by Jade Alters
“On your lead, sensei,” I tease again. It’s the easiest way for me to talk to Rock, I’ve found. Humor is a bridge we can both cross halfway, from our respective islands of family burden. I even give him a little bow.
“Alright,” Rock laughs for about half a second. He spends the other half dropping the expression, and dropping to the ground. He sweeps a leg like a flail, which blasts my feet right out from beneath me when it strikes my ankle. My bowed head swings backward in a wide arc, all the way to the grass. I try to shoot upright again, but I’m stopped by Rock’s hand on the upper part of my chest. I’m not sure if I’m more alarmed by the impact of my back on the ground, or the pulse of excitement that spreads through my breasts at Rock’s firm touch. He pins me from rising. “The first thing you need to remember about Sealbreaker is humility. I know that might be hard for you.” I confirm his suspicion by grasping his arm and rolling back. I plan on tossing him over me, but Rock breaks my hold with a well-placed chop of his wrist against my hand. It pops my fingers right open.
“So what, get used to staying on the ground?” I spit up at him. Rock smirks.
“Well, that’s not exactly what I was going for, but yeah, that too. I get the impression you haven’t fallen much before. And I don’t mean physically,” he says. I cringe as his hammer strikes my nail right on the head. And here I thought I was getting in his head. “When you play Sealbreaker, you’re going to fall. You’ll spend hours running plays at practice, and then you get on the field…and it’ll all go to shit. That’s why most teams develop half a million plays. You’ve got to adapt. You can’t freeze up just because you fucked up. You jump up and you go at it again. Got it?” The question comes with a hand, hanging down in front of my nose. I feel like snapping it sideways with the snap of my fingers. Dalshaks don’t jump up again, because we don’t fall. If mother could hear this... Damn him. I take his hand. Rock swings me back up on my feet.
“Right. Get comfortable screwing up on stage. Have you tried asking a fish to fly?” I bite back.
“You know you’re talking to someone who can actually do that, right?” Rock teases.
“What did you actually mean, when you said I had to learn humility? Before this…frustrating tangent?” I demand, to stop myself from putting knuckles in Rock’s nose.
“I meant that, on the field, you’re not Emery Dalshak. You’re a Disruptor for Silver Spark,” Rock tells me. I cross my arms and puff a silky strand of black hair from my face.
“Serge said almost the same thing.”
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but it sounds like your brother might actually be a decent Captain,” Rock’s nose curls up like he’s smelled something rancid as he admits what he never would in the presence of his team.
“But what does it mean?” I whine. I make a similar face to Rock, unbelieving of my own impatient tone. It’s not often I need to ask anyone for clarification, on anything… God, is that really what I sound like?
“It means that, when you play Sealbreaker, you’ve got to forget about your personal goals. You think about the goal of the team, which is to drop your Goalstone down that chute. You forget about your pride. You’re not the star player, even if you are the best on the team. You’re part of a system that only works if everyone plays their part. As a Disruptor, that means stopping the other team’s Runners from getting pins and stopping their Disruptors from getting in your Runners’ way. That’s it.”
“I…” my mouth pops open on instinct. To defend myself. To explain my superior tactics from the last game, and how it resulted in our landslide victory. Then I remember how angry Serge was. I remember how I was so tired afterward that Rock had to carry me back to my room. “Alright,” I force myself to say, “how are you going to help me do that?”
“I’m going to teach you how to grapple, without any tricks,” Rock tells me. My head tilts at him as I rake my brain for exactly how this is so crucial. My sensei doesn’t wait for me to explain what’s got me so perplexed. “If you had to guess, what would you say is the most pivotal part of any Sealbreaker game?”
“I don’t know… The first score?” I do my best to emulate Rock’s first lesson not to fear failure.
“The first two minutes, when everyone’s powers are sealed,” Rock corrects, without explicitly telling me my answer was wrong. Somehow, that grates my nerves even more. I take a deep breath to stop myself from interrupting. “Whichever team’s runners get their pins first has a huge leg-up over the other team. They can get pins to their whole team before their opponents have any, if they play it right. So. In those first two minutes, what is your role?”
