Alexa ended up staring at the box for years (Barely 10 seconds) before she decided to finally open it, “Alexa will open the box now then…” And vocalized her intent to do so. So with a steady (Trembling) hand, she extended her hand forward and…

  Found a note.

  A piece of paper was at the very top of the contents of the box, “Oh…A letter? That’s cute.” Glory said from behind Alexa.

  “Kya!” Surprising Alexa, not enough to make her cry of course, Alexa was brave, and cute, and sometimes pretty, and sometimes the most beautiful of them all. Screaming like a cliche character from some animated Japanese series was not something she would do.

  No sir!

  “Mother used to send me those from time to time but stopped doing so because Father said that it made me look childish,” Glory carried on speaking as she finished pulling up her hair into a ponytail. “Well, I’ll leave you to that, finish changing up and put on whatever your family sent you.”

  That was the st thing Glory said as she walked out of the room, “I left you a pair of hair ties and sweatbands if you want them; if you don’t use them, leave them in the locker.”

  Well, that was that. Alexa decided to pull the box out of the locker and set it up on the bench, with some trepidation Alexa grabbed the paper and…

  “[Detected new formu on the paper, found 50% of the make to be of new materials…identifying and categorising data…]”

  It said Main Core, Alexa was, however, distracted with something else, namely the documents within the box.

  “[Hello, and Greetings little sister. It is I! Your dearest favorite brother!]”

  Alexa almost threw the piece of paper against the wall, the annoying high-pitched tone of Alexanders voice looking down on her. How? How had he done this? No, wait, surely there was something important and highly relevant?

  “[How are you doing? I am sure you are feeling mighty proud, right? Since you are reading this note, it means that CRADDLE granted you access without sending a hail to the main server, if it had done so. Then this box would have been removed as the protocol dictated and you would be reading a very different letter. So? How does it feel? To punch down so much, to use the might of a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito?]”

  The what now?

  “[Or in terms that you understand…How does it feel to use your full might as P4 to defeat a bug? Because that is what it felt for CRADDLE…or it would have felt if the thing was smarter than a toaster.]”

  ….So Alexa wasn’t supposed to hack the server to get access? Then how was she supposed to open the door?

  “[Now, you must be thinking…’But dearest brother, how was this pitiful sister of you open the door then?’]”

  ….Alexa really wanted to tear this letter to pieces right now.

  “[Well, if you paid attention to your friend, you would have noticed that she pced the hand on the door and after a couple seconds the lock opened.]”

  Alexa did remember seeing that. Was Alexander writing this letter in real-time? How was he doing that?

  “[Well, the door used her biosignature to compare it against the database, then it asked if the person was the current owner and if there was any instruction associated to them. You see, some students have… finicky requirements. There is this one girl that wants her locker to smell like fresh vender, so hers is sprayed with vender scent every time she opens it. Quite annoying for the janitors to be honest if what I am seeing of them spitting on her locker before cleaning it…]”

  But Alexa didn’t ask that…

  “[Anyway, if you had done so, then CRADDLE would have seen that you are the one assigned to this locker, then checked the instructions and find that the ones to your locker was to remove this box and pce another one…You didn’t wait, so you get this letter. The other was just encouragement if you want to know.]”

  Alexa did not want to know that.

  “[Instead you get this one, with me expining that bulldozing things isn’t the answer. Also don’t use the uniform they gave you, use this one instead. No sister of me will go into a match wearing nothing but the best we can offer….Sapphire, she can’t hear you, this is a letter…No, I’ll not…I mean, I did write that….Fine.]”

  Was he dumb? Why was he even writing that?

  “[Sapphire sends her regards, and says that you should visit us…Even though you barely saw us a day ago. Anyway, have fun in your silly match, we will be watching. I promise to not ugh if you end up with a ball to the face, also it was rigged. I made it so the first game was dodgeball!]”

  ….Alexa decided to not throw the letter, she nomed it. It tasted awful, but she wanted to release some of the frustration from reading that no valuable data was acquired, and instead, she got the feeling that she should be angry at Alexa for not letting her out when they met with Alexanders. She would have totally shot him. Actually, could she do that?

