Heartless

"I was just about to call you," the Dean said, "it's almost that time of the year again."

"Are you to play it safe?"

"Of course not," the Dean said with a trace of excitement in his voice, showing that this is going to be something that will stretch the abilities of the students. Those that did horribly, of course, will be thrown out of school.

Although the beginning of the school year seemed rather calm, it was simply the calm before the storm.

The objective changes every year, this year it was how to get out of the school without dying. It will be a surprise of course, a flood out of the blue, followed by the announcement and then finding your teammates. Sounds boring, though it was anything but that. There will most obviously be a series of tests and the only way out was through the roof.

"I am to make sure they stay alive?" I asked.

"You know the drill," he said. Of course I knew the drill, try to keep the children safe. If they die then their dead, usually the parents wouldn't care that much unless they were the only child or the next head of the family.

"Is there any news of the Kikimora?" he then asked.

"No," I responded, unless she was in my class there was little chance of me spotting her.

"I see. I was thinking of what you said earlier this day, do you really think this Kikimora can ruin Xavier?"

"That depends, there is much you don't know about them."

"You doubt my intelligence," the Dean said with a self deprecating smile.

"I doubt your purpose," I told him, someone like me will never understand him. A person who will try to save as much people as possible on the cost of a himself or fewer lives. To me, there is no difference between a few lives lost and all lives lost.

In the end, lives were lost, correct?

"What do you think my purpose is?"

"The same purpose you've always had. If you weren't as obdurate as you are, you wouldn't be the Rainbow Crow, now would you?"

"That was a name I've long lost."

"Names are never lost, simply forgotten."

"And what is the difference between lost and forgotten?"

"I suppose you are the victor of this conversation."

"And you've been treating our conversations as competitions?"

"I haven't had the spirit for that."

"Of course you don't."