“Get myself a pin, so I can keep the other team’s Disruptors off our Runners,” I suppose, hands on my hips.
“EHHH!” Rock simulates a blasting wrong buzzer. I twitch away from him in surprise, with the rest of our conversation so muted. “That’s Emery-thinking. You need to think like a Disruptor! What do you do in the first two minutes, Disruptor?”
“Keep…the other team’s Disruptors from stopping our Runners?” I try instead.
“Bingo. And how are you going to do that, with your powers sealed?” Rock prompts me.
“I’m going to guess… Grappling,” I sigh.
“That’s it! Arms up!” Rock shouts. I raise both my open palms in a gesture of surrender. It takes me about a second to realize it was the wrong move. That’s about how long it takes before Rock’s lowered collar bone connects with my chest. He barrels me over with the full force of all that muscle I admired a minute ago. I flatten on the ground, heaving air into my lungs to replace what Rock squeezed out of me. “On your feet! You know the rules of Sealbreaker. Any means short of fatality are permitted. That means, if someone gets you off your feet, it’s completely within their right to beat the ever-loving piss out of you while you’re down!”
I fold up to a ninety-degree sit even while my lungs are still half-shriveled. I rise and drive my fist at Rock in a single movement. He swipes it past him, around his side, with frustrating ease. I turn the other direction, driving my elbow back at his nose instead. He catches it in a calloused hand. Rock twists my arm around my back, then bucks me a few feet away with the heel of his shoe. I spin around, panting, arms up in the right way now. I bunch two fists at my opponent, my teacher.
“That’s it. This time, you take the lead. I want to feel my back on the grass at least once before the morning’s over!” Rock dares in a smirk. I’ve never been made to smirk, myself, by someone I also want so badly to punch. I boot dew into the cool air on my way straight for him.
I feign a punch at Rock’s face to put him off-balance. I stop the strike an inch from his nose and pull back, just faster than his side-swiping palm. He’s surprised, I see on his face, but hardly vulnerable. Not from the front, anyway. I’m not sure exactly where the brilliant idea comes from - I’ve never kicked anyone in my life - but I snap my leg up at his side. Crack a rib, I figure, that’ll put him in the grass. Instead, I jostle a few of the bones in his clutching hand. His firm hold rounds the fringe of my leg muscle, when he catches it, and won’t let it go. I feel my balance slipping away.
“Better! But if you’re up against an opponent bigger than you, you’ve got to go after their center of gravity!” Rock tells me. Solid advice. I hop with my other leg and lift it from the ground. I compress into a tiny curled-up ball in the air, then buck my free leg against his chest. We both hit the grass, about a foot apart. I leap up and over to him instantly. Rock’s torso pops up immediately, only to be blocked by my own.
My thighs straddle his waist. I bear down on him with the full weight of my body, though I get the feeling as I feel him tense up beneath me that it’s not nearly enough to keep him down. No, it’s shock that keeps him there, beneath me. He stares into my eyes, inches away from his, perplexed as his rigid chest muscles flatten my breasts against me. I hold my fist back, loaded with intent to strike him. But how can I, when he has that stupid look on his face? Those stupid, mys
terious, sharp features gleam out with a glaze of sweat like a glossy carving in the side of a mountain. My fist unfolds. Rock’s lip twitches, preparing to deliver some other ridiculous lesson, no doubt. But mine are so close - I disarm him the way that feels most natural in the moment.
I crash down on Rock like the first wave sent by a storm wind. My face presses hard against his. My body and his compress into mirror images. Our noses slide past one another to lock our jaws together, to let his tongue into my mouth. I feel it slide in alongside mine. I feel his hand arc around my waist. I feel something pulse once, then twice harder between my legs, through Rock’s pants. It sends a chill right up the back of my shirt.
