by C. J. Cooke
I couldn’t help but laugh. She was right. I felt like I could go for another lap. It wasn’t just my magic that was feeling stronger. I could feel it in my body as well. This place was changing me. Liam jogged over to the steps and collected water bottles for the group before coming back and passing them all round. I smiled up at him as he passed me mine. He was always so considerate and I was glad that he had included Britt in our group as well. I always struggled making friends and it was nice to have a female friend around that I could talk to. The rest of the group arrived within five minutes of us and I congratulated every one of the them. They were all starting to get faster. I suppose magic and being a supernatural had its perks when it came to physical training.
“Okay, everyone go eat, get changed, do whatever it is that you do in the next hour. I’ll see you in the gym. Don’t be late, we’ve got a big announcement coming.” I said grabbing my bottle from the grass and standing. Some of the girls stood with me and headed inside but a few opted for laying on the ground for a bit longer.
After grabbing a quick breakfast sandwich and a smoothie I headed to the gym to meet up with Caleb. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Harmony and Echo from my group were already there keeping warm and doing some stretches. I went into Caleb’s office where he was looking over some papers while he waited for the class to arrive. I stuck my head through the door not wanting to intrude and knocked on the doorframe so he would look up. “Got a minute?” I asked.
“Sure” he said pointed to the chair for me to sit down.
“I’m good standing” I said keeping my position leaning against the doorframe. “I wanted to ask your opinion about opening up the competition for spectators.”
Caleb raised his eyebrows “What makes you ask about that?”
“Some students apparently talking smack about my girls in the library the other day.” I answered honestly. “But also, if we’re going to make changes then we need to make waves and I think that to do that we need to get the whole school involved.”
“I suppose that makes sense but I don’t think that the headmaster will go for it” He answered honestly.
“And I also want to gage their reactions.” I explained deciding to let him know everything I’d been thinking.
“Again, why?” He asked sitting back in his chair to give me his full attention.
“I want to train an Elite squad.” I shrugged.
“You’ve got my attention,” he said leaning forward “but I’m struggling to see how the two go together.”
“I want to see who in the crowd is too arrogant for an invite and who looks impressed enough to be considered.”
“Assuming that we even let you have an Elite squad to train.” Caleb argued.
“You’re going to let me have an Elite squad” I smiled.
“Probably” he shrugged. He stood from his desk and looked past me out the door. I turned and saw that most of the class had arrived while we were talking. “Go join your group, I’m going to call the headmaster.”
I strode over to the group with a smile on my face. “What’s got you all happy and gleeful” Britt asked looking at my suspiciously. “If I didn’t already know that you were such a badass, I would have sworn I just saw you skip a little bit.”
“Oh you know, just making waves and exacting social change.” I answered mysteriously.
“Why do I feel like that is going to end badly for us?” Sykes said sliding an arm around my shoulders and kissing the top of my head.
Caleb came out of his office and nodded at me. I turned back to my group with an evil grin on my face. “It’s show time!” I said slipping out from under Sykes’ arm and striding over to meet Caleb so we could address the group together. Halfway there I turned around keeping my stride walking backwards, locked eyes with Britt and raised one fist in the arm shouting “Smash the patriarchy!” Britt burst out into laughter and when I turned back to face Caleb he just rolled his eyes at me but I caught one corner of his mouth twitch upwards.
“Everyone gather around, we have something to discuss.” Caleb shouted and the class dropped to the ground around him. Caleb’s group were just lounging lazily on the floor whilst mine hung at the back and carried on stretching. ‘For fucks sake.’ Caleb grumbled under his breath. “Right, the competition between the two fighting teams is being moved up to this Friday.” Caleb announced. Everyone burst out into excited chatter. I caught a couple of disparaging remarks coming from Caleb’s team and even one “no point delaying the inevitable”. Everyone else heard it as well and half of my group just burst out laughing. “Settle down!” Caleb raised him voice. “That’s not the only news.” It took a few seconds for everyone to gather back their self control before Caleb would continue. “As you know the reason for the two fighting teams was to try out a new training style. It would seem that the whole school has heard of what’s happening and is waiting to find out the result. As such the headmaster and I have decided to open the competition up for spectators. That means that on Friday morning, all of the other classes are going to be cancelled and the rest of the school will be joining us to see which group will be acknowledged as the superior fighters.” At that the chatter from the class basically exploded. There would be no training for Caleb’s group today. Caleb muttered another ‘for fucks sake’ and I patted him on the shoulder in sympathy as I strode away back to the far side of the gym which my group had taken over for the training sessions. They all got up and followed me. There was some chatter but once we all settled in our usual area it quieted down as they looked at me expectantly.
