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Cheesy, maybe, but honest and respectable enough. Jordan figured that the need to be a hero - to do something about it, finally - was a common thread in the wildly different personalities in the room, showing up one way or another. Otherwise, why would they be here?

Jordan looked to David as the man stood, unable to keep his eyebrows from going up briefly. The guy was missing an arm - from the test? And he'd been a reaper himself? Jordan's fist clenched half-consciously, then uncurled again. Circumstances. They were all here now for the same reason. No hard feelings, he reminded himself.

Then Before spoke. "Dude, you have one arm."

... urge to facepalm ... rising. Tact, anybody? Fortunately, somebody was already on it. Those three seemed to be a unit, with Ariane in charge; Jordan made a mental note. Situation defused for now, anyway. David seemed irritable - yeah, and that was a complete surprise, wasn't it? The guy had to be in pain, still. Hurting and on the defensive. No wonder David had snapped at Before.

None of them were at their best, probably. Still shaken from the test, from dying, from not knowing what the heck came next. From the sense of something missing that should be at their sides. What were they all going to be like when they'd had time to calm down?

What was he going to be like?

Jordan kept his mouth shut, tried to keep that alarming thought off his face. Not the time to be having an existential crisis. He couldn't keep from looking to his team, for what comfort that gave. Familiar voices in an unfamiliar place, despite the short time they'd known each other. He'd bet that anyone who'd made bonds during the test would be sticking to their groups at first. Too much new stuff too fast.

Caitlyn had slipped into the classroom as discretely as possible. She was used to blending into crowds, particularly at school, and old habits were hard to break. While the strange man with the scythe (Scythe? That was familiar...) spoke, Caitlyn slid into an empty seat and played with the tabletop, eyes downcast. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about their first test. They kept saying they knew what they were getting themselves into, but it certainly hadn’t felt that way at the time. With no memories and no purpose but to survive a week against what had proven to be impossible odds, Caitlyn had felt more like a puppet in a cruel game than a candidate for an elite team of hunters.

It wasn’t until the first girl spoke up, the one with the short dark hair and the attitude, that Caitlyn looked up, sharply. Epsilon. That girl was Epsilon Ten! Were the others there as well? Caitlyn hadn’t expected to find her teammates again. She wasn’t even certain that they’d been real, but here was E10 sitting in front of her, human, whole, and wonderfully angry! Caitlyn’s heart pounded, waiting on the others to make their introductions.

That was where things went downhill. The next person introduced himself as Beta Four. Caitlyn’s eyes narrowed. She should have expected that some of them had made it and surely they were as conflicted about the whole situation as she was, but old hatreds would be hard to break. Worse yet, after the next girl came Beta Five - B5, who the Epsilons had slaughtered mercilessly. Caitlyn’s hands began to tremble.

Next came more names and faces she wasn’t familiar with, but they all seemed to know each other. So much had happened on the island that Caitlyn wasn’t aware of. It made her wonder what else she’d missed. Surely nothing stranger than the demonic horse though. Nothing could top that.

Except dying and coming back to life, maybe.

”I-I’m Caitlyn Park. I am-was Epsilon Twelve.” Caitlyn spoke up as she accepted the paper. She’d hoped to give her hands a chance to shaking, but only made things worse. What would the Betas think? What about Candace? Would she be happy to see a teammate? She’d run through the doorway awfully quickly, maybe she didn’t want anything to do with Epsilon anymore. Caitlyn swallowed heavily and scribbled her name down, passing the paper on as soon as possible.

When the man at the front of the room slammed the table, Caitlyn jumped. What was she looking for that was different from others? Caitlyn had no idea. She was looking for the truth. Looking to prove that she was right, that the shadows had names and voices.

“I want to know what it was that screwed up my life so badly.” It surprised Caitlyn to hear herself say it. She’d known she was different from other children. For her entire life she was an outcast. Even her parents hadn’t known how to relate to her and ultimately they’d thrown her away like every other person in her life. Well, Caitlyn wanted to know why.

Always with the papers and the writing. Robert was pretty sure he'd graduated high school already, thank you very much. Sure, most of his work had been done by somebody else, but still. He hadn't gone through all the trouble of bullying them into it just to end up in this new place where people keep making him try to write things. UGH.

At least the question was easy. Robert completely ignored the advice to think about the answer before writing it down, and his hand held the pencil awkwardly as he scratched out a single word. Nothing.

Proud of his answer, he put his pencil down and looked at it. His cocky, almost maniacal grin began to slowly drop as the word taunted him. He knew it was a lie. A total cover - he was lying to this piece of paper, just like he lied to himself. Now frowning, he angry scratched out the word and slumped down to think hard.

Thinking hurt.

He scratched his head with the eraser for a minute, before the truth creeped into his thoughts. He didn't like it, and he hated admitting it, but they weren't going to share this with anyone else, right? What could it hurt to be honest?

A few chicken scratches later, he'd written his real answer just underneath the blackened lines of his initial one. Being alone.

He gave a quick furtive look to make sure no one was looking at his writing, and he folded the sheet up and slid it down towards Caelius. His eyes gave a clear warning - read it out loud and Robert didn't care about your scythe, he was going to punch you in the face.

Davey was so glad when Caelius spoke up again. Everyone else quietened down and there was order once more. Best of all, no more random 'observations' from his fellow Hunter recruits or attempts at socialisation. Davey didn't think he'd been in a learning environment this chaotic since his early high school years. Six years might not seem like so long, but when everything since then had been orderly and structured and militant, well... Davey was the proverbial fish out of water.

He pondered the new question that Caelius put to them. The things that the man was asking for cut straight to the core of who they each were as people, things that young adults generally didn't know about themselves yet. But then, they weren't an ordinary group of young people, were they?

