Kael's neural lace flickered with data-static. "Amelia holds that level of renown?"
Finn's ocular implants dilated in holographic outrage. "Are you synaptic? She's the Obsidian Zenith's crown jewel—Archchancellor Austin's pet reality-warper. But what would a chrono-stained freshman like you comprehend about refined genius?" His vocal modulator crackled with the fervor of orbital defense lasers locking onto targets.
The weight of Amelia's influence settled like gravitational debt. Kael observed the lecture hall's atmospheric shift—the way Jaxon's hydromancy gauntlets subconsciously polished non-existent tarnish from his robes, how three sophomores' augmented limbs twitched into parade-rest formation as she glided past.
Their gazes collided during his tactical assessment.
Amelia's quantum-lattice eyes fragmented incoming light spectra, reassembling Kael's profile through seven-dimensional filters. Recognition flared—her lips curving in a singularity smile that warped nearby chrono-fields.
Finn's reactor-core laugh detonated the silence. "Brother! The Ice Queen's thawing for your scuffed neural ports!" His whisper-roar carried the destructive elegance of antimatter in church.
Two hundred and seventeen augmented pupils contracted in smoldering hostility. The air thickened with encrypted threat-pulses targeting Kael's biometric signature.
Unknown entity detected
Threat assessment: Priority Sigma
Initiating reputation erosion protocols
Kael's shadowform absorbed the ambient malice as neural lace warnings blared. Amelia's smile lingered like event horizon graffiti, its implications rewriting social gravity wells. An electric murmur surged through the crowd—half-formed gossip particles seeking critical mass.
"Profile mismatch."
"Lexicon plant?"
"Temporal anomaly?"
Jaxon's hydromancy streams coiled into combat stances, his stormhawk's ghost screeching through augmented reality overlays. "First my canvas, now this?"
Finn phased through a structural beam, neutronium popcorn scattering. "Relax, feather-fingers. Kid's just got that new-student stink."
The lie curdled before reaching floor tiles. Amelia's attention was no transient phenomenon—it carried the terrible precision of orbital strikes. Kael's peripheral chronometer glitched, its numerals bleeding into the pulsar coordinates she'd unwittingly imprinted during their ocular collision.
Somewhere beyond the lecture hall's quantum shielding, the Lexicon's archivists began transcribing this heresy in blood-inked runes.
Amelia cut through the crowd with event horizon inevitability. Finn's coolant systems whined under the collective glare of two hundred thermal targeting systems. "Why do I always orbit supernovas?" he muttered, neural dampeners struggling against the ambient hostility.
"Your neural architecture bears academy encryption now." Amelia's voice sliced through background chatter like monomolecular filament. Her ocular arrays cycled through threat-assessment hues before stabilizing in cobalt scrutiny.
Kael's shadowform rippled under her sensor sweep. "My mentor insisted on academy immersion protocols." He pinged Ethan's encrypted profile across the neural net, a flicker of static betraying the lie.
Amelia's cortical halo flared violet—the machine equivalent of raised eyebrows. "Interesting vector for a temporal anomaly." Her combat-synth musculature hummed with restrained energy. "The arena's equilibrium shifts."
Neural lace warnings blared as Kael processed the implications. She shouldn't possess tier-scanning protocols. His internal diagnostics spiraled—either her paladin core had evolved beyond Tier-Six parameters, or the Obsidian Zenith had armed her with forbidden lexicons.
"You flatter a beta-build like me," Kael deflected, projecting a holographic certification sigil. "Basic thaumic framework, Tier-Five max—"
"Delta-band energy signatures don't lie." Amelia overrode his projection, combat algorithms reconstructing their last encounter. "Tier-Three to Tier-Five in twenty-seven solar cycles? Even Austin's prototypes combusted attempting that curve."
Kael's cooling systems engaged. Praise from war-goddesses carried radiation burns. He monitored three separate assassination plots forming in nearby neural clusters.
