Beast Soul

"Hey, Noah…" A familiar voice entered Noah's ear as he walked towards the school entrance gate, and he turned around and found Adrian, who was standing right behind him with a cast over his shoulder and with a nervous smile on his face. 

"Oh, hey man.." Noah was caught completely off guard by the sudden appearance of Adrian, but he instantly found his composure and waved his hand before approaching him. "What are you doing here? I thought you were still at the hospital. Shouldn't you be resting right now?"

"Well, as you can clearly see…" Adrian raised his hand slightly and waved it around before continuing, "I'm doing quite fine. I can rest at home if I wanted to. But I definitely didn't want to continue staying at the hospital. Felt like I wouldn't get cured if I stayed there."

"Well, as long as you're doing alright…" Noah shrugged his shoulders with a nervous laugh. He didn't know how to respond to Adrian's words, so he simply let it go. Noah wasn't too familiar with the brash way Adrian lived. It was weird, since he had killed literal monsters, and yet found Adrian's response to being hospitalized as brash. 

"Anyways, I wanted to say thank you, Noah.." Adrian's expression turned serious as he spoke, and Noah tilted his head and stared at him with a puzzled expression on his face. "Thank me? For what?"

"Well, of course, when you helped me get away from that violent and terrifying monster that was about to eat us." Adrian replied back with an expression that seemed to imply that it should've been obvious what he was talking about, and Noah simply scratched his head with an embarrassed expression on his face. "Oh, yeah! Ha, ha.. sorry about that. I was blocking out everything that happened that day." Noah made up an excuse on the fly. He couldn't tell Adrian that he had fought countless monsters since then, and that made him forget most of what happened during that fight. 

"Ah, that makes sense. It must've been a traumatic experience for you as well, huh…" Adrian nodded his head as he listened to Noah's excuse. He seemed to have found his answer to be believable, and even relatable. "Are you going to therapy?" Adrian asked with curious eyes, and Noah shook his head and waved his hands dismissively. "Oh, no, no.. it's nothing that bad." He said in a nonchalant manner. "It's not like this is the first traumatic experience that I've experienced."

It was a sad thing to say, but it was unfortunately true as well. Under the hands of Billy and his henchmen, Noah had suffered a lot. He had to endure their bullying for so long that he had even contemplated killing himself, which is what led to him getting his superpowers in the first place. 

"Ah.." It was now Adrian's turn to be embarrassed, and he scratched his chin with a nervous expression. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. Don't worry about it.." Noah shook his head. "I've dealt with it. And besides, Billy is now…"

Noah didn't finish his words, as he immediately realized what happened to Billy. Adrian looked like he had seen a ghost. 

'I probably shouldn't have mentioned that,' Noah wanted to scream loudly for his incompetent behaviour. But he remained calm and lightly tapped Adrian on his back. "You okay? I'm sorry about mentioning that."

"I'm- I'm fine…" Adrian gulped down the saliva that had accumulated inside his mouth and revealed a nervous smile. "I'm glad that you're doing alright." He said to Noah, and Noah nodded his head. "Yeah. Me too."

The two entered the school compound, and then walked towards the classroom building, as the students who saw them immediately moved out of the way, taking glances at them before looking away instantly. 

"But you do know that Billy going away doesn't solve all your problems, right?" Adrian said after a brief period of silence, which made Noah raise his eyebrows with a confused expression. "What do you mean by that?"

Adrian narrowed his eyes and with a serious look on his face, he continued, "It might not seem like it from the outside, but the whole school has a system of hierarchy. Not involving the parents nor the teachers, but simply the students."

"What?" Noah widened his eyes. He couldn't understand what Adrian was telling him. "What are you talking about, Adrian?"

The duo then took a turn and walked to the chemistry department room. The hallway to get to the department was usually empty, and Adrian figured it would be a good place to talk. 

And just like he expected, the hallway really was empty. The two leaned against the wall, and Adrian looked around for a few more seconds before continuing, "Think of the students as part of a system that ranks them and groups them into different tiers. That's essentially what happened here. On the very lowest of the low tier, we have the normal students, who have no clue about these secret hierarchical order that has been formed and are preyed upon and bullied by the heads, who represent each class, followed by the specials, who are unique and talented enough to warrant a higher post than the heads. After that comes the untouchables, who are basically a group consisting of only the strongest of the students. They don't interfere much in most problems, but when they do, you can bet that there'll be a whole lot of trouble."

"What the hell? How on earth did I not know of this?" Noah was now completely taken aback by what Adrian was telling him. He only knew that the school had a bullying problem. And now, he was told that the school had a secret society and ran on the basis of a hierarchy that the normal students had no way of even knowing it existed. 

"Well, I hate to break it to you, Noah… But you weren't exactly someone unique a few days ago," Adrian looked like he had a hard time saying those words, fearing that it might offend or anger Noah, but Noah didn't mind it at all. He knew that Adrian was right. 

Until that fateful day, Noah was someone who was just another student. Just another normal kid, who had nothing unique to show. 

"Well isn't this great?" Noah mumbled to himself in a sarcastic tone. After dealing with a bunch of monsters and even witnessing the death of another human being, he now had to deal with literal children.

"Noah, these people are extremely dangerous." Adrian saw that Noah was more annoyed with the situation rather than being afraid and cautious, and decided to warn the young man as he didn't want to see him get hurt. After all, Noah did help him during a difficult time. 

"What kind of weapons do they use?" Noah asked all of a sudden, which caught Adrian off guard, but he immediately regained his composure and replied, "Uh, not many use weapons, but if they really do, then it'll be materials like metal pipes, crowbars, baseball bats and-"

"So mostly hand to hand combat and close range weapons." Before Adrian could finish his words, he was interrupted by Noah's question. "Uh, y-yeah, I guess.." He replied, unsure of what to feel. 

"And do they utilize any other resources to get what they want?" Noah decided to ask another question. He wanted to know what kind of resources were available to this so-called hierarchical system. After all, even though Noah was capable of handling monsters, he wouldn't be able to take care of a powerful politician or the cops. Well, unless he decided to expose his secret of being a mutant. But that would only put him at an even more risk. "Like wealth and outside help. Any dirty tricks that they could end up using if they feel like they're losing." Noah clarified a bit more.

"No. None of those tricks are allowed, I can tell you that for sure." Adrian shook his head and said with a confident tone. His eyes seemed to imply that he was certain of his words being correct. Noah looked at him with widened eyes, and Adrian shrugged his shoulders. "Well, unless you defeat the King himself. I have no idea what might happen after that."

"The king?" Noah raised his eyebrows again. "There's a position called the king as well?" 

Adrian nodded his head. "The king. The highest position. The top of the hierarchy. The strongest of all the students, and the secret leader of the school."

"And who is this guy?" Noah asked. He was intrigued by Adrian's words, but he didn't feel threatened. After all, no matter how many people are in this secret society, his opponents were still simply teenagers. "Who is the mastermind who's supposedly running this school?"

Adrian took a deep breath before explaining, "Augustus Harriet. The son of Julian Harriet, the CEO of Wildecorp Industries. Nicknamed 'The Captain'." 

Noah narrowed his eyes. "He probably has his eye on you Noah." Adrian continued. "After all, you made changes in the system when you defeated Billy and me.. And he doesn't like change."