Plain-Elemental: Attack, Headbutt, Wild Bite, Fierce Cry
Jackson rubbed his chin. It had been a while since Asena had learned a new move. Just a couple months back, she had learned Fierce Cry, and while that was sometimes useful for paralyzing Djinn in their tracks, he was itching for something more. Another Fire-Elemental attack would be nice — even an Earth-Elemental. Asena was, after all, a rare combo Djinn that natively employed two separate Elements, and yet all he had to show for it was a couple of Fire attacks.
Patience, he told himself as he closed the window. If there was anything he’d learned in his months as a tamer, it was patience.
Even as he did, however, an all-too familiar anxious feeling started to grow in his stomach and the short-lived euphoria of his hollow victory faded away. He looked around at the rolling hills and farms of his hometown of Tyle and, although it was a beautiful early spring day, couldn’t help but feel like he was in a prison.
A couple months prior, Jackson had even applied for the Bronze League — the minors of Djinn Taming — despite him feeling grossly under-qualified. Every day he waited felt like it stretched on for an entire year, and the worse part was that he could still be waiting several more weeks until he found out.
Jackson’s watch buzzed, providing a welcome distraction from his anxiety. A miniature holographic face of his best friend Kay appeared. Before she could say anything, Jackson realized the time.
“Crap! I know — I’m coming!”
Whistling for Asena, Jackson tore off down the knoll he’d been skirmishing with the younger tamers on.
“Do you know how ridiculous it is that I have to set an alarm to remind you that you’re late for work?” Kay’s voice rose from Jackson’s wrist as he sprinted across numerous fields and pastures toward the Djinn breeding ranch where they both worked. Jackson was too winded to say anything, but Kay continued anyway.
“You’d better hurry up — we’re supposed to move the Lambaa into another pasture this morning with their new babies, and you know that’s going to take forever. Honestly, Jackson, I don’t know why —”
Jackson huffed out a goodbye and slapped his watch, hanging up on Kay. Ten minutes later, after several hurdled fences and a few stumbles, Jackson jogged up to the ranch headquarters of Sato Breeders.
Located on the eastern outskirts of Tyle, the ranch was famous throughout the country for its top-of-the-line Djinn. Tyle may not have been a hotbed of top-notch trainers, but the Djinn that came out of Sato were near-unrivaled.
He dropped to his knees at once and sucked in air. Even Asena’s tongue lolled out the side of her mouth as she panted. A moment later, the door opened, revealing Kay with her hands on her hips.
“You’re two minutes late, you know that?”
“I hate…when you do that,” Jackson managed to sputter out. He stood up and peeled off his hoodie to cool off in the chilly morning air. A nasty stitch in his side ached but he didn’t want to give Kay the satisfaction of seeing him gasping for air.
“When I do what? Make you on time for work?” Kay said.
“Just when…you’re always…right.” Jackson’s breath came a bit steadier but his heart was still pounding.
Kay shook her head and smiled. “Fighting with the local kids again?”
“Training with the local kids,” Jackson clarified. “Mornings work best for them, you know?”
The only real competition — if one could even call it that — around Tyle were the high school kids who hadn’t graduated or left town yet. And the ones that were seriously into Djinn taming all had jobs or varsity taming practice after school. So Jackson had to work around their schedules. Though as inconvenient as it was, it had helped Asena make slow and steady progress in the months since the invitational that lost him his Grandma’s house.
“Good morning,” Yuki Sato, half the married couple who owned the ranch, entered, offering them a small, yet sincere, smile. Although kind and somewhat soft-spoken, the woman commanded respect from the entire staff. “Two of the Felinxes got into a fight last night, Kay. Do you think you’d be able to take a look at them?”
Kay nodded. “Of course, Mrs. S.”
Yuki smiled again. “Thank you. We’ve got the veterinarian heading over, but I thought it would be good experience for you.”
Jackson couldn’t help but smile at the Satos’s willingness to help develop Kay into the Djinn Vet, but the down side for him would be that he’d be forced to move the whole Lambaa herd by himself. The wooly livestock Djinn were docile enough but wandered wherever they pleased. Without enough people to corner them and push them in the right direction, it was a task that was bound to take all morning.
