Chapter Two

Cleric's Combat School is the highest difficulty school in all of District 9. It's the tenth hardest of all 31 Districts. Only the most prestigious of the population can even have a chance of attending it. Its courses are borderline war conditions, only your friends don't die. They still get injured, many times over, but never killed. The Shot-Bots are programmed for non-fatal attacks.

Anyone who is injured is put at a major disadvantage. The lightest injuries were a broken hand that took a full week to heal, putting that sorry recruit to the bottom of the class, near fail. Graduating this school is almost like being awarded a medal of honor for fighting an army of flaming dodgeballs that flew at you over 60mph. During a hurricane. That was also on fire.

Jacron was never able to land a devastating blow, but was able to hold his own by dodging around oncoming attacks. Masa dealt quick, accurate attacks, aiming for weak-points, but couldn't do the best at dodging. Thomas was able to deliver heavy blows, but only because he was built to. He didn't bother to even try to dodge. All attacks were brushed to the side, only burning his clothes.

Before each test, Jacron gave an inspiring speech, making the newbies do better. It raised success rates by at least %12. Jacron and Masa were able to survive this hell and still press forward, keeping a cool head and a steady hand the whole way.

Eventually, people started to go home, leaving with their veteran-status children and saying goodbye to their old instructors, who couldn't help but shed a tear. Jacron's graduating class was the best class the school had seen for at least 30 years, when Lortas, the hero of District 9, still was a young Beox.

Jacron sighed, knowing his parents weren't even alive, but still wanted them to see him graduate. He did, after all, do this for them. Jacron's dad was an ex-military officer who quit to focus on his family. Jacron wanted to follow in his old man's footsteps. His mom was a weaponsmith, making the sword Jacron uses to defeat Shot-Bots and still have time to make dinner.

He left the courtyard to walk Masa home, like always, not only because he wanted to, but he had nothing better to do in his spare time. Now that he graduated, he was going to apply to the military academy and becoming a soldier.

As he waved goodbye to Masa, there was a loud explosion in the distance. Large plumes of smoke rose above the District's surface. Masa and Jacron ran back to the open sidewalk, trying to see what was happening over the shorter buildings. They nodded at each other and ran towards the now-glowing clouds. A riot broke out.

Nintens were outraged at the unfair factory conditions of their company. The police were siding with the company, so it was only a matter of time before everyone was arrested. Several Nintens were storming building after building, setting fire to anything with their factory tools, which were currently in Worker Self Defense Mode (WSDM for short). After about a half hour of constant rioting, a heavy amount of military troops were deployed on location. Jacron and Masa were putting their power into helping the workers, but not by vandalism. They were talking to the main boss of the factory, asking for a reasonable deal for both parties to be happy.

"What are they mad about out there?" Jacron started, Masa looking and nodding along. "They say I'm not paying them enough! I've given them premium pay as far as I know, but I don't handle the money that goes to them. I just deal with the customers, the money is dealt by our team manager, Markey."

"Do you actually make sure HE'S paying them enough?"

"N-not really, I mean- he seemed like a good guy when I hired him, so I guess I trust him."

"Right... Well, let's have a little 'chat' with this 'Markey' and maybe we can get this dimmed down."

"D-don't hurt him, I'm sure he means well, and I think he has quite a few connections if you know what I mean." The boss said, nudging his elbow towards Jacron, who was already out the door.

"So, we know this guy might be the issue here, but haven't much to go on, which means we don't have much dirt on him." Jacron said, mostly to himself. "But he gets to deal with all that money by himself. Should we ask the workers first? Maybe we can get more out of them." Masa added. Jacron nodded and they headed past Markey's office down to the workers below.

