"Wow." Tristan gushed as Eleanor stopped the recorder, staring at me like he was meeting me for the first time. "You, you are a great speaker."

Suddenly feeling self-conscious with all the people in the room staring at me, I tugged a strand of hair behind my ears and felt a blush coming on. Just my luck.

"Now that we have got that out of the way." Katerina suddenly spoke up, stepping out of the shadows towards us, holding onto the sheet of paper. "We should address this."

"What is it?" I immediately asked, rotating my chair around as the Original came towards me with Saralisa close behind her, both looking serious and grave.

"It's a report." Katerina said, putting the piece of paper in front of me for everyone to see. "From the Balikova family."

I inhale sharply as I look at the now familiar sigil on the top of the paper. It was a brief report, more like a summarized memo sent explicitly to Mr. Andrewson on...

"The Legre Peace Treaty." I said the words aloud, my heart fluttering as I leaned forward to get a better look at the content. It wasn't very specific about the real issue, apart from the fact that there was a problem renewing it this decade.

"They wanted him to go back and help. That was dated over half a year ago." Katerina said, crossing her arms together in a look of annoyance. It was strange that she foresaw nothing of this. Perhaps it was a good thing, because it meant this wasn't important enough. But then I remember what Katerina told me, that she couldn't foresee everything.

"We need to get to Budapest Citybase to meet with the Balikova family." Katerina said looking straight at me. "Now is not the time to have problems with the Legres community with the Apocalypse on our back. And I would need you to come with me."

Left speechless by this turn of event, I turned around to look at the outside; I wanted to make sure that everyone from the Academy was safe, and if I wasn't mistaken, this plane was headed straight for the UGE. In fact, we really should be arriving any minutes now as we were never that far from it in the beginning.

Flipping out a phone from some hidden pocket, Katerina started to type in a number before speaking furiously into the phone in a language that I don't understand. I supposed when you are 300 years old, you bound to pick up skills along the way.

"I have arranged for us to get on another plane afterwards." Katerina reverted back to English to tell me, before giving some more instructions into the phone. I knew that I should follow her, but I didn't feel comfortable leaving everyone at Pax.

"I need to speak to a few people first." I told Katerina, peering out the window and catching a glimpse of Pax's approaching cityscape. "I can't just leave."

Nodding, Katerina motioned for me to head out the door and I quickly got up and headed out. Immediately, I could see Diego, Viktor, Casey, Fred and Natalie waiting outside the door, while a lonely Karl standing guard at the end of the corridor for some unknown reason.

"Hey." Diego greeted me and got up from leaning against the wall, while the others did the same. Casey stopped pacing and rushed towards me protectively, giving Katerina and Saralisa and glance that I was sure neither was used to.

"What's the deal?" She demanded, knowing something was up from my expression.

"I need to leave for Budapest Citybase immediately." I told them, sounding calmer than I felt. "I need something to take charge of things when I am gone."

"I will come with you." Diego immediately said, casting a quick glance at Katerina to see if she would object. The Original kept quiet and I hesitated for a while. It wouldn't be wise for me to leave Diego at Pax given his dilemma, and it would be good to have more back up other than two secretive Originals.

"I will come too." Viktor and Casey said immediately, and it was my turn to look at Katerina. She didn't say anything at first, but I knew her well enough to see that she was considering it.

"You need to come." She suddenly turned to Viktor, crooking her head to the side as she studied the boy. "I don't know what it is, but there is something that tells me you will play a part in what is to come."

Shivering at her words, I wondered why she couldn't have used some less ominous sentence to convey the exact same meaning. Wouldn't something like you might be useful, or you will be important do? Looking around, I could see an uncomfortable look appearing on everyone's face.

"I will come too." Casey said, and I cast a look at Karl, who was obviously eavesdropping on our conversation from afar, before shaking my head. I needed more people I could trust to stay here and take hold of things. And while I thought Aulia and the rest of my assigned group were amazing people, it would be better if it was someone I know.

"What? No!" Surprised at my answer, Casey immediately started to protest, but it was quickly quietened down by a sideways glance from Katerina. Casey might always be loud and out there, but she had always been intimidated by the Original and always become more compliant when she is concerned.

"But isn't the crew from the UGE?" Diego voiced out his question, and truth be told I wasn't very clear on that myself. "Would they just let us go without causing s scene? And what would they do to all the students?"

Katerina bit on her lips and I knew that this would be something that we would have to handle on our own. Her powers are passive, but mine wasn't.