“Don’t worry, Jackson,” Yuki said, as if reading Jackson’s mind. “I saw on the assignment board you two were moving the Lambaa, so I found you some help.”
The door to the break room opened again and Jackson felt his stomach jerk. They hadn’t spoken much since Jackson’s defeat at her hands in a Djinn invitational the previous fall, but it was hard to avoid someone when their parents owned the place of your employment.
Fiona Sato leaned against the door.
“Long time no see, Jackson.”
Chapter Two
Jackson trudged across the barnyard and past the corrals to the Lambaa pastures at a brisk walk, eager to stay ahead of Fiona. He’d been as polite as he could muster while they were in the company of Kay and Fiona’s mom, but now that the two of them were alone, he had no desire to talk to his taming rival.
“You don’t need to be a sore loser,” Fiona said. Her voice sounded slightly strained from the effort of keeping up with Jackson’s long strides. “I thought we were cool. Plus, I did help you get back your job, didn’t I?”
“I’m not a sore loser,” Jackson said. “You won that invitational match fair and square. Do you honestly think it’s about that?”
Jackson wasn’t lying. He really didn’t hold anything against Fiona for beating him — fair and square. Even though the fact that he’d lost his grandma’s house as a result still stung a bit.
“Is this because I won’t train with you?” Fiona asked next, as if she could read his mind.
“Bingo.”
“I told you I just don’t want to give up a competitive edge.”
“Right. Competitive edge. That’s it.” Jackson sighed and turned to face Fiona. “Look, I’m not mad at you, okay. Just a bit frustrated.”
“Frustrated by what?”
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Before Fiona could answer, Jackson climbed the fence and crossed into the Lambaa pasture. In the neighboring field, the Lambaa grazed on fresh, new grass. The reason for the escape wasn’t hard to spot — there was a wide hole in the fence where the woolly Djinn had pushed their way through, ever in search of the greener grass undoubtedly growing wherever they weren’t.
Jackson squeezed his left hand into a fist. A vermilion beam shot out from Asena’s Djinn ring on his index finger on his left hand, and the Lyote materialized in front of him.
“Asena and I will round them up while you fix the fence,” Jackson said.
Fiona crossed her arms. “Why the hell should I do all of the manual labor while you move the Lambaa?”
Instead of answering, Jackson gave her a wry look and whistled. Asena’s ears perked up at once and the lithe Lyote shot across the field in a burnt red-orange blur toward the small herd of Lambaa. The Djinn circled the herd, who naturally bunched together, their young hiding themselves beneath the short, woolly legs of their parents.
Once the Lambaa were grouped together, Jackson let out another whistle and Asena yipped, driving the Lambaa herd across the pasture at a slow, steady pace along the fence.
Fiona couldn’t help but smirk. “Not bad.” She flared her hand and a blue light burst from her own Djinn ring. Jackson’s stomach tightened at the sight of Rebel, Fiona’s Megala, the plumed, flamboyant Djinn that had been responsible for Jackson and Asena’s narrow defeat in the tourna
ment.
Rebel let out a long forlorn call and then rose into the air with a few powerful flaps of its bejeweled wings. Once it had the height it needed, the flamboyant flying Djinn glided across the pasture just in time to turn the Lambaa herd as they approached the open gate leading them into the next pasture. It was quick, clean work, and by the time the pair had finished their work, Jackson found it hard to be even a little frustrated at her.
“If I’m being honest,” Jackson started out of the blue once they had finished their work. “Yes, I was upset with you.”
“No!” Fiona said, nudging him. “But you hid it so well!”
“Laugh all you want, but after I lost to you, it hurt. A lot. I not only lost the match, but I lost the house, too — but the job did help, so thanks by the way. But after a couple of weeks, I had justified to myself that this could be a good thing. That I could use the loss to better myself. And what better way to get stronger than to train with the tamer who pummeled me in the first place?”
