"Welcome! Are you here to register?" a woman in an elegant uniform greeted them inside the building.
"Yes."
Seeing there were four of them, the woman spoke up, "Friends and family are asked to wait outside. A legal guardian may be present in the case of an underaged awakened's registration."
"They are also awakened. We're here to register together," Kaiden replied in a patient, accommodating tone.
"Oh!" the attendant exclaimed in surprise. Four acquaintances awakened within a week from each other? That was certainly a rare occurrence. "My apologies," she bowed before continuing, "There's a short queue ahead. You're the third in line. Please wait here for you to be called. Can I bring you some refreshments in the meantime?"
Awakened were the new gems of any nation, thus, any sensible government tried their best to treat them well. A simple gesture like bringing them a glass of water could make the awakened look favorably at the association, which would help the organization recruit the youths they find worthy.
"That would be great, thank you."
They sat down together in the waiting room and chatted until they were called upon by the same woman who brought them the glasses of water.
"Please give me your identifications."
Once that was sorted, she nodded and continued, "Thank you. Follow me, please."
They were led into a large room where three additional staff awaited them. Two seemed to be guards, while the final one was an older man with round glasses and a black tablet in his hand.
The receptionist handed him their identifications, and he entered them into the system through the tablet. "Hmm... Not siblings, you don't even have a common background such as going to the same high school. May I know how you came to know each other?" His question made all three women's cheeks redden, knowing their lover would be blunt about it.
"We starred in an adult film together."
'Yep, just like that...' each girl sighed inwardly.
"Hoh?!" the man's ears perked from excitement. He didn't care in the least that they were pornstars. Instead, it was the circumstances that made his heart begin to beat faster. "And you each awakened afterward?! How is that possible?! Wait, two of you are even twenty or older! The statistical odds of this happening are almost exactly zero!"
This was the exact reason why Kaiden debated about having each of them register at different points in time and possibly even locations, but he knew when the girls' class names were read, they would end up being associated anyway. They all had the word 'Valkyrie' in their classes, after all. Perhaps he would escape the association's scrutiny, but he didn't want to leave the three of them to deal with this without him being there for them.
Kaiden shrugged his shoulders, "Stranger things have happened since the apocalypse, no?" he did his best to lessen the 'wow' factor of their awakening. The last thing he wanted right now was to be imprisoned in some secret government facility to be researched at great lengths. Naturally, the government denied the existence of any such facility, but he found their words to be hard to trust.
"Hmm... You might be right, but still. You didn't feel anything special? Not even the slightest things were out of the ordinary?"
"We made great love to each other, maybe that was the secret sauce," he said while shrugging his shoulders, eliciting a bulging vein on the old man's forehead and even redder cheeks on his ladies' gorgeous faces.
"... Let's move on then..." The scientist studying the apocalypse and its effects on humans in particular grumbled. He gestured at an orb, "You probably know how this goes, right? Put your palm on the artifact and keep it there until I tell you to lift it. It will show your class, and the light it emits will let us know of your class' tier."
No artifact could outright classify people into tiers; nothing stated that the gardener girl with the bubbly butt was F-tier. It just displayed her class' name and emitted a faint light, signaling it was weak, at which point the association categorized her to be an F-tier awakened. There were some debates about whether this method was trustworthy enough to group awakened into tiers, but that was just the opinion of a small minority. This artifact has been very accurate thus far.
Kaiden went first. "Paragon of Sin..." The man grumbled as the words formed on the orb. In a few seconds, it began emitting a faint, weak light. "F... tier?" the glassed man asked with disbelief. It was very rare to have such a badass-sounding class be this weak. No class was named 'Shadowblade, Phantom Striker, Cursed Specter' and was an F-tier. Multiple studies found a strong correlation between a class' strength and how badass its name sounded.
"What are your spells?!" he shouted at Kaiden, but the young man once again shrugged his shoulders dismissively while saying, "I have no wishes to disclose that information at this moment in time."
Indeed, the artifact couldn't display what spells were available to the awakened.
Another vein bulged on the old man's forehead, but he was restricted by the annoying laws of the USA, so his hands were tied.
"Ladies, if you will," he gestured for them to replicate Kaiden's motions, and each time they did, his face became paler and paler.
"Space Valkyrie... F-tier...?"
"S-Storm V-Valkyrie?! F-tier???"
"M-M-M-Moon V-V-V-Valkyirie!!! F-F-F-F-F-F-tier!!!"
By the time Aria's turn came, he was screaming from the top of his lungs in complete disbelief. There was no way this was some random occurrence! He had to study this phenomenon in great detail! Just as the scientist thought that his tablet rang. He was receiving a call from the higher-ups.
"Curses! The timing... You two, keep them here! They're not allowed to leave!" he shouted at the guards and then rushed to another room to receive the call.
The old man's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets when the famous visage of the chairman's secretary welcomed him. There was not a lot of information available about this woman, but everyone who knew her recognized her astounding levels of professionalism and complete loyalty to the chairman and the government. "Dr. Eckbert," she greeted him.
"Lady Grace! Good timing, I just stumbled upon four truly rare specimens! We must transfer them to 'the lab' for further study!"
"Dr. Eckbert, you're to complete their registration and release them at once." The tone of Grace's declaration made it clear she wasn't asking his opinion on the matter.
"B-but Lady Grace! This might be the breakthrough my research needs-"
"Complete their registration and release them. You're forbidden from harming any of them in any shape or form, not now nor at any time in the future. If you do so, you will be treated as a terrorist who is a great threat toward the continued peace and prosperity of the United States of America," she interjected in an authoritative tone.
Eckbert couldn't believe his ears. "Why?! Just why?!" he shouted his question unprofessionally. The doctor couldn't care about decorum right now.
"We received a visit from Vespera Ashborn not long ago."
Hearing that name, the doctor trembled from head to toe involuntarily because the few times he met the woman, she didn't leave a very warm impression on him, but he still didn't understand why that mattered. Seeing his confused state of mind, Grace continued, "There was some family drama, Kaiden Grey is her full-blooded son—and the clear favorite one at that by the look of things—but she disowned him for some reason we're still trying to understand. This is a secret; you may not disclose it to anyone. Anyhow..."
Grace had a wry expression as she finished her statement.
"Vespera Ashborn promised the chairman should we do anything to Kaiden or his allies, she would declare war on the United States of America and leave the country to join the CCP."