  “Main Core, can we make [Gun] type of weaponry?” Alexa asked, looking at her left hand while the right hand went into the box to check the contents.

  “[That is against Core Directives.]”

  Core:Creation of weapons is possible, current viable options are:

  –M1911 - Handgun.

  –Assault Rifle.

  –Gun modifications

  …Perfect, she would shoot at him the next time she saw him, yes. Actually, hadn’t she done one of these before? She was half sure that she had done so at least once.

  Either way, “This is a problem…” Alexa was in a pinch now; the clothes that Alexanders had sent her were way better than the ones she had been granted by the school.

  The material was more durable, it had better quality, breathed more easily, and the material seemed optimized to let her nanites run around the make without compromising the integrity of the clothes.

  So it was annoying, “Gnnuuuuuu….” The fact that she didn’t want to wear these clothes, since they had been given to her with that annoying letter.

  But the fact that it was the optimal solution to her current problems, she could just not use them of course, but that would mean to walk into a test wearing mere fabric, normal fabric. The clothes that Alexanders had sent her were better in every aspect; it was also fabric, yes, but there was a whole order of magnitude of difference.

  Where one was brittle, the other would be able to hold several magnitudes of impact without damaging Alexa, protecting her against kinetic damage, protecting her against high thermal impacts…Or Alexa could put on the weak alternative…

  “Gnnuuuuuuuu………” Alexa did not like the decision she was going to make, it would stand against everything she fought for, but it was something that needed to be done, “Main Core…make sure there is no doubt anywhere that Alexa is someone that stands by her principles.”

  “[....A note was made with that.]”

  And so…Alexa took her bzer off and walked to the locker, there was a pce for her to hang her clothes, so she would make use of that, now she only needed to put on her ‘Sports Uniform’, and stand by her standards.

  —-------------------------------------

  “Oh, a custom uniform?” Glory said as soon as Alexa walked out of the changing room.

  Unlike the normal white uniform with red lines and letters, Alexa’s uniform had a golden finish and a golden eagle motif on her back, which made a great contrast against Glory and An’s uniform, which had the emblem of a boar.

  Why was it different?

  “So your family sent you their uniform?” An asked as he walked from a spot against a wall, “I have heard that only main family members could even get a piece of embroidery on their clothes, and you have all the pieces, huh…”

  That was something that Alexa had noticed too, compared to Glory who had a ribbon on her hair with the emblem of the Golden Eagle. Compared to Alexa whose shirt had a big bird on her back, her shorts had a golden wing in one side, her shoes had wings on the back. And even her hair tie had one small golden eagle…

  To be honest, Alexa felt that it was a little too much, but every time she attempted to modify them to take the golden eagle away, the stupid things reformed. Alexa wasn’t sure if that was some kind of subroutine on her nanites that made it impossible to remove the stupid thing, or if Alexanders had somehow managed to create a nanite swarm that was invisible to her tampering.

  Perhaps he had used some type of [Core Power] to ensure the stuff remained no matter what? That was a chilling thought.

  Either way, Alexa was stuck in these garbs.

  “Yeah, we may need to re-evaluate how much we are paying you. One piece of your uniform may be just well be more expensive than the manufacturer that made the MRE snack we paid you with.” Glory said, eyeing Alexa’s clothes.

  Wait just a second…

  “So Alexa can buy more food if she uses her shirt as payment?” Alexa asked pulling out on the fabric of her shirt.

  “Well, if you somehow manage to find someone that wants to buy the thing, that it is expensive doesn’t mean that people would buy it.” An said, taking a step forward and looking at Alexa’s clothes, “They are expensive because it’s hard to see them, and the materials used to make these are treated with technology that isn’t out for the public. People like to say that the more present the golden eagle is, the better protected the wearer is.”

  But the stupid thing was all over her clothes…

  “See, that means that you wearing this mean that you as you are right now are the most protected person on this building, not because you are wearing especial clothes,” Glory started speaking pulling out a dagger from…where had she pulled that out?!?!?!? “But because your clothes are probably more sturdy than the average body armor out there.”