What is this? What started as a move of strategy has spiraled almost too far out of my hands to grasp and rein in. I meant to catch him off-guard. To rob him of his senses so I could deliver a pivotal strike. But where are my senses? It’s a question I suddenly don’t have the answer to. The only questions I can answer now are what I want to do with Rock’s clothes - cast them out across the field - and what I want to do with his body. I want to feel it, even more than I already am. With my lips. With my hands. I want to feel him, outside himself and inside of me.
But I can’t do that. What if I ruin it? No, not the relationship, I remind myself, the connection I need for Mother and Father’s plan. If I want to maintain appearances, I need to stay on a Sealbreaker Team. If I don’t work on my skills, Serge will throw me off. I need Rock, one way or another, and… I’ve never done this before. If I’m not careful, I’m going to do it wrong. And if I do that…I’ll lose Rock, and botch the plan. Only one of those things should matter to me, but now’s not the time to figure that out. Not with Rock’s hand sliding up the side of my shirt, to the outside of my bra. I catch it before it can climb higher. I peel my lips back from his.
“That’s…another lesson,” I grin down at him. He looks up at me in a way that forces me to stop, just for a second. It’s a face I’ve never seen before. Not on Rock. Not on anyone. He’s amazed. Not by my family reputation. By me. I take it in, then I snap my fingers.
I blink out of sight, leaving Rock alone in the grass for the rest of the morning. He springs up to glance from one end of the field to the other. He doesn’t spot me behind the archway that leads to B-Wing. He won’t see me again until our next practice. It won’t be for a few days, since I have an important meeting to attend. I slip away with a peculiar spring in my confused step.
Emery,
The Broken Academy, Chamber of the Six
“Hello, Emery,” I’m greeted at my evaluation by Magister Reynold. The man who’s replaced my father on the Council of Six is an odd egg, if a likeable one, even for me. His white beard might make him look truly mystical, if it wasn’t for the massive croissant-gut that flares out from his highly-adorned robes. He comes off as a mall santa in the wrong costume.
“Hello,” I answer him with a nod. It’s traditional for a student’s advisor to open a Council meeting, but I know he’s not the one who called it. Honestly, I’m shocked Reynold’s been able to assuage the other five’s worries this long. I’ve been ready for this meeting, this interrogation, since my first day at the Broken Academy.
“Don’t be alarmed by the formality of this meeting. Think of it as a wellness visit. A checkup to see how your term is going so far. Normally such a meeting would be in my office,” Reynold states, but I feel the shift building in his throat. I feel the transition from a welcome, friendly atmosphere to something else already. “However, my fellow Councilmembers had a few questions about your experience I’m afraid I didn’t know the answer to. In the interests of time and information potency, we thought it best to convene as a full Council.”
“Of course,” I agree, like I don’t have any idea what’s really going on here, behind the showy curtain. They might as well just ask me outright if I’m planning a coup.
“How are you doing here, Emery?” Dragonlord Thise takes the lead, and I have to admit, takes me by surprise. I clear my throat before I start.
“I…imagine the Council has access to my test evaluations,” I say, to avoid coming off as a boaster. No matter how you tell someone your school record is above perfect, it never quite comes off as humble. And the last thing I want right now is a brighter spotlight on me. Not when I’m finally making some headway in my mission.
“That we do,” Thise answers.
“As well as your Sealbreaker statistics,” Fey Rorelia adds in her hushed, songlike tone. I bite my tongue to stop the very details she’s just shared for me from spilling out. If they already know it all, why am I here?
“I didn’t mean your Academics, Emery. Or your impressive victory in your first Sealbreaker match. I wonder how you feel here?” Thise asks. I almost cough out loud at the word. Feel. The Council has really outdone themselves this time. They set me up marvelously, opening with the familiar pleasantries of Reynold, followed by this downright alien concern from a woman I don’t even know. They must want me off-balance for whatever question comes next. I’m teetering alright, but I’ll be damned if they’re going to undo my weeks of espionage in a handful of minutes.
“Feel, Dragonlord? I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I say, to buy some time. At least, that’s what I meant it to do when I opened my mouth. I’m shocked by the authenticity of my acting when I hear myself sound so…lost. I wanted a vote of sympathy. I wanted to put them off-balance. But the heavier I feel eyes of pity on me, the more I feel there really is something in me to be pitied.
