The True Elites

Chapter 4-2: The Rooster Group Plan

Ayanokōji's POV

It was currently 20:30, around ten minutes before Lelouch's meeting was set to begin, and I'd decided to accompany him out of boredom and mild curiosity as to who would be in his group.

All groups have all their students going to various rooms at the same time – in other words, any students that come here now will be in Lelouch's group.

Around one hour ago, I'd gone to my meeting, which surprisingly had Ishihara-sensei in there ready to explain the exam.

I'd found out some minor nuances that Light's general explanation hadn't covered, such as exactly when and how we would be assigned our VIP status. Tomorrow morning, every student would get mail to their phones telling them whether or not they were the VIP.

After that, I'd also been given the names of the students in my group, which was the 'Snake' group. I'd made a note of it on my phone, which read as follows:

Snake Group

· Class A: Yahiko Totsuka, Kamuro Masumi, Hashimoto Masayoshi

· Class B: Himeno Yuki, Amikura Mako, Shiranami Chihiro

· Class C: Ishizaki Daichi, Shiina Hiyori, Yoshimoto Kōsetsu

· Class D: Ayanokōji Kiyotaka

· Class E: Miyake Akito, Hasebe Haruka, Onodera Kayano, Miyamoto Soshi

The only ones I was really familiar with in my group was Yahiko, who was the leader during the island special exam, and Shiina, who had stayed in our camp during the duration of that same special exam.

All in all, though, there didn't seem to be any particularly influential figures within the 'Snake' group.

It wasn't a very favourable group to be in, to say the least. For me, who isn't very good at things requiring social skills, a discussion-based exam with nobody I really know in my group is one of the worst possible challenges.

Class D's current idea is to hope to get assigned a VIP of our own, figure out one or two from our groups and then negotiate for the rest in order to deduce a theoretical pattern.

Currently, however, this strategy was not viable.

For one, there were people like me and Shiro that would have problems socially controlling a group of strangers. There were plenty of methods I could use to determine somebody's nature and suspicion of being the VIP student, but it would be difficult for me to employ such methods in a room of strangers.

Secondly, the strategy was currently far too risky. In the event that it turns out the VIPs are selected purely by randomness, it would be too late for us to recover.

In other words, what Class D needed to do now was wait to see which VIPs we could find out on our own, and we also needed to deduce for sure that the theorised VIP selection method did actually exist.

"Ooh, look at this, quite an interesting gathering, eh Ayanokōji?"

Lelouch's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I followed his pointing gesture.

Katsuragi and Horikita were seemingly having some sort of altercation – by the look of it, it seemed to be an exchange of provocations.

"Just because you got lucky and did well once, I'd like you not to get arrogant and think we're equals now."

Katsuragi's voice echoed off the walls of the corridor as he spoke down to Horikita.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Horikita asked him in response.