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    Note: Please read 'Prolouge', also written by Khengi to understand this chapter.

    Chapter 1:
    ---------------

    "Kinesis"
    Chapter 1
    - Escaping the AA-8xx Zone -



    The pen moved. Correction; the pen moved by means of Telekinesis.

    "Holy crap," K-7 though to himself. He didn't jump away or break out into a cold sweat. He simply stared with wide, hard eyes at the pen. It didn't move again; how could it?

    Just at the moment where he urged himself to investigate the pen and see if there was any form of a gimmick, the pen mechanically split from the center and spread outwards, very slightly. It spread enough to reveal the hollow inside, which revealed a small piece of paper with the printed text 'Zone KIN-zzx, Nazukke Building, Room 337, 11:30 tonight.' Anyone who's been on academy grounds for longer than a day knows that this exact address doesn't exist. K-7 read the address, making sense of it, all until it said 'Room 337', as the Nazukke Building ends at 336, which in turn is the last room of that building, and that particular building in itself is the last structure in the Shin'yama Kinesthetic Academy. It's like saying your birthday was February 30th; it just doesn't work like that.

    Curiosity jerked his mind to look at the back of the small paper. "Speak of this to no one," it said. A small mark was written at the corner which is very familiar to the students in terms of meaning: don't tell anyone, not even teachers. It was made for situations where a student would need to do an assignment on their own without asking for help. The mark was here, meaning he couldn't ask anyone how to get to this make-believe Room 337.

    "11:30 p.m. is pretty late," he thought to himself as he lay in his bed, arms crossed behind his head, staring a the ceiling. He glanced at his digital clock: 10:10 p.m. It was past curfew, and students weren't allowed out past this time. "This has to be a joke," he joked to himself. "not only are they demanding we go somewhere that doesn't exist, but an hour and thirty minutes after curfew, too. Curfew starts at ten, and it's already ten minutes past."

    Then he thought about the pen. He moved it. That alone should have been enough confirmation to know that something was out there. This anxious curiosity burned in the bottom part of his stomach. He couldn't sit still, constantly fidgeting and turning as he lay in his bed. He could see out of his window as he lay with his eyes losing focus, simply watching. It was snowing lightly, but picked up more and more every minute. Everything was silent, save for the humming of the academy heater. It was pitch black outside, but there was a very dim light in the distance, just over the mountains in the KIN-zzx Zone. The dim light reflected the snow on the ground as well as the falling snow, causing a purple and indigo hue to flush the sky and stars, intermingling with the night sky. The weather was below negative 10 degrees.

    That's when it hit him. He stared at the same spot for a few minutes without even noticing it. "Huh, hu-huh? Wait, there's light coming from KIN-zzx... it's 'lights out' time, nobody has their lights on at this time, especially not in the zone furthest away from the academy. The only zone over the mountains..." he could feel his own anxiousness rising, his nervousness, his burning desire. He sat and thought, and then he turned and sat on the edge of his bed. The dim hue from his lamp's shade causing only light to permeate to some of the room, the rest in a soft shadow. He watched the snow. He watched the light over the mountains. He didn't think about any plans, he just sat and watched. Oddly enough, the mindset he fell into when he succeeded in Telekinesis showed up slowly, and his breathing slowed down. His heart rate steadied. He felt warmer and warmer, as the front of his forehead tingled from the deep breaths.

    "I'll do it." the resolve was too strong to keep away! "If I'm going to do this, I need to prepare. At the moment it's... 10:17 p.m. Curfew started over 17 minutes ago. I'll be in a world of hurt if I'm caught, and put on lockdown for the rest of the night, ending any plan of reaching that building. I'll need to use as much stealth as possible." he began to pace his floor as he searched for his Fuyukutsu Boots, the academy's specialized boots for snow combat and travel. "I'll need to stay warm, as well, and pace myself. The road to that building is snowed over in almost a foot of snow. It's way below zero and the cold could take me easily. Not to mention it's almost an hour's walk..." as he named every opposing factor in his plan, he was surprised to see that it only geared him more and more to going. Nothing was going to stop him now. He came across his boots under his bed. They were long, black, and very light, with the symbol for 'Snow' written on their heel. He grew anxious and excited, mostly because of the danger that awaited him, and the fact that he was going to get answers on Telekinesis. That was a heavy driving force.