“Look…I don’t mean to act like I’m too good for you or anything — I’m not. If it were up to me, I would. But…”
Jackson nodded. “Vance McAllister?”
“Yeah,” Fiona said. As it turned out, while Fiona’s win against Jackson locked down an opportunity to be trained by the Gold League vet Vance McAllister, she was not allowed to train with him until the weeks leading up until Bronze League Training Camp. His only order: to avoid training with Jackson Hunt.
Jackson couldn’t help but be flattered, but it still irked him.
“Wait,” Jackson said, piecing together Fiona’s explanation. “No training until the weeks leading up to camp. Does that mean…?”
A long, painful silence stretched between them as Jackson considered the ramifications of what Fiona was saying. The first step into the world of professional Djinn taming was an invite to a regional training camp in the Bronze League, the entry-level competition for the DBL. Only one tamer from each town and city were selected to participate — at the end of camp, the best tamers were sponsored to compete in the actual Bronze League Championships for their region, no matter how well or poorly they ranked in the main season.
It was all Jackson had thought about for the past three months and the reason he’d been keeping such insane hours in an effort to eke out every ounce of training he could with Asena. But something in Fiona’s voice cut through the thin thread his hopes dangled from.
“You already got the invite, didn’t you?” he said in a quiet, hollow voice. Asena bounded up to his side, but Jackson could only give her a listless pat on the head while he stared at Fiona.
For the first time all morning, Fiona looked genuinely uncomfortable. It was all Jackson needed to confirm his guess.
“It came yesterday morning,” Fiona said. “Look, you —”
“No, it’s fine,” Jackson said. “Congratulations. You really do deserve it.”
“I’m tel —”
“No, it’s fine, okay?”
“Would you just —”
“Look, can you just stop?”
Fiona’s eyes widened and her lips tensed. She looked like she wanted to deck him.
His heart hammered in his chest and his cheeks burned. It felt the same as the moments after he’d lost to Fiona in the tournament. Still, he did his best not to show it. Rather than aggravating him further, the news left Jackson drained.
“Fine, then,” Fiona said. “You want me to stop? I’ll stop.”
Chapter Three
The rest of the day passed by in a haze as Jackson tried to go through the motions of his job. But no matter how much he tried to focus on the task at hand, his mind returned to the news. He felt like it had somehow punched him in the chest, and every time he took in a breath, it felt tight and strained. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jackson had known Fiona would be Tyle’s rookie representative, but a part of him — that small flame that hadn’t been put out with his tournament defeat — had hoped…
Now it felt like the flicker of hope had been completely snuffed out. Asena sensed something was wrong right away and spent hours trying to cheer Jackson up with soft nudges of her nose or small, encouraging licks. When that failed to work, her tail drooped between her legs and she followed Jackson around, whining every time he looked at her.
The heartbreaking sight was enough to pull Jackson from his self-pity — at least enough to make him a functioning employee until lunch time. He’d found plenty of solo jobs around the ranch that provided solitude after Fiona left the pastures, but when lunch rolled around, Jackson prepared to face Kay. He would’ve skipped the meal entirely, but his locker also held Asena’s food. The last thing Jackson wanted to do was punish his Djinn just because he felt antisocial.
“What’s the matter with you?” Kay said. “It looks like an Auroxx just ran over your face.”
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Jackson said, passing by Kay and burying his face in his locker. Asena’s food sat right in the front but he made a show of looking for it, hoping Kay might lose interest.
“C’mon, dude, working with Fiona this morning can’t have been that bad,” Kay said. “Look, I know you guys are sort of competitors now, but you grew up together! Just because you had one Djinn battle against each other doesn’t mean —”
“She’s in,” Jackson said. His flat voice caused Kay to pause long enough to explain. “Fiona got an invite to the Bronze League Training Camp.”
Kay knew what that meant — it was all Jackson could talk about over the past several weeks.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Jack,” she said in a much softer tone, tirade abandoned. “That doesn’t mean anything, though! She’s just one spot — there are like a dozen tamers brought to camp from each region aren’t there?”
