I just realized the title sounds a lot like CyberLife but it's not a Detroit: Become Human reference I swear

We're severely lacking in what the Ciphers' school lives are like except for the Eversingers so ima go out on a limb and make up my own thing for them??

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Jax sat silently with the rest of his class before the bell rang. Most of the students had rushed in the last thirty seconds before the bell rang, using their time down to the last second to be able to socialize with their friends. As soon as the students walked through the door, they were supposed to be silent, sit down, pull out class materials, and act like statues and take notes the rest of class.

Jax hated this strange mentality his teacher had. She was some sort of crazy Cipher-obedience extremist and enforced this mentality with the threat of a ruler- although she had never used it that Jax had seen and he was fairly sure that was against school policy. The threat was enough to scare students into being silent and invisible to the teacher except when she called on a single student to answer a question and then turned back to the whiteboard. If someone had a question, it was never answered.

Jax had known that the Cipher curriculum in Everston was more extreme than what it had been at his and Melissa's old school, but not like this. At their old school everyone was taught the same stuff, except for the one or two classes that only Magiclicas took. Even as Magiclicas and Ciphers stayed in completely separate wings of the school, at least what they were learning wasn't so obviously separated. Maybe it would be less irritating if Melissa were here to support Jax, but the teal-eyed boy had barely said a few words to her in two weeks.

His first period teacher droned on about Cipher rights and how they were and always would be less than a Magiclica (which Jax found stupid.) A few students in the back were passing notes to each other, using the system everyone in the class knew except the teacher to communicate in their vigil. The pink-haired Cipher girl that Jax only knew for her tech smarts and rebellious attitude was on her phone next to him, tapping away at the screen with a fist on her cheek and looked about as bored at Jax was.

The bell rang. Thank the White Stone, Jax grabbed his bag and things that he had prepared ten minutes before and sped towards the door.

"Mister Kollmann! Where exactly do you think you're going?"  The teacher asked in a shrewd voice.

Jax slowly turned back to the class to see the teacher tapping her foot impatiently and the rest of the class staring at him while holding papers, many of them packets stapled together.

"Don't tell me you forgot to do your homework, Mister Kollmann, or I'll give you detention!" The teacher warned.

Jax groaned. He had done the assignment a week ago and forgotten it was due today. As his classmates filed out the door behind him he dug into his folder and pulled out the assignment, which had been on the differences between available Cipher occupations and Magiclica jobs (an assignment which Jax found very biased and detrimental to self-esteem, as basically the entire article was saying that Ciphers will always have the working class jobs while Magiclicas will always be above that level and will be the ones to be famous and powerful; as if they weren't already.)

"Sorry, I forgot it was due today. I had it done a couple days ago and-"

"Be glad I'm not punishing you for speeding out of here before you were dismissed. A Cipher should be listening for instructions by their superiors, not operating on their own agenda," the teacher scolded. Jax bowed his head while hiding his disgusted scowl.

I was going by the bell system! I'm OPERATING on the time schedule we're supposed to be going by. You should have collected homework sooner, lady. Jax seethed in his head, along with more than a few other rather unpleasant thoughts about this teacher and Everston's Cipher curriculum in general.

"Am I dismissed, Misses-"

"Yes yes, shoo! Good day, Mister Kollmann!"

Jax rolled his eyes as the teacher turned her back to him and he left the classroom for real. There was no way he was going to make it to his next class on time and he was already trying to think of an excuse as to why he was late- to his favorite class, science, he might add!

Jax winced as he opened the closed door to the science classroom and all eyes turned to him.

"Why are you late, Mister Kollmann?" His teacher asked. Thankfully this teacher was fairly casual and didn't get so worked up about stupid things like rushing out the door so fast or a quiet whisper in the back of the class.

"My last teacher held me back, sorry..." Jax apologized and slipped into his assigned seat. The teacher nodded and continued on with his lesson.

The class was finishing their astronomy unit (which Jax had mistaken for Melissa's astrology on their first day) and they were going to be building water bottle rockets to finish the unit! The teacher assigned partners for them to work with (as literally all of Jax's teachers did, while he was convinced Magiclicas either were always partnered with their friends or they could choose who they wanted to work with). Jax had been partnered with the pink-haired transfer student, of which he had learned her name was Zana.

"So how do we want to do this?" She had asked as soon as he sat down next to her. "Do we want do do any of the extra credit options?" Jax jumped, surprised by the options immediately offered to him. Most Ciphers would just copy the example and do the simplest design.

"W-Well, what do you want to do?" Jax asked. He was surprised by the excitement shining in her brown eyes.

