What Lana didn't know because the trees were unable to tell her was Duff worked for Pucket. His job was to watch her and learn about her vulnerability. See if she was a good candidate to be sent off with all the other special people with no backing. Was her ability strong or weak? He was instructed to record her after the second portal outing as much as he could. Duff was in her homeroom class as well but she didn't talk to her classmates much, keeping to the people she already knew.
As part of her learning process, she had copious notes. She kept them secure on her at all times so getting them was too difficult but watching her write with cameras was not so difficult with miniaturized technology. The trees just thought they were insects.
The cameras had only recently been used so they have only discovered what she's working on, not what she already knew. They have seen her do things but not with a clear explanation of how it worked. The camera just needed to keep being used. If only her damned bag was not insect-proof, they could have gotten the books out and scanned them that way. Instead, they had to do it the hard way, watching her with the books and to see if they could blackmail her and force her to talk. The thought running through Duff's head was, could this blond boy be used to get to her? Why didn't she practice more of the things she wrote down?
After Duff returned from the doctor's office, he went back to recording her and uploaded the footage that night.
As usual, Paul was informed there was a change to Lana's file. After reviewing it, he decided he'd take care of this issue in his own way.
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The next afternoon, there was a knock on a door at the top of the second-year building. Pucket listened for the response before opening the door and walking in. Major Cruciatus waved to the front of his desk with an angry expression on his face.
"I'm going to cut straight to the chase. I went to look at the footage of our little friend today and the recording was nothing but static. I suggest you figure this out and fix it. Here is a new camera. There won't be another one. Now leave!"
An hour later, Pucket was on the roof of the first-year building. He had invited up a level 0 boy named Duff to have a friendly conversation.
Pucket slapped Duff across the face, "I offer you protection and this is what you do to me? The video was all static. Explain this!"
Duff was crying, "I don't know. I checked it before I uploaded it and it was clear. She was performing all kinds of moves and I had her writing in her book. She's working on some new move. She thinks she's got it figured out and plans to try it in a few days when she has enough time to do it."
Pucket handed him the new camera. "You better not screw up like this again. Get the footage."
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Paul had been waiting for her and just doing menial tasks before getting engrossed in something exciting once he was done with this talk.
"You may want to sit down for this."
She did as she was bid at the seat he provided her by his desk.
"I decided to look at your file last night and I found videos of you."
"Excuse me???" She was shocked.
"I fixed that in my own way but there is someone watching you and making videos of what you are doing. May I suggest you take a few of these devices," he handed her a bunch of small square-like devices, "place them around your tree and other areas you hang out. I would place 2 in your lab and your little bedroom. That's footage you don't want getting out…" Her face went red.
"In addition, take these oomlauts with you. When you place them, state the location you place them. They are cameras and listening devices that won't be blocked by those other devices. From what I can tell, the military is issuing low-grade or mid-grade cameras. Mine are something that cannot be bought on the market."
"We need to find out who is behind this and how to stop it and get you protected. I know the person who uploaded the footage is someone named Duff from our class. I suggest not confronting him. Bring all these cameras to homeroom tomorrow and I'll place one on him."
Lana was in shock at what she was hearing and thankful to have Paul at the same time.
"Thank you, Paul. I owe you a lot of meals!"
"Before you go, take this Model Super kitchen with you. I'll have another one ready in a few days but I keep forgetting to give you this one. If you like it, we'll need a commercial for it as well."
Lana nodded, took the kitchen and headed back to her room.
The next morning, the students were told there would be an assembly just after lunch and the students would need to be in uniform for it. Blaine continued meeting her before breakfast so Kyle could feed Kent. He was enjoying playing pet parent. It was also further bonding time between him and Lana.
The friends all decided to say around the dorms until then. At the assembly, they were told due to the previous outing ending so… tragically, some teams would be consolidated. There would be another outing a week from Monday, basically moving up the third outing from March.
A sergeant then instructed them all to get in their groups. Lana realized this meant Blaine's group would get another person. At the same time, a lot of his class died on that outing so it should be expected. Tobias walked up to their team and asked if he could join them. They agreed having seen him use his wind ability on the outing.
The sergeant stopped seeing movement and saw there were some groups that weren't fully at 5 yet so she had some students fill in there. At the end, there were three students left after every group was at 5. She took the last three and pointed at different groups. Next thing Lana knew, she heard someone say, "I guess I'm in your group."
Lana head snapped in the direction of the voice, "excuse me?"
"The sergeant assigned me to your group," Duff pointed in her direction.
Lana sat there dumbfounded. This student was in her homeroom class. He didn't know his right from his left, he can't activate a beast weapon, he's using the wrong weapon in general, he caused her to have to kill Seymour and, he's working for Pucket… But she couldn't let on she knew that so…
"Duff, how are you still level-0? Did you reject the ability book?"
He nodded.
"Do you get beat up a lot?"
"I used to," he replied.
"You got protection."
He nodded.
"In exchange for what?" she asked.
"I'm not allowed to talk about it," he said while fidgeting.
"What kind of ability do you want?"
He looked her in the eyes to see if she was being serious or asking out of curiosity.
She returned his gaze. "Well?"
"Some kind of support. Like a buff, maybe a debuff."
"Let's go to the library."
Duff looked scared.
"I cannot travel with a level-0. If you are to join us, then you need to actually join us."
They went to the library to see what kind of support abilities were out there. She knew healing which would actually be great to have in combat. Hers was too slow to use in such a fast-paced environment. They got to the library and sat down once again to do some shopping. They found several options. Lana was sticking to level-3 at the moment. Given his talent with killing plants, she wasn't sure he'd be able to go very high on the MC scale.
They settled on an ability that allowed attribute swaps. The ability user designated an opponent and a party member. An example would be the beast has strength of 15 and the party member has a strength of 8. Those numbers would swap and the party member would get stronger, the beast weaker. This ability worked on all attributes as well as health and MC if it applied. At level 3, the most that could be taken for MC and Healing was 15 points per use. It went up 5 points per level of the user.
She took the code to the machine to get the book. As she handed it over to Duff, "you learn this ability before the outing if you can. As of now, you are out of the Agriculture Club. You are to join the Beast Weapons Club. Am I clear?"
He gulped knowing he was about to be in big trouble but the teacher placed him with the group. He had to play ball. Could they protect him from the monster? He didn't know but there was something special about this person or the monster would not be acting the way he was toward her. He simply nodded and took the book. They got his room number, 2201, in case they wanted to check up on him and sent him there to begin studying.
Lana smirked as he walked away. "I just gave him a week to learn a level-3 ability. Do you think he can do it?"
"We'll know in a week, won't we!" replied Alto.
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