"This ship is the SMS's, but funded by the UGE and the crew is a mix." Eleanor, who had finally emerged from the room, lingering at the back with Tristan. "We pulled a few strings to get on here with Katerina, and we had their words that they won't bother us. As for the rest of you... Before you get too worried, I can tell you that we won't sit by and watch these kids get mistreated, but all I know is that they want to take you to some facility first to debrief you."

Musing over the information, I nodded. "Let's go to the main room." I said, gesturing for everyone to head back out the way we came. I would have to act fast and hope the rough plan forming in my head would be sufficient. Eleanor and Tristan weren't going to expose themselves to everyone, as after all their involvement in all things POE should be zero. And I was putting my trust in Vulture and Iris once again.

Moving my way to the front as we finally burst through to the staircase that overlooked everyone, I made sue to give Karl a small nod so that he knew to go over to Casey's. His presence would stop her from going off the rails.

As soon as people realized that we were there everyone began to hush and looked up towards us, and I felt a weird tingling sensation going through my body. It was like I had become part of something bigger than myself, someone that others were looking to, even though I barely knew what to do myself. I wasn't sure how I got to this position, nor whether or not it was something that I liked. All I knew is that at that moment I felt a sense of power than had nothing to do with the mutated genes in my DNA, but the fact that I had stood up and fought for what was right.

"We will be landing in Pax soon." I started, looking across and trying to scan everyone's faces, spotting some familiar ones. "I knew it had been a difficult day for everyone, waking up to find that six months had passed just to get attacked and barely escape being captured. In fact, some of us did get captured." I paused here, not sure how to continue on for a second as the overwhelming feelings of what had transpired seeped through my veins. "But know that we will get to the bottom of this."

"What are we going to do now?" someone shouted from below, "Do we go home? Wil they find us there?"

My eyes wondered over to where Vulture and Iris were standing, a little away from the crowd in their own little corner. Vulture caught my eyes and gave me a half smirk.

"Miss," One of the staff suddenly came towards me, his face apologetic. "I am going to have to ask you to go back down to the atrium as we are about to land."

With a look I could tell that this was a ploy to stop me talking. "It's okay," I said, and the man relaxed slightly as stared into my eyes. "We will be finished in a little while, please give us a few more minutes."

Nodding, he backed off and the rest of my group gave him a slightly startled expression as though they couldn't figure out why the guy let the matter go so easily. But this was still a secret that I wanted to keep, and it would remain so until someone actually figured it out.

"As soon as we land, I will have to leave." I announced, wincing a little as my words hit the student body like a shock wave. They had already lost Mr. Andrewson, then Bradly, and now I was abandoning them. Before they could respond to me, I grabbed Casey, Karl, Natalie and Fred forward, as well as waved for Aulia and co to come up.

"I know that this is bad timing," I continued, opting to go for the truth, because everyone deserved to be treated like an adult and there's never any good in sugar coating things. "But there are a lot at risk right now. We are not only facing the Apocalypse, but the imminent threat of a Legre invasion. I know none of you asked for this, and it might be more than anything you have ever bargained for to go out there and face the uncertainty of the world. While I can't control what will happen, I am leaving you in capable hands and I can at least say that you won't be in any real danger at Pax if you stick together. But believe me when I tell you that we have it much, much better than the Originals and the POEs in the Dark Age. And that it's time for us to finally fight for the privilege that they had earned for us ourselves. We might have been the target in this attack, but in the bigger picture of this ongoing war, the entire world is at risk. We can no longer keep our identity a secret from the rest of the world in this fight, and we won't. I can't stop you from going wherever you want when we land. Whether you want to go into hiding, co-operate with whatever plans the UGE or SMS have when we land, it's your choice. But if you want to help us fight against this, stay with us."

The whole room fell silent for a good five seconds after my speech, until it was interrupted by Vulture clapping slowly and loudly. He stared up at me, his eyes an emotion that I couldn't recognised.

"I might not be the best person to promise anything," He started, earning a bewildered look from Iris. "But however twisted you all think UGE is, we have never stooped to imprisoning and threatening children, POE or not."

A visible sigh of relief flooded through the room, and I could see all the students visibly relaxed. There were still a few hesitant if not hostile thoughts floating around, but I did my best to block them out.