    He swiped his hooded Atsui Jaketto jacket from his bedpost and pulled it over his shirt. It, too, was an academy specialization for cold weather, with a large symbol for 'Heat' on the back. Out of his jacket's pocket were two leather gloves, cut off at the fingers and thumbs to allow full mobility and grip. There were so many other things that he felt were necessary to bring, but had to turn them down; he could die out there if he brought too much. His boots, jacket, gloves and own body were just enough. Now he was set for the cold, but was he set for breaking the curfew?

    "Alright," he said to himself out loud, taking deep breaths. "Now it's time. I have until 11:30 p.m. to get there, and it's currently 10:30 p.m." K-7 peeked out his dorm's door. He could see down the hallway, left and right, at every other room. It was quiet. Every other student were either asleep or studying. The carpet floors, walls and ceiling all had the same warm, birchwood color, only differing slightly in shade. He looked around before leaving his room, and finally shut his door. The closest door was the emergency door which, conveniently, led towards the back of his dorm building. This was good for him, as his room was on the 12th floor in the back, which allowed his window to see the outer edges of the academy grounds; mainly the mountains, where he needed to be in the next hour. He raced for the stairs at the end of the hall, and darted around the corner, grabbing the stair railing and descending to Floor 11. One floor down, 10 more to go, but something told him each floor wouldn't be this easy.

    And he was so right. Floor 11 just so happened to be the floor where his Dorm Chaperon slept on, and that term is used lightly: he doesn't sleep. He's trained in the Martial Arts at this academy for more than 40 years, and gets a full nights sleep off of less than 1 hour of meditation. 3 hours is enough to keep him going for a decent amount of time, and he just loved to monitor these floors. But the mission could NOT stop right now! But it was going to get hard from here on it. You see, the stairs from one floor to another is based on opposite sides. Meaning the stairs to get to Floor 10 was across the hall, and the hall was more than 500 feet long in length, with dozens of dorm rooms in on its sides. And it was a decently narrow hall, meaning if someone walked on it at the same time as he, then mission over. Seeing as how there was nothing he could hide behind, jump on, or blend in with, it was a simple plan: just run to the other side. Problem is, but the time he was halfway there, he was too far away to simply run around the corner if someone was coming. It was do or die. Do, or die?

    "Do," he confirmed in his mind. "Do. Not die." he bolted as fast as he could across the hallway, mustering all of his Martial Arts training into his conditioned legs, speeding at up to 20 miles per hour. Half way there, he did his best to use a Kurohaya Technique, which was an instant burst of energy and muscle tension in the legs, allowing him to hit a temporary speed of 52 miles per hour, approaching the end in less than 13 seconds of running. In his sonicboom-like burst of speed, he reached the railing of the staircase descending to the 10th Floor, leaped, grabbed the railing with his momentum, and swung downward in a dazzling display of gymnastics and mind-boggling speeds. Upon touching ground on the 10th floor, he continued his pace as fast as he could, desiring to be able to clear each floor as easily as this, despite running out of energy quickly. But he had a plan for this as well: on the 8th, 5th, and 2nd floors there's a rest area where students can go after curfew to study, but only until 11:00 p.m. He could use these areas to catch his breath and try to regain whatever energy he lost from the Kurohaya technique. It was risky, as he was dressed for outside, and would instantly be spotted as odd, but it was his only chance. His stamina wasn't developed enough to cover 10 more floors straight through, he had to stop and rest, if only for a few minutes. And he needed to get this done quickly, as he still had the truly hard part awaiting: the outside.

    He quickened his pace, forcing the Kurohaya Technique as hard as he could, clocking 64 miles per hour. He caught wind of one of the digital clocks on the floor as he passed it: 10:33 p.m. He had scaled two and a half floor, more than 1200 feet, in less than 3 minutes from his dorm room. He was making great time. Nothing could stop him now, he was in the zone, perfect precision-

    Oh no. He made it to the end of the floor, but didn't do such an amazing maneuver as diving down into the lower floor. Instead, he stepped his foot forward, slowing his speed until he halted, where he gently touched the rail to the next floor. Why didn't he go down? Why has he stopped?

