My spirit animal is a F–Rank gecko-Chapter 20: The first special bond exam (6)

Jaster couldn’t take the two fighting anymore; he opened his mouth and screamed at them.

"COULD YOU BOTH KINDLY SHUT THE FUCK UP!!"

Everyone was speechless. Karina and Reza stopped fighting, Ivy was startled, and Jay let go of his hand on Jaster’s neck.

All of them looked at Jaster, until Karina broke the silence.

"That was rude."

"I don’t care! If you guys don’t want to get expelled and shunned by society, then we have to work TOGETHER, whether we want to or not!"

Jaster walked towards Karina, facing her.

"What spirit animal do you have?"

Karina crossed her arms while maintaining her stoic expression.

"I have a Spring Azure butterfly. It has a tide affinity."

After hearing her answer, Jaster looked at Reza.

"Uhh.. I—"

Reza all of a sudden got nervous from his stare.

"I have a Night Heron. My main skills are mostly for hiding or stealth."

Jaster thought in his head.

These two don’t have any combat skills. I was planning for Jay to guard the flag and the other person to be either Karina or Reza, since...

He glanced at the nervous Ivy.

I can’t trust Ivy with our flag.

Jaster sighed in his mind. This was like a group project. He wished he could do it alone, but it was almost impossible for him.

Jay saw the stressed-out Jaster and decided to go to him.

"Yo, bro, don’t stress out too much. It’ll make your hair fall off."

Jaster looked at Jay.

"What? Do you have something in mind?"

Jay patted Jaster’s back.

"Why don’t we just let Karina and Reza guard the flag? The both of them kinda complement each other, am I right?"

He smirked at Jaster.

"The heck do you mean by that, white boy?"

Karina furrowed her eyebrows.

"Fine, you both will guard the flag. Just stay low in this cave and wait till midnight so we can at least secure a spot in one of the classes!"

Despite Karina and Reza’s reluctance, Jay convinced them, leaving Jaster, Jay, and Ivy to hunt for the flag.

Leaving the cave and going down the mountain, they once again entered the packed forest.

Ivy looked around, her eyes shivering in fear.

"They say that there’s an evil spirit roaming around. We have to be extra careful!"

She held onto Jaster’s arm, locking tight as they walked.

"Don’t worry, m’lady, your knight in shining armor is here to protect you!"

Jay picked up a stick from the ground and held it like a sword.

Jaster scoffed, seeing the two.

"No time for playing around. We have to look in every direction and see if there’s any flag anywhere."

Jay quickly stopped the childish act and dropped the stick.

His face became stoic as he watched Jaster’s back.

"Before that—"

Jay held Jaster’s shoulder. The two of them stopped walking and turned around, confused about what Jay wanted.

"What?"

He smirked and said with a relaxed voice.

"Why don’t we form an alliance?"

Ivy’s eyes widened.

"An alliance? What do you mean?"

Jay patted Ivy’s hair while smiling.

"Let’s form a white hair alliance!"

Jay pointed at Jaster and Ivy’s white hair, and then at himself.

"Well, technically I have silver hair, but it’s still kinda the same."

Jaster eyes narrowed. He didn’t like the thought of having a team within a team when their group were the outcasts of the bunch.

"What’s the purpose of this alliance?"

Jaster asked.

"Can’t you see? The student council is definitely plotting something. The fact that they didn’t tell us from the start what the special bond exam was gonna be is already shady enough, and now they pulled this second phase move."

Despite Jaster’s suspicion of Jay, he couldn’t deny that what the student council did was suspicious,

since someone or something must have disrupted the story flow, making it harder for Jaster to predict what would happen next.

"I’m guessing that if they pull a ’only a certain amount of you in the team can proceed’ move, then it won’t be hard for us to decide, since we’re the majority and we can kick out Karina and Reza."

Jay’s eyes sparkled; he snapped his fingers.

"Correct! This alliance is just for safety measure. It’s great if they don’t pull that move, but just in case, right, my brother?"

Jay extended his hand, inviting Jaster into a handshake.

He hesitated at first, but thought that Karina and Reza weren’t useful anyway, and this wouldn’t affect him too much either.

So Jaster agreed and shook Jay’s hand, signaling the beginning of the White Hair Alliance.

Ivy looked at the two guys; she felt guilty shunning Karina and Reza from their group.

But it was better that it was them than her, so she decided to stay quiet.

Unbeknownst to the three of them, a caterpillar with strangely glowing purple eyes was watching them the whole time.

---

After walking for a while and not finding anything, the three of them were starting to get tired.

Just then, Jaster noticed a scratch on a tree.

He came up towards it and traced his finger alongside it.

"Did you find something?"

Jay caught up to him with Ivy.

"This strange marking... Could this mean something?"

It looked like it was made by a sword blade. The scratch looked messy and spread out; it was almost as if someone had accidentally scratched the tree while running really fast.

Janster looked up, and his gaze froze.

He saw a white flag hanging far up on the tree branches.

"Bingo!"

Jaster quietly pointed towards the flag up on the tree.

Jay and Ivy saw the flag.

"A flag! Who should climb up to get it?"

Jay asked.

Ivy shook her head, leaving Jaster the only one that had climbing skills.

"I’ll do it."

He volunteered and used the Wall Climb skill.

Jaster proceeded to climb the big tree.

While climbing, Jay and Ivy kept a watchful eyes in case somebody came.