“Which is what I was worried about. I saw similar tendencies in your brother, when he first started as D-Wing Supervisor,” Thise explains. Her words crack through the stony skin on the outside of my spirit. They leech under my mask. I want nothing more than to tune out her truths, twisted to bend me in their favor, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m curious. I listen. After all, it could be valuable intel, right? “After a year in the Broken Academy, Serge showed a remarkable lack of autonomy. He wanted a higher position with more responsibility. But when I talked to him…he had almost no interest in it. He couldn’t explain why he wanted to be Wing Supervisor, at all, just that he wanted to be. I understand now that this was a power play by your family, when they were still welcome at the Academy.”
“I’ve gotten to know your brother since I became Magister here,” Reynold jumps in. I cock my confused head at him. “I see only echoes of the young man the Dragonlord describes. Scars left behind on the mind of the man your brother has become, since deciding his own path. He struggles sometimes, to decide what topic he actually enjoys, because he’s been so trained to serve the needs of his family, your family, first.”
“We fear the same thing happening to you,” Sorceress Lily adds. “We were overjoyed to see you join a Sealbreaker team. To see you come out of your academic shell a little.” I turn her a weak little smirk. Mother…the clever vixen. It worked. If only the Six knew the one thing that redeemed me in their minds was her design, too. I never would have joined a Sealbreaker team if I hadn’t been ordered to, though I find myself oddly glad I did.
“I find the competition…refreshing,” I dig out of the vault of genuine feelings I keep tucked away for moments like this. The Council smiles and bobs their heads.
“That being said...” the VampKing’s voice slithers around the room like a snake between my feet. “We worry about your request for a curfew extension.” A shiver prickles nerves all over my body. I knew it! And still, I gave in. I listened to their warm words of concern, and the silver tongue of the enemy made me forget: this is an interrogation, no matter what they call it.
“Your grades are astounding,” Dragonlord Thise picks up the thread where the VampKing let it down, “and your first Sealbreaker match… We hardly see landslide victories like that, even with well-seasoned teams. The request to use tricks outside of class made sense, in light of your new sports career. But now you want even more time. It can’t be to study or practice. The Council is simply concerne
d you are going to burn yourself out, with everything you’re taking onto your plate. You’re only in your first term, Emery.”
“I…” I mutter while I struggle to reorganize my thoughts. They’ve sniffed out the insecurity in my armor. They’ve plunged a dagger straight through it. Had the Council come at me with a barrage of accusations, I could have responded the way my training prepared me. They’ve disguised it as something I’m far less familiar with. They’ve made it into something I don’t know quite how to deal with. Care, concern. “I may…appear to be a gifted Sealbreaker player, but the truth is I made a poor decision in our last game, in my lack of experience. That trick Serge and I used put both of us out of commission for days. My petition for extra time…was for additional practice. To help close the gap of experience between me and the rest of my team.”
“I told you,” Reynold sighs in relief. It makes me want to melt into a puddle and slink away. He’s so blind to what kind of student he’s really mentoring it hurts. Sure, part of what I told the Council is the truth. But all of it is built on a foundation of lies. I need the extra practice to make sure my brother doesn’t throw me off the team, so I won’t lose my out-of-class trick privileges, which have nothing to do with Sealbreaker. They have everything to do with why I need to be allowed out before and after hours. So no one will be around when I corrupt the Tether Teleporters. “But…like the Dragonlord said, you’ve made many commitments in a short time here, Emery. It’s a tall order, and you may not succeed if it’s not something you’re passionate about. You’re sure it’s you that wants it? No one else?”
“Yes.” No. My lips and my brain utter opposite messages. Am I sure I want to shuffle my social connections and reputation around as strategy plays in a game I don’t even control? Of course not. But then, I don’t control the game.
“Very good… You have the appropriate references, so your request will undergo consideration tonight,” Reynold tells me, “But I don’t expect you’ll have any trouble getting permission.”