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Academia - Part 8

by Zelphair

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Author's Notes: So, yeah...I really dropped the ball this time, didn't I? Kept you guys waiting about 3 years since part 7. I can come up with plenty of perfectly valid excuses as to why this took so long, but the long and short of it is I get distracted easily, and thus it's hard to sit down and focus on writing. Maybe I need a computer for writing that's not also my high-end gaming rig.

Also note that it's been a long time since I submitted anything here. It looks like things have been streamlined enough that just copying and pasting from my Word document was enough, but if you notice any issues with the formatting, let me know.

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After everything Kaze had experienced in the past twenty-four hours, registration was actually a bit anticlimactic. As it turned out, it wasn't going to be feasible to make it into normal classes this term, since there were only a few weeks left. Therefore, he had some information and some planning time on what he wanted to do as far as normal college courses.

What this did give him, the person at the office cheerfully informed him, was a chance to work on his Gift. Apparently, he had the dubious honor of getting a few weeks of extensive one-on-one tutoring in the use of his abilities. He had a million questions about that, of course, but he was merely told to take the elevator to the roof of East Tower.

They really don't waste any time here, do they?, the fox thought to himself with a bit of amazement. He had been at the Academy since late last night, a total of maybe twelve hours. Within that time, he'd made a new friend (possibly even two), met the headmaster, been dressed in a school uniform, and was now going to apparently be given a crash course in how to use powers he'd barely come to accept he had.

All in all, he felt it would be fair to say more had happened to him in the past few hours than in the past couple of years. Even the act of making a new friend was something he'd almost forgotten how to do. He'd had massive amounts of potentially earth shattering information stuffed into his head, and from the sound of it, there was about to be a lot more joining it.

As he returned to the elevator, he couldn't seem to help getting more and more apprehensive. In fact, as he stepped inside, he couldn't seem to bring himself to press the button. Every new piece of information that came his way today had been more jarring than the last. Every hour or so, it seemed, he was being forced another step down a path he wasn't sure he wanted.

No, that wasn't entirely true. If he were honest with himself, he had to admit that, deep down, he loved this place. It was like stepping into some kind of parallel universe where he was actually considered normal. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he while he may still be a freak, he was a freak surrounded by more of his own kind, to the point where "normal" felt like the oddity.

So yes, perhaps he could admit this was a much more pleasant path than the one he'd been on before. That, however, wasn't the point. The point was that he really hadn't been given much of a choice in the matter. Granted, if presented with the alternatives, he would have chosen this life over his old one in a heartbeat. And he would certainly rather be here than dying of exposure on a park bench.

However, no one had asked him what he wanted. No one had even asked him how he felt about any of it. As much as this place seemed like a little slice of paradise, it was one he'd been forced into, and one he couldn't leave. A gilded cage is still a cage.

Did your parents ever give you a choice?, a more reasonable part of his mind argued. He could have run away, yes, but up until his most recent birthday, his parents would have been perfectly within their rights to track him down and have him brought back home. For that matter, even if he could have successfully run away, he had to admit, all of his hardships had been emotional. From a material standpoint, he'd still been a spoiled rich kid with no clue how to make it on his own. The "real world" would have chewed him up and spit him out.

Come to think of it, from what the headmaster had said, he would have a choice eventually. Once he had been fully trained, he could make this sort of thing his life, or simply live a normal life except when he was needed. In the meantime, if what the headmaster had told him was true, they had a good reason for keeping him and the other students here. The wolf had said that at the moment, his Gift made him a liability, a danger to himself and others. He had no reason to doubt that, and a bit of personal experience to make him believe it.

Looking at it like that, he decided he needed a new view on his lessons. They weren't something to be feared and dreaded, another step chosen unwillingly for him. Each one brought him a little closer to something he'd never truly had, the ability to actually choose for himself. With a bit less trepidation, he pressed the Roof and East Tower buttons.

After a few minutes, and a slight popping of his ears, the blue fox found the door opening upon a stone roof and a view of blue sky. He was also faced with a grey fennec vixen in perhaps her late forties, leaning against a small door that presumably led to the stairs. She grinned and waved in his direction, making her way toward the younger vulpine.