    500 feet away from him, on the other side of the hall, touching the other rail, was the Dorm Chaperon: Jikan Satsu. Oddly enough, his name was a mix of two words: the first name simply meant 'time' or 'hour', while his last name was the suffix for the word 'gyakusatsu', meaning 'to slaughter'. His name meant 'Time Slaughterer,' roughly. It was almost like a kick in the face to K-7, the person who needed time to be on his side more than anything. Jikan's stare from the other side was impossible to make out; he was more than 500 feet away and was too far to get the details of his glare. But the energy and feeling exuding from him hissed 'horror' almost, and was more than enough for K-7 to know that he had to go; he'd been caught, and by the worst person. Tiring Jikan out was impossible, as he had just meditated a day earlier for more than 7 hours, meaning he would be wide awake and full of energy for more than a week. K-7's plan of resting on the different floors was now over. Now, he had to run.

    Because Jikan was walking towards him. A shocking horror ran through K-7's mind, his eyes widened, and in a burst of speed he flipped over the railing, hands high above his head as he descended into the next floor, landed crouching, and pulsed forward as hard as he could with his own personalized technique: the 'Hoshi Kurohaya Manuever', allowing him to dig deep into his energy reserves and flare across the room at a sickening speed of 89.9 miles per hour! But the technique's side effect was its stopping ability: when he reaches the other side of the hall, how does he slow down enough to flip over the railing!

    "I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go!" he chanted to himself over and over again in his mind, his face dead set on his target. His remedy to the impossibility coming to the much needed screeching halt was to simply 'jump' at about 400 feet of the 500 foot distance. This would cause him to do a long jump, but because he was no longer running, he was slowly come down after 'flying', almost, for more than 7 seconds. This would allow him to land, grab the railing, swing over, and make his run to the next.

    And it worked. 400 feet of the way, he leaped, landed, grabbed, and swung down to the lower floor. Before swinging down, he looked to see if Jikan was still following him: he didn't see him at all. "Huh?" he thought to himself the split second he got a glimpse of the hall as he flipped upside down, before descending. "Something's not right," he thought. But there was no time to think, there was no time for anything. Regardless of the fact that he was making record timing, he still had the snow to trek through.

    And in a dazzling display of speed, momentum, gymnastics and Martial Arts, K-7 scaled every floor. Not one person was awake or walked on any floor; but it didn't matter, he was finally on the final floor, and the emergency door to the back of the building was only 500 feet away. This was the ground floor, and he wasn't scaling any more stairs anymore. It was time to open the door, but he was so tired. He needed to rest, as the 'Hoshi Kurohaya Maneuver' took everything he had. His legs felt like rubber, and his lungs were as coal. His breathing was hoarse and no form of deep breathing or quick meditation would calm his breathing down. He kneeled down, holding his heart, and coughed. Coughing nearly made him dry-heave vomit. His body was spent, he wasn't strong enough to fight a 2 year old in this condition. In fact, if Jikan decided to rear his head, then he'd simply take K-7.

    It was 10:37 p.m., and he was making great time. At this rate, he deserved a little break. The thought of what may be happening over at Zone KIN-zzx was thrilling to him. He had to press on. He worked his self up, and lightly jogged to the other end of the hall. His sweat drenched his hair and eyes and he gasped for air so viciously that saliva fell from his lips uncontrollably; he simply couldn't close his mouth. It was over 3 minutes later that he reached the end, and he latched on to the heavy, steel emergency door in relieved manner. A dumb, crooked smile cracked on the side of his face, complimenting the already dazed look his half closed eyes gave. He turned the door, slightly bracing himself for the cold, but almost welcoming it because he was sweating so profusely. He turned it all the way, and pushed in.

    "VEEEEEEEER, VEEEEEEEER, VEEEEEEEER!" The alarm blared! This was just not his day!

    "Ack, seriously?!" he gasped, still coughing from the lung punishment of his technique. He regretted it so much, as Jikan was no longer even following him! He had no choice now but to jump out into the cold. As he pushed the door opened he was welcomed to the howling cold and dark night of the harshest winter he'd ever seen. The snow was in a blizzard-like state and buffeted him heavily as he tried to regain his bearings. He slammed the door behind him and nearly lost his balance in the 2 feet of snow. It was truly a terrible blizzard, but now he could finally make his way to his destination. He squinted towards the distance, watching the mountain, trying to make it out through the heavy snow. All he could make out was a figure, just 10 or 11 feet away from him. As he approached closer and closer, trying his hardest to guard against the powerful snow and maddening cold, he finally made out the figure.

    Jikan Satsu.