolan Fyodorov. She was a magus and a sorceress and exceptionally talented in the art of transformation which she used to create armies of golems. Regarding her ’transformation’ he had heard that she almost lost her place as a hero because of it. What she did ’lose’ was the majority of her family which didn’t want to have anything to do with her despite her status as a hero, except her brother, who was said to be quite close to her.

Sofya winked at him to which he just gave a bitter smile, he might be handsome with his red feathers, which in conjunction with his yellow eyes and his red inquisition robes made him look like a living flame, but this was neither the place nor the time for flirting.

“Could we start already?”, said the woman next to Sofya which made Aaron flinch.

The angry-looking woman was Nia Anderson better known as ’Roar’. Nia had dark skin and dreadlocks. Her red eyes together with her bulky physique gave one the feeling to be sitting next to a predator. However, considering how she used her powers of a knight and mage it didn’t come as a surprise. She tamed monsters and used them to invent runes for her path as a knight. He even heard that she had tamed a behemoth-class monster but the Empire hadn’t found any proof yet.

“Don’t be in such a hurry Nia. While I understand that you are eager to get this this over with, we have to wait for my wife as this discussion will touch the subject of currency.”, said the last person on the table.

He was Henry ’Godshot’ Barkas the oldest and most respected of the ’heroes’. He had short white hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. His tired blue eyes did never leave Aaron as if searching for something. Aaron thought that it must be a habit as archers tried to never lose sight of their target.

Tu looked rather annoyed at her watch before turning to Henry.

“Still, I think we have waited long enough. We can just push ’currency’ to the back and talk about other topics first.”

Sofya nodded her head in agreement.

“Yeah, we can talk about other things first. I, for example, would like to know why we talk to you when we were told that the high priestess would hold this negotiation. We didn’t expect the inquisition.”

Henry almost spat out his tea as he held back his laughter. The others, obviously ignoring Henry and his strange humor, turned to Aaron.

“Well…”, Aaron spoke, “…she did come but is currently sightseeing. She’ll be joining us later today.”

Bran almost jumped out of his seat as his booming voice resounded in the room.

“So, we have one of the strongest people of the Empire just walking around without anyone of us knowing? Do you think that we’re idiots or that we’ll just let this slide?”

Nia crossed her arms and gave Aaron a questioning look.

“Well, I’d like to know your agenda. This negotiation would have been about trading technologies and a shared currency, so why did you send the inquisition and the high priestess, two things that have nothing to do with these topics?”

Aaron, making himself as small as possible, thought how things derailed that quickly. The high priestess had just said that she wants to see how the humans here lived and that she would try to interact with them a little bit. And now five powerhouses were about to rip him to pieces.

Before this could happen however the doors opened and two women entered.

“High Priestess!”

Aaron practically jumped at the smaller woman. She wore a purple robe with a hoof that made making out her features difficult, only her bright purple eyes could be seen clearly.

The larger of the two walked over to Henry and gave him a big hug. This was Nicole Barkas, Henry’s wife. She had long black hair with a few streaks of grey, probably because of her age, and big green eyes. Nicole was a magus and in charge of currency creation. The currency was called Ruco, short for rune coins as they used runes to guarantee the validity of each coin.

Before Henry could ask why she was this late the high priestess spoke up.

“I’m sorry for sightseeing without your approval but we have a bigger problem now. There was an accident where one of the Empire’s students tried to kill one of your students after a minor dispute. We think that someone manipulated the attacker with poison or magic but we aren’t sure yet.”

Everyone was confused how that was a bigger problem than having a foreign powerhouse walking around before Nicole spoke up.

“It was Alyssa.”

Before someone could say anything Henry had already stormed out of the conference room. Everybody looked shocked in the direction Henry had disappeared to, not noticing the eye that had appeared on one of Henry’s books.

So, it has begun. ,thought the being before vanishing again.