It was clear from the way she moved that she was in exceedingly good shape for her age. That was probably something to be very thankful for, as she wore a blue and silver jumpsuit that could easily have been quite unflattering. He met her halfway, and the two foxes briefly shook paws. Hers was soft, but with a surprisingly firm grip.

"So you're Kaze, huh?" she remarked, looking him over thoroughly. "Not necessarily what I expected from someone they'd send to me, but that's alright. I like being surprised." The slight smile on her face seemed to be her way of letting him know that her words weren't meant to be offensive. "I'm Trisha Belheim, one of the Air instructors."

"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am," the fox responded, with a nervous half-bow. He knew it probably looked ridiculous, but it was something his father had drilled into him, one of a pawfull of things the older fox had selectively kept from their heritage. Unfortunately, there was nothing quite like anxiety to bring up old habits.

"If you don't mind my asking," he continued, tail twitching with nerves, "Why am I not what you expected? Is there something different about me from most of the...um...Air users?"

She smirked a bit at him, but there was no malice behind it. "That's what we're here to see." She paused to examine him, then absently played with one of her ears as she thought something over. "Well," she said finally, "let's just cut right to it. When you think about the element of Air, what comes to mind?"

Images of the previous night flashed unbidden in his mind. "A storm," he replied, without even thinking about it. "Winds that can cut through anything. Lightning that's as quick as it is deadly."

"Interesting." Trisha pondered his words for a moment, her ears twitching as she analyzed what he'd said. "I wouldn't have expected an answer like that from someone who looks like you. Then again..." She looked over her own diminutive body with a chuckle. "I should know better than to judge a book by its cover, shouldn't I?"

Kaze smiled back at her self-consciously. "Is that...I mean, is that a bad answer?"

"Depends who you ask," she remarked with a grin. "A lot of the Air users we see are avians. Most of those, and quite a few of the others, think of Air quite differently. To them, the wind can go anywhere, as silent as a breath. It can cross the world faster than the eye can see. And if necessary, a little jolt in the right place can bring down a building, or shut down a power grid."

"That's also true, I guess," Kaze agreed tentatively. He supposed abilities like his could make espionage much easier. From a personal standpoint, though, he wasn't sure he could be that subtle. If he could, his relationship with his father would likely have been a great deal easier.

"There's nothing wrong with that line of thought," she confirmed, a nod of her head making her ears bounce. "It seems to be the norm for our element, and the power does respond quite well to it. If that's what the majority wants to make of it, good for them." She looked him right in the eyes, then, and as apprehensive as he was, he couldn't look away. "Some of us are different, though. Some of us see the storm."

"Then I guess I've come to the right place," the fox responded, with a chuckle that sounded weak even to his own ears. "I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with blowing stuff up or anything like that, but that sounds a lot more like my thing than being some kind of...spy, or ninja, or something."

The fennec chuckled again, and gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "Not quite how I would have put it, but well said. You prefer to face things head-on. That means I'm the teacher for you." Her face turned serious again. "The way we see our element, we end up using it most often for direct combat. That's not something most Air users do well, so it often gives you the element of surprise."

"I see." Kaze nodded, but then a thought crossed his mind. "I don't know if I really want to end up killing anyone, though. I mean, I suppose I can see times where that might be necessary, but...it's just so final, you know?"

That was the thing right there. He could accept that the best way to protect people may be with violence. He'd dealt with plenty of bullies growing up, and he knew that despite what some of the adults had said, most of them wouldn't stop if you ignored them, wouldn't listen to reason, would just make things ten times worse if you told on them. Most of them were bullies because violence was really all they understood.

He'd learned to stand up for himself, at least in theory. Often, all that his confrontations would lead to was him lying face down in the dirt with some newly developing bruises. Still, it seemed to eventually earn him a level of grudging respect, or perhaps boredom, from his tormentors. After all, a target that fought back, even ineffectively, wasn't their style.

They'd left him alone until high school, when his little dalliance with his friend had started them going again. The cycle had repeated again, this time without him losing quite so horribly. He realized belatedly that it must have been other, more minor incidents of his Gift reacting to emotional distress.

Thus, he was quite familiar with violence, and accepted its occasional necessity. Killing was another matter, though. Maybe it was because of his father, but Kaze had never been particularly religious, or even spiritual. He was very certain he didn't buy the whole idea of an afterlife. It could never be as simple for him as "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out". Death was quite final, and not something he could easily see himself doling out.

