The three children spent a year apart, all in separate rooms and they never saw each other. They rarely saw another person other than their respective adult.

For Tigree, it was Lavender, and all of her time was spent training. Every waking hour, Tigree was running and conditioning and sparring. If she wasn’t doing that, she was shifting. There was very little time to sleep and hardly ever time to eat. Even so, by the end of the year, she felt strong. Powerful. Tigree was only 8, maybe almost nine, but she felt like she could destroy anything if she wanted to. If she saw Phantom again, she could fight him and win. And it felt good to be powerful, to be able to get revenge for the past. She felt strong and healthy; so unlike she had felt for so long in her life.

For Phantom, his adult was Trevor. He was rude to Phantom and eventually the very little food that he was being given turned into none, only a drink that tasted like chemicals and IVs for nutrition while Phantom slept. He grew tall and skinny for a 9 year old, and he became violent. Trevor liked to set Phantom off for fun, telling the boy that he was useless and telling him all about his boy back home who was smart and could read and played sports and actually listened. Phantom hated Trevor’s son just as much as he hated Trevor. He was angry and destroying dozens of dummies didn’t help at all to relieve the anger and pure bloodlust that he had.

For Sunny, she stayed with Xenon, but she didn’t do anything. Unlike the other two children, she didn’t train or fight. Instead she stayed asleep for the entirety of the year, as Xenon did various surgical operations on her and shaved her head and fiddled with his machine as he tried to put it into her head and make it work.

And as the year ended, all three adults took the children and brought them out of the room, to three separate doors.

“Tigree, listen to me. Go ahead and do whatever you have to. Kill Phantom, attack him, run away, do whatever you need to. Just survive and win and show that you’re the best.”

“Phantom, kill Tigree and Sunny and if you don’t, I’ll kill you. Hear that?”

“Hey, hey Sunny. Hi. Morning. You’ve been asleep for a while. I know, you’re dizzy. I’m sorry. But we can’t wait. You’re going to go through that door and you’re going to see Tigree and Phantom again, and they’re going to be different. Just stay far away from them, okay? Run and stay away and stay alive. Okay? Can you do that for me? After that, I can help you so you can beat them, okay? You’ll be okay, alright Sunny? Can you do that for me?”

All three children looked at the adults with different expressions. Tigree looked determined, Phantom looked tortured, and Sunny looked confused. Regardless, they all nodded. “Okay.”