It was an awkward silence between the two; Jay tried to find a way to start a conversation.

"Hey, what did you say your spirit animal was?"

The three of them had talked about what each of their animals were while walking,

but Jay didn’t listen to any of them talking since he was daydreaming.

"Uhh..."

The shy girl twirled her hair and looked at Jay.

"It’s just a hare, nothing useful. The only thing I can do is jump a little higher. Oh but i do have a plant manipulation ability, tho i never got it to work."

"Yikes, that must suck. Good thing I’m not you, lol."

Ivy didn’t expect that response from Jay, as she held her tears back.

The silver-haired guy, completely oblivious to the girl’s feelings, continued to talk casually again.

"I have a hognose snake as my spirit animal. I love it, though, since the snake is sooo me!"

While Jay was talking, Ivy looked at him; she scanned his eyes and hair.

She felt like she had seen him before.

"Have we ever met?" Ivy asked.

Jay was taken aback by what she said; he accidentally stumbled on a tree branch.

"Uhh..Well, no...."

Before Jay could say anything, a branch fell off the tree, making Ivy and him look up.

They saw Jaster had successfully captured the flag.

The once white flag slowly turned red, and a robotic girl’s voice from Jaster’s badge announced he had claimed one flag.

"Nice!"

Jaster looked at his pocket where Purple was resting.

"We can do this, Purple!"

"Krrk!"

He was curious about where he placed in the rankings, so Jaster clicked the logo on his uniform.

A hologram screen came out, showing the leaderboard:

————————————

#1 Black teams: 20 flags

#2 Purple teams: 18 flags

#3 Yellow teams: 18 flags

#4 Pink teams: 18 flags

#5 Orange teams: 17 flags

Your current position:

#86 Red teams: 2 flags

Number of expelled teams:

10

————————————

Jaster almost dropped the flag after seeing the number of expelled teams.

"Why is it so much? It’s not even sunset yet, and 10 teams have already been expelled."

There were about 480 students a year, and the average that got expelled every year was usually 50 to 100 students.

So having already 50 students expelled in the first special bond exam was really weird.

"Did the student council know about this?"

Just then, Jaster heard a girl screaming coming from the forest.

He looked down and told his teammates about the scream; he then signaled them to hide somewhere while he got down from the tree.

Jay and Ivy scrambled to hide, while Jaster slowly climbed down.

He was about to reach the bottom when he heard a guy’s voice from inside the forest.

He quickly panicked and hid in one of the branches with lots of bushes.

Just as Jaster guessed, five people came out from the packed bushes—two girls and the rest boys.

They seemed to be on a team, as they were talking casually to each other.

Jaster observed them, trying to hear what they were saying.

"Dude, can’t believe that girl only had two flags!"

One of the guys waved the white flag, and it immediately changed into a green-colored one.

One of the girls scoffed.

She punched the guy that was holding the flag.

"Of course she only had two, Gaddy. And one of them is probably their original flag, since the eliminated team got up!"

Gaddy touched his shoulder while he spotted the big tree Jaster was hiding in.

"Oh, why don’t we rest for a bit? We already have 12 flags. At least we’re secure for a while."

The five of them rested their backs on the tree, leaving Jaster confused about what he should do next.

"Ah shit—" He whispered.

"Where do I go?"

Jaster got up and carefully walked the branches to see if there was a blind spot he could climb down from.

While walking, one of the leaves had a green-haired caterpillar. Without realizing it, Jaster passed through the leaf as the caterpillar went onto his neck.

Mistaking his neck for a leaf, the caterpillar bit into his skin.

Jaster was shocked and made a loud grunting noise.

He flicked the caterpillar off, but in the process, he made the branch shake, making a leaf fall onto one of the girls in the team.

A guy saw the girl’s head had a leaf on it.

"You have a leaf on your head, Kaya."

He picked the leaf off and threw it away.

Kaya panicked and got up, rubbing her head.

"Are you serious, Cameron?! A bug could land on my hair!"

The rest of the group were laughing while seeing the girl rubbing her entire hair.

Cameron didn’t join in on the laughing; he instead looked up and spotted Jaster’s shirt trying to hide in the canopy.

"Hey, guys—"

He alerted everyone.

"There’s someone up there!"

He pointed at Jaster, while Jaster face-palmed himself.

"Could really use a camouflaging skill right about now!"

One of the girls picked up a bow and shot it towards the branches.

It pierced through the canopy and stopped right at Jaster’s face.

He finally got up and decided to climb way higher.

Everyone saw him climbing up.

"HE’S OVER THERE!"

The girl shot her bow again, and it almost hit his hand this time.

"Shit!"

Jaster continued climbing faster and higher.

He climbed high enough to the point where he could barely see them anymore.

After getting away from them, he finally shouted.

"WHY ARE YOU ATTACKING ME? I COULD’VE BEEN IN SERIOUS DANGER!"

But Jaster’s voice did not reach them.

Gaddy looked at his teammates.

"What should we do with him?"

One of the guys scoffed and swayed his hair back.

"I saw that guy holding a flag. Why don’t we capture him and take the flag? I’m sure it’ll be easier than fighting an evil spirit!"

Kaya agreed with the man.

"Yeah, sure, let’s go with Brandon’s plan! Let’s just camp here and wait for him to come down. There’s no way he’ll stay up there forever!"

The five of them decided to stay and took shade against the tree.

Jaster watched them get comfortable down there, and he... yet again let out a huge sigh.

"Great...."