“Yeah, but only one from each town.”
“But haven’t there been years in the past where a town’s had multiple tamers?”
“Sure, but they’re all sponsored,” Jackson said. It was really the last thing he wanted to talk about, but he hoped he could explain things to Kay now and at least get it out of the way. “Since I’m not the Tyle representative, there’s like a one percent chance I’ll get in. I mean, do I look like I know any sponsors?”
If I’d only won the tournament last year, things would be different. He left the words unsaid, but they rang in his head just like they had every day he returned home to the cramped apartment he shared with his grandma — the apartment they had to squeeze themselves into after losing their family home when Jackson failed to defeat Fiona in the Vance McAllister-sponsored invitational.
“Well, maybe you’re just looking at it the wrong way,” Kay said, falling back to her hallmark optimism. “If you don’t get invited to the Bronze League camp this year, you can always keep training — if you put another year in, there’s no way they can’t let you try out!”
“Yeah…maybe.” Jackson knew Kay was trying to cheer him up, but it didn’t help much. A year was a long time, and he worried the lack of real competition in Tyle would mean the margin between him and Fiona would continue to grow.
“Jackson, could I speak with you?”
Ken Sato’s voice rang across the break room, causing another jolt of adrenaline in Jackson’s stomach. His mind raced, wondering if he’d done something wrong in his distracted stupor over the past few hours. Shooting Kay a worried glanced, Jackson rose and crossed the room to meet with his employer who waited by the doors.
“What’s up, Mr. Sato?” Jackson said, trying to shake the depression from his voice.
Ken Sato’s face was unreadable. “Care to step into my office for a minute?”
Jackson nodded and followed Mr. Sato through a couple of rooms until they came into a medium-sized office decorated with awards and pictures of the Satos standing next to some of their prize-winning, world-class Djinn and their famous tamers. Ken motioned for Jackson to have a seat. Jackson sat down in a worn leather chair, which let out a puff of air as he adjusted himself on th
e cushion. He squished his sweaty palms together in his lap.
He wasn’t sure why he felt so nervous — he’d worked for Sato Breeders for almost three years now. He’d loved the job the entire time, but had almost been fired the previous summer when he convinced Fiona to sign a bill of health allowing Jackson to compete with Asena in the ill-fated tournament. It wasn’t illegal, as Fiona did have the qualifications to do so, but in keeping the ordeal from the Satos — and more importantly, his grandma, it had been a real breach of trust that Fiona had to smooth over with her family before they accepted him back. Jackson had done his best to toe the line ever since.
“Is everything okay, Jackson?” Mr. Sato asked, brow creasing in concern. “Is your grandma well?”
“Yes, sir,” Jackson said. “I’m just…tired is all.”
Mr. Sato nodded but he didn’t look convinced. Once more, Jackson felt a pang of regret for what he and Fiona had done to her parents — the Satos practically treated Jackson like family.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I’ve been hearing lots of good things about your work,” Ken said. “And I’ve seen them myself. What were your plans now that you’ve been out of school for several months?”
Jackson didn’t hesitate. “I want to be a Djinn tamer.” What he didn’t add was that, at the moment, it felt like the furthest thing from a possibility.
Mr. Sato nodded. Jackson knew the breeder had mixed emotions about taming as a professional career. He’d made his millions raising Djinn to be the very best battlers possible. On one hand, all three of the Sato children were pros — or in Fiona’s case now, at least semi-pro. On the other, Jackson knew Mr. Sato didn’t want Fiona to follow in the footsteps of her older brothers. He’d held out hope that his daughter would get an education and take over the ranch someday.
“You’ve got some talent as a young tamer, but I don’t think I need to tell you how hard that road is and how many young talents don’t make it to the big leagues,” Mr. Sato said. “You’ve got just as much skill raising and caring for Djinn as you do battling with them. I’ve been impressed watching you the last few years and wanted to see if you were interested in taking on more responsibilities at the ranch?”
Djinn Tamer - The Complete Bronze League Trilogy Page 26