"If it's okay with you, I REALLY want to try and work out how to do that dart rocket thing. Imagine how cool it would be to just use physics to make a two-stage water bottle rocket! We'd completely win the height competition!" Zana gushed.

Jax tilted his head. "There's a height competition?"

The pink-haired girl laughed and shrugged. "We'll make it a competition."

Jax decided that he liked this girl immediately. Not romantically, but as in oh-my-gosh-she's-crazy-and-awesome sort of way. He nodded enthusiastically.

"Let's do it then!"

The two found that they worked incredibly well together. While Zana worked out most of the design aspects on how they were going to get a second, smaller rocket to separate from the main one, Jax was the one doing most of the construction as he had built crazy things with Melissa when they were younger and was familiar with how their provided materials would work. Their rocket looked much different than the other pairs' rockets at the end of the class- instead of a duct taped two-liter water bottle with a paper cone on top their rocket actually resembled a NASA rocket with a bulky second capsule slid on top.

"It's like the Saturn 5 of water bottle rockets," Jax commented when they were comparing their rocket to the others as they were turning them in to the teacher.

"It's totally going to work. Extra height and five points extra credit!" Zana cheered, raising a hand to the teal-eyed boy. He grinned and high-fived her as the second bell rang.

"Alright class, we'll be launching these tomorrow! T-minus, twenty-four hours! Have a good day!" Their teacher joked and dismissed them.

"By the way, I spiritually relate to you trying to leave last class. I would have been doing that too if Kylie hadn't reminded me of the assignment," Zana said as Jax grabbed his stuff.

He groaned and frowned again. "Ha. At least I'm not alone in hating her guts..." he grumbled.

Zana laughed. "Tea. She and half the other teachers in this school need to chill." Then they were out the door, heading down opposite directions in the hallway.

What does "tea" mean? Have I missed some new teenage meme culture? Jax wondered this throughout the rest of the day.

His next two classes were somewhere in between his first two. His home room was extreme conformity and his science class was basically total freedom while the rest of his classes were fairly normal, although he did often pick up the hints and warning that Ciphers were supposed to be obedient, brainless servants (basically) that made him sour.

At lunch he sat alone on the "Cipher" side of the cafeteria. At his old school there had been a literal wall between the Cipher side and the Magiclica side, while here at Everston it was only a mental barrier that seemed to exist between everyone. The Magiclicas would sit on their side and the Ciphers sat on theirs, watching quietly as the privileged students happily talked and joked loudly. It was a strange concept to Jax, one that he didn't like. Even when the Magiclicas were more than happy to welcome a Cipher to their table, the backlash Jax had gotten the first few days he tried to hang out with Melissa from the other Cipher students hurt.

Everston's supposed to be a school where Cipher and Magiclicas learn together, isn't it? Jax thought as he shoved a spoonful of mashed potatoes and gravy into his mouth and watched his blue-haired childhood friend point and say something to the purple-haired girl that had given him the invisibility potion when they had infiltrated the Spero hideout a while back.

What a false reality this is.

Jax's mind thought back to the articles he had been up late reading night. The warnings of a rising domestic terrorist group known as the Spero, the rising attacks on people who were known Magicalists (from Magiclicalism, the belief that those with powers given by the White Stone were superior to those whose ancestors were not exposed to the relic. Also known as modern society and almost everyone that Jax knew.) The creed that the Spero were fighting for equality for all and the condemning of these statements by the COM. The rise in missing peoples and the increase in Spero activity and members, all before just after Jax was born the sudden disappearance of the Spero- mentions, sightings, activity, all of it. The media seemed to have assumed that the organization had given up or collapsed at the death of their leader, Genzo Hamura, but Jax knew from experience that the magicked Ciphers has only gone into hiding and most definitely still existed. Heck, he even knew where their base was and that his idol was supposedly dating a Spero.

I wonder if I would fit in more in the Spero than here? Jax had been thinking about this for a while.

Melissa caught him staring at her group and waved, to which Jax sternly nodded. Her smiling face fell for a moment before she turned back to Chase and Quinston saying something.

The lonely teal-eyes boy sighed and leaned his head and arms onto the table. He was meant for so much more than to be just another useless Cipher, he knew it.

Maybe if Everston wasn't giving him a chance, the Spero would?

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I have a feeling when we lost Jax, we lost a character with a lot of potential to do something big. But now I think he may be too far gone down the Spero path to ever reach that potential.

But maybe that's just me?

Also one again I meant for this to be short but it's nearly 2000 words :D