“Thoughts” I asked them. I wasn’t sure if they would be worried about having the whole school watching.
“It’s going to be terribly embarrassing for them when we crush them in front of the whole school” Britt said.
I couldn’t help but smile. “I get that you might be a bit nervous at the thought of everyone watching but you really do have nothing to worry about. You’ve seen the way that they fight, the way that they organise. The competition is for nine of them to go against the nine of you. At this stage I think the nine of you could take the rest of the entire class but we don’t want to embarrass them too much.” That set a few chuckles running around the group. “Moving forward we still have the run in the mornings, conditioning training today and two sparring session before the competition. I think we should cut the run on Friday morning down to just five miles, that way you’ll be warmed up but you won’t be too tired. For now, though, got off your asses, I want fifteen squats, fifteen sit ups, fifteen push ups then rinse and repeat people.” Everyone jumped to their feet, spread out and started. I wandered back across the gym to Caleb who was looking forlornly at his group that had started to shuffle laps around the gym. You really couldn’t call it running.
“I just don’t get what it is with this group. The last two years have taken to training so much better but this lot just don’t give a shit and I have no idea how to motivate them.” He looked at me stood as his side. “You must think I’m really shit at my job.” He sighed.
“Nah, not even I could whip this lot into shape. Anyway, I’ve heard that the third years are nearly at my level.” I said.
“Who told you that?” He asked surprised.
“You did.” I laughed.
“Ah right, I don’t remember that.” He said rubbing the back of his neck. “Don’t get me wrong they are a lot further ahead than this group but no one at this school, and I think I might even be including myself in this as well, is anywhere near your level Aria.”
“You want to talk about it?” I asked, sensing that there was something else going on.
“Maybe later, in fact, you still up to looking over the training schedule after this.”
“Sure. You know it might be a bit unfair measuring them up against me.” I admitted. “The headmaster thinks I have some kind of god magic.” I peered at him out of the side of my eye to see how he would react to this. He just nodded.
“He did m
ention something about that. He’s totally on board with letting the school watch the competition by the way, I didn’t even have to argue it with him. Apparently, he had heard some of the students talking about it and he thinks that they could do with having an example made of them.”
“On one hand I feel like that’s a bit harsh but on the other hand I totally agree with him.” I thought about it for a moment. “It’s totally conflicting.”
Caleb chuckled and it was nice to hear him a bit more like his normal self. He strode back over to his group to set them up into pairs to start sparring and I joined my own group to set up some circuits for them to work through for the next hour. By the time that the class was over the other team were stumbling out of the room and mine looked ready to go another ten rounds. Britt was even hopping up and down on the spot drivelling on about something that was clearly exciting her. I didn’t have the time for it. I might only have three classes this semester but it was on three subjects I came into knowing nothing about. I was behind when I started and I felt like I had to do twice the reading to just keep up with everyone else. I waved goodbye to the girls and gave my guys a kiss goodbye before heading to Caleb’s office. He was already sunk down in the chair at his desk looking like the weight of the world was trying to crush him.
“So, what’s up?” I asked slinking into the other chair. The run this morning hadn’t quite quelled the fire in my veins and training everyone else meant that I wasn’t getting enough of a workout in myself. Couple that with the fact that my magic seemed to be growing everyday and I was starting to seriously worry that I may actually explode at some point in the not so distant future.
“I suck at my job, that’s what.” Caleb grunted pulling two bottles of water out of his desk and throwing one across to me. I caught it before twisting the top off and taking a sip. “You’ve had three weeks training that group and they are nearly on par with the third year group. This first year group might be lax but the second years really do but the effort in and yet yours are surpassing them already.”
“Yeah it’s not possible.” I commented. I had actually had the exact same thought myself.
“Well clearly it is because it’s happening. We need to completely re-write the training scheme. If you didn’t have your own classes I’d be asking you to come on as a full time trainer.” He said shifting through the piles of paper on his desk. He was starting to get a slight gleam of mania in his eye and it was worrying me. I didn’t deal well with other people’s crazy. It seemed to rub up against my own crazy and make it explode out of me in unexpected ways.
“No, I’m being serious, it actually isn’t possible.” I said putting my feet up on his desk and then quickly removing them when Caleb’s crazy started to look like it was about to leak out his eyeballs. “It took me about six months to get to the level that they are at and I catch onto this stuff crazy quick. Granted, I was like twelve at the time but still, there is no way that they should be at the level that they are at. I show them a move once and they have it down pat. No problems at all. It’s even got to the point where I show one of them a move and then they can demonstrate it to another and they do it just as well. Something shifty is going on here.”