"That's something you'll need to decide for yourself," the instructor told him softly, "but I will tell you one thing. As much as we'd all like to believe everyone's good at the core, that anyone can be redeemed, it's not always true. Some people are simply irredeemably evil. When someone's not only evil, but has power that makes them difficult, at best, to contain, sometimes there's only one way to make sure they can't hurt anyone."

"I'm not sure I believe that," the young fox asserted. "I think sometimes we oversimplify. People are incredibly complex. Everyone has their reasons, no matter how warped or misguided. Don't get me wrong," he said quickly, needing to clarify, "people do some incredibly stupid, horrible things. They can hurt people in ways that'd give me nightmares. But I think maybe under the right circumstances, they can see they were wrong."

"Then we agree to disagree for now," she said with a shrug. Then she added, her voice serious and sincere, "If things go well, perhaps nothing will ever come along to prove me right. Gods grant it so."

Silence hung oppressively in the air for a long moment. Kaze eventually decided a change of subject was in order. Or more accurately, a return to the original one. "So, how does this whole learning process get started?"

Trisha seem to belatedly recall that yes, they were supposed to be in a lesson. "Right, right," she agreed with a bit of chagrin. "Well, let's start by taking in the view."

They walked together to the end of the tower. The younger fox did so with a fair degree of caution. For whatever reason, there was no ledge at the tower's edge.

"What's the matter?" the instructor asked, seeming to be honestly confused.

"I'm...scared of heights," Kaze admitted with a blush.

"That's...different." The fennec looked more puzzled than anything else. Then her expression grew more thoughtful. "Is it really the height you're afraid of, though? Would you be scared if there were a ledge here?"

"Well, no." He supposed that thought had some merit. "I guess it's more that I'm afraid of falling."

"Closer, but I don't think that's quite it," she told him, with a hint of a smile. "What's that old saying? It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end."

"Alright, fine. I have a fear of colliding with the ground at bone breaking momentum," he replied, with a bit of exasperation. "Happy?"

"We'll fix that," was her cryptic reply, as the hint of a smile turned into the genuine article. "Anyway, look out at the view in front of us. What's the first thing you notice?"

"The sky," he replied immediately. "It seems...bluer here than at home."

"Good, good," the fennec responded with a nod. "Our elements affect more than just our Gifts. They become part of us."

"They tend to match personalities, right?" Kaze asked tentatively. "My roommate was basically saying there are usually personality conflicts between opposite elements."

"Exactly," the instructor confirmed. "Take the question I asked you. A Fire user would notice the sun. Water would see the ocean around us. An Earth user might notice the other islands in the distance. The point is, our Gifts are more than just the power. They're a part of us, and the power is merely an extension of that."

The fox wasn't entirely sure what to say to that, so he just nodded. It made sense, certainly, in an abstract sense. He wasn't sure what all the philosophical stuff had to do with actually using it, though.

"But you wonder what all of this has to do with shocking an enemy, hmm?" A glint of good humor in her eyes told him she'd anticipated his line of thinking. "It's not like flipping a light switch. You can't completely separate theory from practice. If you can't understand your power, feel it as a part of you...you'll never have it under full control."

"That sounds like a lot to learn," Kaze remarked, a bit of his uncertainty showing. "And it seems like some really metaphysical, new age stuff. I'll try my best, but I don't know if it'll come that easy."

The smile the instructor turned on him was full of sympathy. "It's really just like anything else. We start with the basics."

The blue fox held his paws out awkwardly, in what years of watching fantasy told him was probably a good casting motion. "So, um...how do I start it up?"

The fennec chuckled, but her tone was one of amused patience. "It's not quite that simple. How should I put this?" Her large ears twitched as she considered. "Would it make sense if I said that to gain control of our abilities, we have to give it up?"

"Not really," the younger fox admitted.

His instructor chuckled again, a warm, understanding sound. "Fair enough," she replied. "Think of it this way. The air exists all around you. So does its power. It's massive on a scale we can't even comprehend. We couldn't hope to control that."

"But I thought you said..."