In a better world, Davey wouldn't have known the answer to this question. He wouldn't have ever had to look at himself so deeply, and would instead be writing something stupid and generic like 'death' or 'being broke' or 'my girlfriend leaving me'. (Perhaps not the latter. It wasn't as though Davey had cared overly much when she had walked out.)

But this wasn't a better world. This was a terrible, flawed world, with creatures that hunted humans. And Davey had had to face his worst fear already, one only strengthened by the 'accident' resulting from the test.

Flipping his card over, Davey quickly wrote: Being useless.

He rose to his feet and pushed away from the desk. Davey walked his card up to Caelius, rather than risk passing it along. It wasn't so much that he feared having someone peek and discover what his fear was, but that Caelius had ordered not to share it with anyone. Therefore, the easist way of ensuring that was to remove the risk of any third party getting involved. It was just logical.

Davey gave Caelius a nod as he handed over his card. Then it was back to his desk, awaiting the next instruction.

Scott laced his pen through his fingers, where he proceeded to twirl it between his wriggling digits deftly enough to suggest it was a common habit of his. He looked restless, anxious, free hand groping at the table’s smooth surface in search of something to occupy it. Having said his piece, he lacked a single topic to focus on, and without Hanna’s clever asides to distract him, the flood of questions that had been simmering since he stepped out of his pod rushed back louder than before.

Where were they? Why were they doing this? What was their one simple purpose? How did he know this world was real? Why were so many of the others teenagers? Where was that spear he had envisioned? What happened to that girl who had accompanied Hanna – the one who had killed him? Did the Boy Who Lived not get to live because he wasn’t a boy? Where was his tie?

Scott tried to pace himself. Staring intently at Milton, his inane babbling providing adequate white noise, Scott attempted to go through each troubling matter slowly, considering every detail and piece of information he was aware of. He only made it halfway through his first question, continuing to waffle on the fallibility of his own perception, when their superior’s calculating tone silenced his thoughts like a record scratch.

Even without a cloak masking his features, Caelius still somehow managed an infuriating air of vagueness. He still talked with that blood boiling smug cadence, as if he assumed everyone was on the same page as him while knowing perfectly well they were all absolutely lost. The thought that the man knew something that he didn’t drove Scott crazy, just as it had when he had insisted that there was a traitor among them.

What did he fear? Scott frowned, not at all pleased with the question. It seemed so inessential, more fitting for a fashion magazine’s personality quiz than a so-called “orientation” into what they had all signed away their lives for. What did it matter? He was afraid of a lot of things. Spiders. Korean horror films. RealDolls. But, of course, there was that one true fear, the thing that terrified him above all else, the very reason he wrote his answer down while keeping resentful eyes trained on Caelius.

Ignorance.

Scott didn’t bother to elaborate. He was getting the feeling that this place, whatever it was, knew more about him than he did himself. He wanted to give them at least one thing to ponder over. He folded his card and shot a look towards Hanna and Scarlett, a pang of gentlemanly chivalry making him briefly consider offering to take their cards up for them. But, he quickly remembered he wasn’t in high school, and rose from his seat to hand in his answer and his answer alone.

Madison kept quiet while one of the others put his foot solidly in his mouth, looking down at the table a little awkwardly. The urge to use the situation to push herself up, to belittle the other boy further to make herself look better, was sudden and sharp and ugly and she was not going to listen to it.

She wanted better than that high school crap. She meant it, damnit - but that didn't mean it was easy. Madison was relieved when Caelius spoke again, and she moved her gaze from the table to the piece of card sitting in front of her.

What did she fear...

A thousand answers fought for attention. Darkness. The shadowy things. Monsters. Being unpopular. Breaking a nail... She shook her head sharply, then ran one hand through her hair as the movement made her bangs fall over her eyes. No. Those were the easy answers. She wasn't going to fail this because she was being shallow.

Madison picked up the card and put it down again, curving one arm around it as if it were a test she was hiding from a cheater. Being normal, she scribbled, quickly. Being weak and helpless and food.

Her pencil hit the table with a small clatter as she folded up the card, unwilling to look over the words once she'd written them. Somewhere in the back of her mind was the memory she'd dreamed again in that pod... of her, age ten, writing down her heart's desire. Normal, normal, normal.

She hoped, devoutly, that seventeen was wiser than ten.

The room quieted as introduction became introspection. Jordan chewed absently on the end of his pencil, staring at the wall without seeing it. Fear was the familiar undercurrent of life; he'd never thought that perhaps it might not have to be, not till now. What did he fear most? The dark, the monsters in the dark. Death. Loneliness - no, more precise than that - being alone. Deep cold fears that made his chest ache with a dull horror that he had no name for. All of it was there, but there was worse.

Failing, he scratched on the card. The lead in the pencil broke on the last letter. Had he been pressing that hard? He dropped the pencil and leaned over the table to hand his card to Caelius.

He was suddenly aware of how tired he was. He slumped back into his chair, limbs too heavy.

Even with the room falling into silent, serious mode, Bix couldn't help but be rather comfortable. Testing, class rooms, silent obedience.. all things he'd been good at before and all things he was equally comfortable doing again. Just the fact that he had Before, Ariane and Gale (their little Beta posse) made him want to peek over people's cards like a high school kid. High school, of course, had been several years behind him and he recognized the severity of the room and so he stayed silent, eyes darting around, before he concentrated on his answer.

He seemed able to pull it out of his head rather quickly and it ended up being more of a list than a sentence.
I am afraid of falling...
-by the wayside
-behind
-back into my old habits of inaction

He leaned back to take one last look at his answer. He tapped the card on the table slightly and the clapping sound seemed WAY louder than intended. His pale cheeks flushed inadvertently from drawing attention to himself and he passed his card towards Caelius.