“It must be something to do with your magic.” Caleb said sitting up. He actually looked a little relieved and I felt bad that he had been feeling like this for the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t sure if he was really close to anyone. He seemed kind of like an outsider with the rest of the teachers and then there was the whole problem with the teacher student relationship that kept him at a distance from everyone else.
“Nah, I’ve taught defence skills to people before and trust me they did not get a hold of it like this group does.” I laughed thinking of the kids in the self defence class that I had taught at Alfie’s gym. It hurt my heart a little thinking about them. I hope someone else had taken up teaching the class for them. I missed the little shits more than I thought I ever would.
“You did say that your magic has increased since you got here.” Caleb pointed out.
“Increased is one way to think about it. Turned into a raging inferno is another.” I joked trying to keep the look of strain from my face. I was seriously starting to worry that I was going to become one of those kids off the news that went on a rampage.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked, seeing right through me. “If you need to talk?”
“Nah, I’ve got a handle on it.” I shrugged. Hopefully. “Back to the issue at hand, don’t beat yourself up something weird is definitely going on with my group. I know we said that we would only train on hand to hand with them but I’ve actually introduced some weapon work with them. Only to the extent of how not to stab yourself if you happen to be holding something stabby while punching someone.”
“That’s not a problem. How are they handling them?”
“Surprisingly well. In fact, tonight I’m going to see about finding which weapon they hold an affinity with if you want to join us.” I offered.
“I’d actually like that. If you don’t mind me intruding.” He edged.
“It’s not an intrusion if you are invited Caleb.” I smiled at him. I think I could actually have a friend in Caleb. “Which is yours?” I asked.
“My what? Weapon?” he asked. When I nodded he just smiled and laughed. “I’m a wolf, I don’t fight with weapons.” He shrugged.
“What? Then why do you train the shifter students with weapons?”
“Everyone gets a brief introduction to the most commonly used weapons. You never know what’s going to happen in a fight. If you can handle a weapon it makes it easy to predict how someone will use it against you.” He explained.
“Makes sense. Don’t you ever find that you can’t rely on the shift?” I asked.
“It’s not failed me yet.” He laughed.
“What if you end up somewhere where you can’t turn into a wolf, like the middle of the human realm.” I put out there. It seemed strange to me that they would rely on just one form of fighting. “You should join us. Choose your own weapon. Train with us Caleb. You look like you could do with a bit of fun. Don’t get me wrong the crazy disorganisation thing you’ve got going on is clearly keeping you busy but maybe you need a new hobby.” I said looking round at the chaos that was his office. There were papers on every surface and it looked like now that he was running out of surface space he had taken to sticking some to the walls.
“Yeah,” he said looking around at the room with a cringe, “I may have got a little carried away with the whole training crisis I’ve been having.”
“Just a bit” I laughed. “Come on, let me pick you a new life partner that has sharp pointy edges.”
“Fine,” he huffed but I could see through his fake annoyance. He was as giddy as a schoolgirl. “How do we do this anyway.”
“Well, first you need to show me where you keep all the fun toys around here.” I clapped my hands together and rubbed them together gleefully. There was nothing better than a nice orderly weapons safe.
“Come on then.” He said standing up and leading me out of the office. A door in the corner of the gym which I had assumed led to some kind of cleaning cupboard was in fact a door to my worst nightmare.
“This is … this is fucking wrong. How could someone do this?” I was genuinely distressed by the sight in front of me. Swords were just stood up in a barrel type container of all things. There was a pile of bows in the corner with some quivers knocked over next to them. What looked like a bag of daggers. Basically, there were weapons shoved in piles, some were covered in dust, others clearly hadn’t been cleaned in what looked like forever.
“Yeah, it’s got a bit disorganised in here.” Caleb said looking around and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly with one hand.
“Dis-disorganised” I spluttered. “I have no words for what this is. How, just how?”
“We don’t really use them very much and the students just grab something when they need it and then put it back. If I’m
honest I haven’t been in here for ages.” He said pushing a stray sword next to his feet across the floor with one foot.
“Stop it!” I said slapping his arm with the back of my hand and scooping up the poor neglected sword from the floor. “They deserve more respect than this.” I said running the blade over one trouser leg to wipe the dust off. “Right, come on, get them all out in to the gym.” I said stooping down and picking up a bucket of daggers.
“What? You can’t take these all out into the gym I’ve got a training session with the second year students in half an hour.”
“Good, we’re going to need some extra hands to get this mess sorted out.” I looked around with my hands on my hips briefly putting together an action plan. “I am very disappointed in you right now Mr … erm … Caleb.” Coming up at a loss for his last name.
It took us the full half an hour just to get all the weapons out of the room and into the gym. We were organising them into piles when the second year students started to filter through into the gym.