"I think Gail had done more than enough to help us." A voice suddenly broke out and everyone's head turned towards Jared, who was looking very uncomfortable to be in the spotlight. "She didn't ask for it any more than the rest of us; but she had first come back to rescue us and now giving us a way out. We can't help who we are born as, and I think that it's time we actually try and give back to the Academy and the Originals for giving us a refuge when we needed it."

Ending his speech with a shout, Jared was shaking and I couldn't help but felt a wave of appreciation over this boy who had helped so much during the siege of the Academy. A majority of the students started clapping and cheering him on, while a few lingered together forming small groups at the side. I shook my head and shrugged – you can't win everyone over in life, and ultimately, it is their choice.

"We will take care of them." Karl assured me, which I found a little odd seeing as he was the one that I knew least well. Although I have faith in Casey's choice of people as her, er, friends.

"They all heard your plan, you know." Vulture came up next to me casually as we finally descended back down the stairs and mingled into the crowd. My heart skipped a beat and I looked around to see a few pairs of eyes trailing my every move. "How are you planning to evade them now?"

Turning to him with my best smile, I was satisfied to see a bemused expression on his face. "With your help, of course."

No one confronted us about my speech at all as we all settled down on the floor for landing. I supposed they thought they have us in the hat given that they control where we land. I had no idea whether or not they were planning on rounding us up aggressively or simply going to just let us out, but I knew that they weren't going to let us go without at least some kind of a debrief.

"Doors open in a minute." One of the staff yelled, and the guy that I compelled was nowhere in sight. I suppressed my snigger and looked around, hoping that everyone was in place. Vulture and Iris were right by the door with Fred and Natalie right behind him.

"I hope you know what you are doing." Katerina emerged to my side, a hint of a smile on her face. I smiled at her, "Our plane is going to land right behind us when I give them the signal, we have a five minute windows to get over there and get on."

I nodded, tugging at the necklace I still had out of comfort. Which brought another question to mind; despite the initial reaction of everyone to me having it, no one had actually told me what it was used for, nor why it seemed to be such a precious commodity. But it was probably something best left to figure out another day.

"Please get off the plane in an orderly fashion!" One of the staff shouted; but ignoring his orders, we all rushed down as a big group.

Immediately they started to shout, and I could see there were quite a bit of people waiting for us at the air strip. From the looks of things we were on one of the remote landing sites that's mostly used for maintenance, and a few people dressed in guard uniforms from the UGE started to try and round us up. Vulture and Iris started heading off towards one of the men standing in a line in front of two huge buses. And I knew that's my cue.

Sending the pre discussed signal to Jared, he started to shout and everyone started to fan out. Taken by surprise, the guards tried to contain us and I took the opportunity, along with Diego, to tug the weapons in their hands out and flung them towards each other.

Closing my eyes, I quickly prayed that my next stunt will pull off. Squeezing my mind, I tried to isolate the thoughts of the unfamiliar people from those who were from the Academy. It felt like I was trying to pick out the song from the background conversations, but as soon as I could, I sent out one message to them.

You can't see anything.

Just like that, everything turned into epic chaos. Saralisa gestured for me to head around behind the plane that we came in, towards a sleek black small plane that seemed to land out of nowhere. Casting one last glance at the mayhem that I helped caused, I was glad to see Vulture and Iris turning a blind eye to some of the students that were running away. The majority had stayed and started boarding the buses, pushing the drivers off and taking it for their own. I knew then that they were more than capable of taking care of themselves.

Stay safe. I sent one last message to Jared before hopping on the plane behind Viktor and watching as the door slid shut in front of me. I might not be happy with everything that had happened in the Academy, but I was more certain than ever that we were close to unraveling the Apocalypse.

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Finally! I wanted to whisk Gail to Budapest Citybase immediately, but the flow of the story took me t their time on the plane instead :) I think the students are long overdue for a little bit of growing up. This chapter is mostly a reminder that we all make our own choices in life, sometimes it's something that we think are the best or is the best for us. Often t might not be the choice that everyone makes, but it's important to stop thinking just about yourself and look around.

Gail has always been aware of the bigger picture. She parted with Tom, now with Casey to go and do what she thinks it's the most important. She's the kind of Heroine that I want to see in this world, not the kind that gives a ton of emotional baggage and drag everyone down. She's sad about her choices, and have her own burden but she shoulders through it :)

Anyway - enough of my psychological dissection! Let me know what you think! I have some huge plot twists lining up for you guys and I CANNOT wait to reveal them.

Don't forget to vote and comment!