[center][h1][color=ed1c24][b]Jiang and the Contestants[/b][/color][/h1][/center]
[center][h2]P  A  R  T    O  N  E[/h2][/center]
[center][h2][color=a187be]Location:
[b][u]The Inquisitional College[/u][/b][/color][/h2][/center]
[center][color=92278f]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/color][/center]

As the fog completely cleared out and more of the College building was revealed, Jiang compared it in his mind to a combination of a fortress built to be durable and an actual college - built to look like something that houses educated people. It somewhat looked a bit like the high school he went to back in the day, which was built during a stricter time - when Mao was in power. 

He didn't notice that the theme melody of Disney Studios had suddenly shifted into [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMFXiEq_ow]the Chinese National Anthem[/url], as a far cry from his younger years. Jaro and Noseless looked at each other in confusion. Lyuben joined in on the confused staredown by looking at his three passengers through the rear-view mirror, but later decided against it, so as to keep an eye on the road. After all, he didn't want to slow them down by accidentally driving straight into the sand beach of the island - his car was currently prepared for stylish and elegant transportation, not for off-road driving.

Speaking of the road, it was a paved one, but not like the old Ancient Roman highways - it was tiled, like an indoors floor rather than actually paved. One of its end points was somewhere behind the building, where the College's garage & workshop was. The other end, where they came out of, seemed to be going straight into an ominous cloud of fog, about as large as a football field. It stood there, motionless and monolithic, right on top of the surface of the sea. It served as a portal to other worlds, preferably ones with roads in them. The road itself was relatively long and it curved to the back of the building, where it weaved into an S-shape before ending with a garage door that looked a bit like something out of Ancient Athens, but not quite.

Lyuben halted the car when he was just about 10 meters from the garage door. A very bright spotlight-looking device switched itself on and was pointed towards the car by an invisible hand. It continuously made a high-pitched humming sound for about 5 seconds, and then switched off. A deep, gravely voice from some speakers tucked away somewhere in the overhang told the driver: "Welcome back, Davy Jones. Hurry up and get in, the fightin' boys are already gathering at the thing." Lyuben silently replied with an OK hand sign and continued onwards.

"Here we are, boys.", he said in his heavy Slavic accent

The Collage Garage & Workshop was unusually large, although it was necessarily so, for it had about 6 other vehicles parked in it. The ceiling was about 20 feet over their heads and lengthy fluorescent tube lights, like the ones you'd find in hospitals, were neatly lined up on it and shone down for people to see what they were doing. The floor, on the other hand, was a mess - dozens of tool cabinets haphazardly bunched up in the two sides of the room, near the vehicles, and hundreds of more tools and parts littered on the floor in the same way as the cabinets. The room itself, fortunately, was 15 feet wide and 20 feet long, so despite the huge mess it wasn't too cramped up.

One of the vehicles was rather shaped more like a speedboat entirely made out of blued steel with intricate art-deco designs and hovering on top of a floating red and gold carpet. The carpet had a few more long strips of cloth of the same material floating around it, possibly to support the weight of the heavy steel hull. Someone wearing a collarless, double-breasted, scarlet silk trenchcoat embroidered with gold thread, a red & gold silk shawl on his head, a leather mechanic's apron on top of the coat, a pair of rolled up dark-brown slacks and light, beige boots had kneeled down to examine the carpet, possibly to check for any imperfections.

Lyuben stopped the Moskvitch in the exact middle of the room. He removed his glasses and his faux beard - it was quite a nuisance to constantly have flax in his mouth and the sunglasses were beginning to strain his eyes. He left the driver's seat, opened the back door and welcomed them out of the car with a tip of his peaked cap.

"Welcome to the College, Mr. Zhao. Have a nice day."

Zhao respectfully nodded at him and walked up towards the steel double door, but stopped for about a minute to think through everything that had happend up to this point. This was his chance. No turning back.

Standing behind him were Noseless on the right and Jaro on the left. They were kind of impatient - Jaro pulled a brass pocket watch from her waistcoat to check the time. Noseless looked at her general direction, hoping to get a glimpse of where the arrows were pointing on the tiny clock-face. She looked back at her tall friend and gestured [i][color=fff79a]Two-Oh[/color][/i] with her hands - twenty minutes until the beginning. He nodded.

The complete silence was only disturbed by the rumble of Lyuben's car being parked properly, him walking up to the shawled repairman and talk of a particular "desert cop" they were picking up next.

The silence ended abruptly with Jiang quite literally whipping into stern attention, placing his Baton under his armpit and some sort of [url=https://youtu.be/C36DrJOO7YY]attentive, disciplined trumpet sting[/url] aggressively piercing the air. Noseless, Jaro and anybody else who was currently in the room was startled. The composer's pose was similar to that of a condescending drill sergeant surveying a line of cadets.

He marched through the doors in perfect beat with the drums. Pieter and Monkeyboy followed.

[hr]

[color=f7941d][h3]==CONTINUED IN PART 2==>[/h3][/color]