Chapter 68 - Gas! Gas! Gas!

Author's Note: A few days ago someone wrote a comment because I wanted to include this world and sealed the majorities of the MC's powers to do so temporarily (can't find it anmore, probably deleted) in which he stated that this novel would probably die soon because of that. As a response to that I will promise you that as long as you lot are willing to read this novel I will promise that I will do whatever possible to continue this novel and bring it to a great conclusion (I already have evil plans so I can't abandon them no matter the cost).

Besides that I wish you a lot of fun with this chapter! Enjoy!

--- End of Author's Note ---

As they all waited in front of their buses their old and already balding history teacher Mr. Banks stepped forwards and began to address the large crowd of students in his usual monotone high voice.

"Good morning my dear students. Today we stand in front of a large forest. You might all as yourselves.." at that moment Aeolus shifted on Kaiser's shoulder and began to ruffle through a few of his leg feathers with his beak which startled Kaiser and caused him to loose track of the ongoing explanation. When he was finally able to refocus he noticed that he had missed quite a lot. "...and after that battle about a third of the capitols airborne units had been lost due to the fortifications but managed to kill more than 40 000 of the encamped. Even today some remains are still visible. Now if you were to follow me please."

With that the teacher turned around and slowly made his way towards the forest, strolling on the dirt road which narrowed even further as soon as it entered the forest, eventually becoming just a dirty trail underneath the tall trees. About half of the teachers walked just behind Mr. Banks while the other half urged the students forwards from behind.

Due to the narrowness of the path people could only walk in pairs of three besides each other, causing a long line of students to stumble along the badly maintained trail. Not long after they had started some already began to complain. Their feet hurt, they clothes had become dirty, they were thirsty, they had fallen over tree roots and rock and they wanted to go home.

Annoyed by the constant complains Kaiser began to move to the front where the people remained much more silent which was much to his liking. Although they began to sing songs after a while it was still better than hearing constant complaints. Finally after close to half an hour of trekking through the forest the came to a halt close to a clearing in order to wait for the slowpokes in the back. That means the front. The people in the back hadn't understood the order and simply continued to push forwards. It wasn't until a teacher walked all the way to the back and returned that everyone slowly walked the last few meters until they reached the clearing and gathered in a large half-circle along the edge of the clearing.

In front of them they could see what could only be described as scorched earth. In an areal close to four kilometers in diameter nothing grew. The ground had become partially blacked, a rotten smell permeated the air and the rising fumes and fog of the morass that laid before them burned in their noses. Long trenches filled with green and muddy water were visible, in straight lines they almost seemed to have been carved into the earth. Long wooden logs or planks, sometimes even rusted pieces of metal could sometimes be seen piercing out of the mud as if they tried to escape their eternal grave. Within this eerie atmosphere that made the onlookers shiver their history teacher continued his story.

"These, my students, are the last remains I spoke of. As the Capitol used poisonous gasses and chemicals on the fortifications nature has never managed to truly recover this place, not even close to 65 years after the war has it begun to properly heal. At least a small bit of green already managed to return..." he motions towards a thin green film swimming on top of the water inside trenches. "When I was last here, around ten years ago, there was nothing here." After that he sighs heavily and after shaking his head he continues: " I hope we will not have another war like this. Not only did many people and their families die but also nature was harmed to such an extent. Let us hope that people will learn from the past."

After looking at the morass for another few seconds, taking in the sad atmosphere he motioned towards the teachers and students. "Now let us return. We have much more to see. Go! We don't have all day!"

Grumbling and quietly cursing about their way back they began to move although everyone was glad they were able to leave this disgusting and smelly place for good. After everyone had returned to the buses rather safely (only about three people had managed to twist their ankles and a lot more had fallen and scr.a.p.ed their knees etc) and the teachers had made sure that no one had been left behind in the forests they drove towards the next locations.

Over the course of the next few hours they moved to many different places and had seen a lot more things. More trenches, more ruined nature, more ruins of destroyed buildings where rebels had hidden, more ruined nature. Everything had a repetitive and pointless feeling to it. People rose up against the oppressive capitol and died, leaving the survivors behind to deal with even harsher conditions and even worse problems.

The trip had been a genius idea by the Capitol. These kids would grow up to be loyal followers of the capitol. After all history had proven their superiority.

After some time they arrived in Zone B3 close to the border to Zone A3. There they went to visit the ruins of a large rebel hideout. In order to preserve it as a memento for the future the Capitol had only bombed it with regular bombs before rushing in, killing the rest of the defenders. Because of this every part of the ruin could be visited. Because of that the school decided to let the kids discover the ruins in groups of three.

In order to mix up everything they took one student from each class and pared them up with each other. In Kaisers group were two girls and two boys. He actually only knew one of the girls named Aster who was one of the oldest among them, being eight year old herself as well as and older boy by the amusing name of Snake who his sister apparently found to be super likable. The other two also had some pretty strange names, the girl being named Alyssa while he instantly forgot the other boy's name. As he introduced himself with the bird on his shoulder they looked at him weirdly. Not only did carry a bird around everywhere but he also had a strange sounding name. Despite that they moved on.

After they had introduces themselves Snake took over as a leading figure and began to walk around the ruins, everyone following behind him. Although Kaiser wasn't very keen on following a boy named after a lying and deceiving creature he just had to think about his own little sleeping bundle that he had carried around everywhere causing him to grin and follow much more relaxed. Why should he cause trouble over such trivial things? What did it matter anyways?