Outside, there were a few workers still standing near the road, throwing up rude gestures’ and yelling profanities to nobody. "Excuse me, did you work here?" The workers confirmed with almost a high amount of zealous pride. "Well, do you know why you're rioting?" One of them shook his head and looked at the other. The other looked Jacron and Masa up and down for a second before saying, "Nobody does, really, we just followed the lead of that guy, Markey. He was talking about revolution and enough money from the government to live hearty lives. I don't really care about the money, but I do love to yell and destroy stuff, so I just hopped on the bandwagon." "Where can we find Markey?" Jacron questioned. "Uh... We ain't supposed to say, his orders were to not tell anyone we don't know, and you guys look like a pair of undercover cops to me." "If we were cops, why haven't we arrested you for rioting on public property? Also, why would we remain undercover after this riot even broke out?" Jacron retorted.

"Because you guys could be asking me his whereabouts to arrest him outright and stop the fun." Jacron thought for a second and said, "Listen, we aren't cops and we don't plan to arrest anyone. We just need to know where he is, so we can maybe make a deal before this ends up going further south. You have kids, right? Wife? What would they think if their beloved worker didn't come home? What if, instead they saw your mugshot on the news with all these other people? Is it really worth it?" The workers stood silent for a while and the other answered, "There's a hatch in his room, leading to a secret place in the sewers. He was using the riot as a distraction so, he could escort money from the company to his personal stache." "Thanks... And, get home. Your family is probably worried sick." They nodded and started heading their separate ways.

Jacron and Masa kicked open Markey's office, sending production records everywhere and several chunks of wood on the floor. Blue lights were floating around outside and military officers shouting orders around in all the chaos. They were beginning to arrest rioters with surprising speed. Jacron and Masa didn't have much time if they were going to catch Markey. Trashing his room, Jacron finally found a hatch under Markey's desk. They opened it and started stepping down the metal ladder leading to the sewers. As they reached the bottom, they flipped on their persona-lights, illuminating the area ahead. The smell was awful, so much so, that Jacron and Masa activated their rebreathing apparatus, a gas mask, basically. As they met with the final step, Jacron stepped on a switch, which was followed by a click and the metal hatch closed. It sounded like something heavy was being pushed over it. Jacron looked to Masa, "Must've been the way he got out unnoticed." Masa noted. Jacron nodded in agreement. They looked around the putrid sewer system.

There was a deep, guttural kind of grinding noise far off to the left. The city's sewer grinding system. It was a natural way of quickly turning waste into fertile soil to farm. Using millions of organic and mechanical worms grinding it up and decomposing it in a matter of hours.

Around the corner, there was a dim light. Jacron and Masa turned toward one another and nodded, heading that direction quietly. Lit up by the light on the walls, Jacron and Masa saw several posters, very clean. They're the posters talking about the 31st District's construction. Although clean, they seemed to be soggy with what looked like heavy amounts of glue, keeping them hung up.

They turned the corner; not to find Markey, but some sort of monster. The thing was at least 6 feet tall, almost touching the ceiling of the sewer and was very wide. It had pudgy feet that held up a glowing figure and a single eye that hung from a tentacle-sort of thing. It was licking something off the wall of the sewer. "Is that-?" Masa whispered. "Yeah, the posters are it's food source or something." The monster licked the poster clean and it stayed on the wall.

Masa slipped on some moss on the ground. They looked down at it and it was a pile of green moss, but smelled awful. Masa slipped again and fell in the sewage. She let out a small scream on the way down. The monster turned around slowly, showing it's one eye first before turning. It let out a raspy gargle as it ran towards them, saliva dripping the whole time out of its gaping mouth. It was slow and clumsy, but making good pace as Masa lifted her now-ruined feather dress out of the sludge.

"Ew..." She groaned as Jacron pulled her out of the muck and began running in the opposite direction. Although it was given a head start, the creature couldn't keep up with their speed. After a minute of sprinting, they seemed to have lost the creature. There was a distant groan that echoed throughout the system and more heavy footfalls, more than two at a time.