"I said before that we'll help you learn control," Trisha clarified, "but technically, what we do really all comes down to accepting and directing. The power's everywhere, always flowing, and for whatever reason, because we are who we are, a little part of it's always flowing right through us. I haven't seen your file, but I'd be willing to bet your ability's been manifesting for quite a while now, right?"

"Well, there's only been one big incident," he insisted, a little too quickly. The fennec gave him a penetrating look, but said nothing. Reluctantly, his mind drifted further and further back, insisting he acknowledge the little sparks and gusts he'd always just shrugged off. "There were little things, too, I suppose, going a lot further back."

She nodded, and the young fox had the feeling she would have known if he'd lied, file or no. "Like I said, it's a part of you. It flows through you, whether you want it to or not. And it's at such a primal level that sometimes it can be directed on an instinctive level. I assume the headmaster's had a little chat with you about why that's a bad thing."

He thought back to the horrible images his imagination had conjured. In his mind's eye, he could easily see his father ending up like the burglar, or much, much worse. "Yes, ma'am," was all he said.

"So we need to learn to direct it consciously. The first part of that is feeling it consciously," she explained. "Think back to that first massive manifestation of your power. I'm sure it's etched in your memory, that you can remember every detail as if it were yesterday."

"Um, actually, it was last night," Kaze admitted sheepishly.

Trisha's eyes widened, but she continued unperturbed. "It should be that much easier, then. It's the next part that's tricky, because by definition, major unconscious manifestations are incredibly emotional. What we want to do is peel away all those layers of distressed emotion, to see what else felt different from the everyday."

With some trepidation, the fox turned his thoughts to the previous night, to what was going through his head as he fought off the burglar. There was fear, of course, and anger. There was a fierce protectiveness toward his parents that he frankly wouldn't have thought possible. That was all part of the situation, though. It didn't necessarily have anything to do with his Gift.

There was something else, though, almost drowned out by the rest of his emotions. The only reason he noticed it at all was because it was so different, so out of place in the scene. He had felt, dimly, a sense of something far greater than himself flowing through him. Every muscle in his body had been tensed, more focused on what was in front of him than he had ever been. Yet at the same time, he had been so very relaxed, as if he simply let go and became a conduit for the power. It was a difficult feeling to describe, but strangely enough, the experience that matched it most fully was when he'd get completely caught up in a song, to the point where it would just wash over him and through him.

He did his best to explain this to his teacher, and saw her eyes narrow thoughtfully. "That's some impressive insight," she remarked. "We may just have you ready by the time classes start back up." The fennec considered something for a moment, then nodded to herself. "Yes, I think we're ready to move on. She pointed to a spot on the horizon, directly in front of him. "Well, then, if you'd be so kind as to direct some lightning at roughly that spot, we'll know where we stand."

"That's an awfully big step, don't you think?" the young fox pointed out with a bit of uncertainty. Trisha just continued to stare at him expectantly. Deep down, he wondered if he could really do this. Maybe everything before had just been some weird fluke, and he didn't even have a Gift at all.

Still, he supposed he would humor her. Kaze held out both his paws, palms outward, and closed his eyes for a moment. He thought of those times he would sit in his room, all by himself, guitar in hand, lost in the song he was playing. As he let that feeling flow through him, he focused on the sensation of the breeze on his fur, imagined that as little eddies of power, swirling all around, and more importantly, through him.

He could feel that flow, dimly, around him and through him, and he concentrated on it. He let himself act as merely a conduit, as his mind suggested a direction, imagined electricity striking forth from his open palms. He let the feeling build within him until it felt like it was going to burst, urging it gently down his arms, through his paws.

He opened his eyes...and saw a jolt of lightning arc out from his paw. It wasn't spectacular, by any means. It certainly didn't look as...well, epic as it had felt when it was building inside him, but it was there. There was no more denying it, then. He was an Air user. He had a Gift. He belonged here.

Without warning, he felt a smile creep over his face. It was a truly heartfelt expression, like he hadn't shown in quite some time. At the same time, he heard a slow clap from behind him.

"Very nice." Trisha commented. "Well, you seem to have a first grasp of the basics. I guess we'll jump right into an advanced lesson."

Just as he was turning around, the fox felt a gale force wind spring up out of nowhere, pushing him back several feet...right off the edge of the tower.