  And without stopping for a second, Glory pushed the dagger against Alexa’s shirt; at least Glory had pulled her shirt and made it so when the sharp knife penetrated her shirt, Alexa wouldn’t be damaged…

  Any second now…

  Any second….

  Any….

  “Huh?” Alexa noticed that while Glory was exerting strength, somehow it wasn’t damaging her shirt. Alexa of course knew that it was sturdy, she had used it following her standards of using the best possible materials and equipment, even if that meant using something that was sourced from such a site as Alexanders gift box…

  Alexa would need to take a bath after this.

  “Let me…” Alexa said, taking the dagger out of Glory’s hand.

  “[New Blueprint acquired, ceramic dagger.]”

  “Check on this,” And after taking hold of the dagger, Alexa started exerting strength on the fabric with the weapon. Alexa did so till she started feeling the material giving way, but even so, it withstood way more than it should.

  It was at the point that Alexa had exceeded the threshold of strength with which she would participate in this event; that is to say, her current strength rating to damage this was closer to what a [Human Adult Stage] would use and not something a [Human Kid Stage] could field.

  “This…is not possible..” Alexa said as she let go of her shirt and stopped this experiment.

  “This is the Saintsworths might,” Glory said at Alexa’s words, “They are the light that advances civilization for a reason, the technology they have access is not something we can imagine.”

  Yeah well, that was way beyond that, this was something that was closer to what Alexa was using to pass up as a Core User, this was closer to the realm of Nanites, and Alexanders was passing it up as technology?

  Alexa didn’t understand; this was Nanite technology, even if Alexa hadn’t found them, but the way the cloth on her shirt behaved was too simir to Nanite technology.

  “How is this even possible?” Alexa questioned.

  “Some people theorize that they are using Exotic Core Users to affix the clothes,” An was the first to answer, “There is also some theories that imply that they discovered magic or something simir to that, but those are more likely than not, the ramblings of people. It doesn’t help their case the fact that these are the same people that rave about Alexanders being in reality an Elder Dragon.”

  “I hate those people,” Glory said with a cold tone, “They disregard the studies, the innovations and all the blood, sweet and effort to advance the culture an technologies of our world.”

  “Now now, we all know they are madmen, if anything the fact that they are still alive is proof enough that they are speaking nonsense.” An said in an attempt to calm down Glory, “If they had any degree of truth in their argument, then they would be silenced, or would dissapear, especially since Alexanders seems to hate the fact that he gets called a Dragon.”

  Alexa could see it, she could get behind calling him a Dragon, Alexa wasn’t sure what type of creature these were, but surely if all of the people on the internets said it, it must be true!

  “I don’t understand why they would call him that; the emblem of the Saintsworths is an eagle. A thunder eagle, it couldn’t be more further away from cold blooded reptiles even if they tried to,” Glory huffed as she said that.

  “Students, please go to your designated areas.” An announcement sounded while they spoke.

  “Maybe it is a reference to his power?” An said pointing towards a bench on the distance, it had a letter with the letter A, “Since he rose to power faster than anyone else, maybe it is because of that? You know the story about the carp who jumped out of the waterfall and turned into a dragon?”

  “That was a carp jumping out of the dragon gate, and it became a sky Chinese dragon. They use the occidental dragon,” Glory said back, “I have been reporting the posts as soon as I see them, the fact that they think that our brightest start achievements are from being a stupid lizard is insulting. Alexanders fought for his achievements, they should respect that.”

  Alexa… wasn’t sure what to say, “I am sure he doesn’t mind it that much?” And decided to say that, she wasn’t sure what a Dragon was, but if they used it to refer to Alexanders perhaps it was an apt example.

  But for now, she would try to not think about that, instead, “So, when does this start?” Alexa couldn’t wait for this, if her clothes were like that, then perhaps she could have some advantage during the event?

  If her shirt could defend against piercing, and she knew that from the design and material it was capable of dispersing kinetics force, then she should be almost impervious to all damage.