"Good thing we got away from that one. That could've gotten messy fast. Almost as messy as that butt-absorbed toilet paper you're wearing." Jacron said, giggling while still holding his nose. "Oh, shut up," Masa said, giving him a crap-covered arm bump, "C'mon, give your bestie a hug, why don'tcha?" As she lunged toward Jacron.

"Ah! No! I don't want to be a wad of butt!" But it was no use, Masa tackled him, and they fell into the sludge together. "Now we're equal." Masa said, tossing more crap off her face before helping Jacron up. They were too enveloped in their conversation to notice the several footsteps getting very close. They turned towards the noise and their eyes went wide, "Get down! Lights off!" Jacron shouted before dropping into the crap once more. The sewers were caked in darkness. Just as they shut off their lights, several glowing monsters ran around the corner and down the hall, snarling and panting as they ran. At least thirty of them passed before Jacron and

Masa were finally alone again.

Slowly, they rose out of the sludge, looking into the directions of the collective glow which was still coughing and snarling ferociously down the sewer. "Why are there so many?" Jacron asked, mostly to himself. Masa shrugged and added, "Let's just hope that that's the last we see of them."

They got onto the sidewalk, turning their lights back on and began to walk again, shaking off the feces with every step. They saw another glow around the corner, brighter than what they saw before. Cautious this time, they peered around the corner and saw a desk with several papers scattered around it. It was lit up by a single desk lamp.

Jacron and Masa approached it, a bit more relaxed than before. They reached the desk and looked the papers over. "This isn't currency." Masa whispered. The papers were what looked like the hitman applications, which were the only other thing made of paper other than money. Several of them were scribbled out and one was crumpled up. The scribbled one's were covered in the glue-like slime they saw before. The crumpled paper was still intact, showing a name in clear print. Jacron didn't register the name before they both heard a louder roar just to their left.

There was a large mass rushing towards them, slowly pushing through the sewage. In front of it was a man, running just a little faster to keep his distance, but he was in a heavy panic. "No! You can't kill me! I'm Markey! I'm the one who has been keeping you alive!" Just before he reached ten feet from Jacron, he slipped on the sewage and the monster ate him whole.

It glowed a very bright red, which illuminated the entire hallway before going back to its original luminescence. After a second of satisfaction, the monster belched and turned towards Jacron and Masa. It roared once more before charging the two, a little slower than before. The monster looked like the other ones but had several extra limbs and even a hat.

On the opposite side of them, the monsters from before had caught up to them and were making a beeline for them too. Jacron and Masa looked either way and targeted the biggest. Jacron stuffed the paper into his pocket before they launched the assault.

Masa ran first, cutting it several times and severing tendons with surgeon-like accuracy. The beast fell to its knees before Jacron sliced its eye and it flew off, while it screamed in agony. Jacron and Masa jumped over the stunned enemy, but when they looked back, the hallway started to glow a bright yellow before fading to severely bright red.

They were eating the biggest monster. It was writhing and struggling, but to no avail to the massive amount of others, pinning it down. "What the-" Masa managed to mutter before Jacron pulled her along, "Let's not wait for them to finish that meal. We need to get out of here!"

After turning several corners, they found a ladder. The ladder was in another location than where they began. "This must be where Markey was going to get out." Jacron walked up the ladder and opened the hatch. There was nothing but darkness just before a bunch of Linchens fell out, making a ruckus and throwing feathers the whole way out. They began running in random directions followed by the monster’s roar. "Okay, that was the feeding chamber. Makes sense on how Markey was feeding them." Jacron noted. They went the rest of the way up the ladder and saw a feeding pin and a door. The floor was covered in eggs, most likely from the Linchens. They were careful to avoid them.

They headed out of the door and were greeted with the bright outside, where people gave them a disgusted look. Cytanks rolled through the streets toward the factory. "Seems a bit much for a city riot, don't you?" Masa shrugged. "We could ask those Cytanks, or we could take a shower at my place." She added. Jacron shrugged and they ran towards Masa's mansion.