Finn materialized through a phased-reality partition, scattering zero-point confetti. "Reunion protocols engaged! So when's the alliance formalization? I'll handle the press holo-drones!"
"Your humor matrices remain... intact." Amelia acknowledged Finn's fractal-shaped handshake with a nanosecond delay—precisely calculated to maintain social orbit.
The trio's conversation became a layered battlefield. Amelia's queries about quantum thaumaturgy hid depth-charge probes into Kael's origins. Finn's anecdotal radiation masked counter-surveillance jammers. Kael's deflection algorithms rewrote reality logs with each response.
Observers saw only the surface holography: The unranked anomaly basking in war-queen attention. Jaxon's hydrokinetic blade-arm sublimated ice crystals into the ventilation system. Three upperclassmen initiated reputation-doxing subroutines.
Amelia's true focus became apparent when her combat-core accidentally solved Kael's three-century-old temporal paradox mid-conversation. The resulting logic-bomb vaporized seven nearby surveillance drones.
"Fascinating resonance pattern," she remarked, ignoring the molten debris. Her neural-firewall breaches left twelve cognitive traps disarmed in Kael's psyche.
Finn activated emergency humor protocols. "So... anyone want synth-pretzels?"
The cafeteria's quantum clocks skipped a picosecond. Somewhere in deep memory stacks, the academy's central intelligence began drafting a new threat classification.
Finn's banter with Amelia translated cleanly through social credit algorithms—expected camaraderie between combat-core elites. But the anomaly drew neural firewalls. Why did the war-queen's diagnostic beams linger on this unranked chrono-stain?
Jaxon's thermal signatures spiked crimson. His stormhawk drone screeched binary curses as they approached the trio. Every male in Obsidian Zenith's memory banks carried corrupted files labeled [Amelia_Infatuation_Protocols]. The hydromancy prodigy's attempts now unfolded like obsolete courtship malware.
"Query: Ambient_Synchronicity_Event?" Jaxon forced his vocal buffer into suave harmonics, hydromancy gauntlets projecting false-casual steam patterns.
Amelia's firewall pinged his query with [Priority_Ignore]. Her focus remained locked on decrypting Kael's temporal resonance frequencies. "Acknowledged," she replied through encrypted subtext channels only Finn bothered to decode.
Undeterred, Jaxon booted his courtship subroutine. Holo-canvas bloomed between them—quantum brushstrokes mimicking liquid light. "This [Azure_Lakeside] simulation requires proper runtime parameters. Perhaps..."
Kael's humor protocols nearly crashed. The approach reeked of beta-test romance AIs—all nested loops and forced variables. Amelia's rejection came before Jaxon finished loading poetic variables.
"Artifact preservation protocols suggest storing this in your personal memory vault." Her dismissal carried the finality of system overrides.
Jaxon's ocular implants flickered with corrupted pixels. Threat-assessment protocols redirected toward Kael. "Facial recognition mismatch. State your neural architecture clearance level."
Kael's shadowform absorbed the hostility-pulse. How quaint—the jilted suitor deploying primitive dominance protocols. "Basic academic encryption. Freshman tier."
"Anomalous readings contradict." Jaxon's stormhawk drone cycled combat authorization codes. "Suggest full diagnostic scan under Hydromancy Department oversight."
Finn phased through the tension, neutronium popcorn scattering. "Scan this, water-boy." His holographic middle finger projection crashed three nearby surveillance drones.
Amelia's quantum lattice eyes flared warning blue. "Academic regulations prohibit unsanctioned subsystem interrogations."
The standoff froze in temporal suspension. Jaxon's social credit algorithms calculated catastrophic loss ratios. With forced protocol-smile, he retreated—but not before imprinting Kael's biometrics into seventeen different vengeance subroutines.
Kael monitored the hostile code injections. How nostalgic—primitive schoolyard rivalries dressed in quantum leather. Amelia's attention carried heavier radiation burns. Whatever secrets she sought in his chrono-signature might ignite worse than jealous hydromancers.