then could you make the next chapter end in a spot where we can wait without dying?

Um, no promises... I end all my chapters once I reach a point I feel works as an end. >_>

But I'll see what I can do (the outlook is not necessarily that great, as the next few chapters are all part of a sort of arc I've had planned for months. so it's almost definitely going to end still in the middle of something... at least i'll try to make it not a cliffhanger? no promises.)

*sigh*

you know, i've been waiting for tooooo long...waaaay too long...so what part of tonight is "tonight"?

Within the next... hour? (If I posted what I have now, I am pretty sure it would qualify as a very, very cruel cliffhanger)

I appreciate your patience. I'm sorry it's taking a while.

Some time later, Rhen stumbled wearily into classroom 112, formerly a large closet, and found, to her relief, that it was empty.

She hadn’t yet had a chance to look at the files that Neya had handed her, which she’d rather been hoping to do before starting class. Well, fine. She had fifteen minutes left before her class was officially set to begin, which, while not ideal, was at least enough time to do a quick skim.

Only of course she didn’t have the files anymore. She stared at her uselessly empty hands.

Where had she left them? Mentally she retraced her steps since receiving the files.

Small talk with a friendly first-year teacher on her way back into the building, as she was coming back from a visit to a healer near school, where she had needed to go because the school healer would have meant waiting in the back of a long line of students nursing injuries from over-enthusiastic practice… All this, of course, because she’d banged her head after diving under a table in the library where she had almost definitely left her files.

Even if she ran, she wouldn’t be able to get to the library and back in fifteen minutes. She would have to wing it.

Oh, yay. She sank down into the chair at the front of the very small classroom. Six desks had been arranged in two rows of three, with about three inches of breathing space between each one. She supposed that meant that at some point or other this room actually held seven people at once- she wondered how they didn’t asphyxiate.

One second. Was she supposed to teach six students at once?

She didn’t feel as if Neya had handed her six separate folders, but seeing as she had nearly suffered a minor concussion she wasn’t sure she trusted her memory.

Wasn’t she supposed to be teaching one-on-one? Her schedule had said something about that, hadn’t it? Why, oh why had she left it upstairs?

Time to calm down. She struggled to remember what the schedule had said- she’d stared at the blasted thing long enough, she really should remember, only of course her mind had been occupied with other things the entire time…

Today was important. It was her first day all over again, and this time she didn’t want to mess up.

“Good afternoon!” She said, jumping up and smiling, as a brown-haired boy poked his head in. “It’s really nice to meet you, I’m-”

He blinked, turning his head from side to side. “Oops. Wrong room,” he said, and backed away.

She almost called after him, to ask him if perhaps he was mistaken. But that would have been pathetic.

It was 12:45, wasn’t it? That was when she was supposed to be here, right? Where were they?

She sat back down and waited, and waited, for what felt like hours.

At 12:55 someone came hurtling in through the door so fast that for a moment Rhen only saw a hazy afterimage.

“Hi!” Said the girl, jumping up and down in place. “I’msorryI’mlate!”

“Um,” Rhen said.

“BasicallyalotofthingshappenedonmywayoverhereandIkindakeptgettingdistractedbecausetherewasthiskittytrappedinatreeand…"

Rhen’s brain tried feebly to catch up with what her ears were hearing, and gave up. The bizarre thing was that as the wave of words washed over her it became slowly possible for her to distinguish individual phrases.

Finally the girl, apparently out of breath, stopped talking for a moment to sit down in one of the desks. While sitting she somehow managed to sprawl out, long legs splayed and arms dangling.

“So what are we learning today?” She asked, still in the super-fast blur that was apparently her only means of communicating.

“I… think today is just for. Um. Getting to know you.” Rhen said, still a little dazed. “At least I’m pretty sure it said ‘General Meeting’ on the schedule… I’m sorry,” she said, “I got some papers from the office but I kind of left them somewhere due to various circumstances, so I’m just going to be, um, making today up as I go along. On that thought, may I know your name?”

“Kylie,” the girl said, and flashed Rhen a huge grin. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs…”

“Ms,” Rhen said. “Ms. Darzon. But that sounds kind of weird so I guess you can just call me Rhen, okay?” She smiled back at the girl. It was hard not to. Kylie smiled with every fiber of her being radiating joy, it made you feel happy just seeing it.

“Fantastic. An inept teacher and the idiot girl,” someone muttered from the doorway, and Rhen turned to see a scowling blond boy enter the classroom. His face shimmered weirdly, and it took her a moment to realize that that was because he had a silvery tattoo climbing up the right side of his face.

“Hio!” Kylie said, apparently not at all bothered by the ‘idiot girl’ bit. “We’re going to be in the same class? I’m so excited!”

“I’m not,” the boy said acidly, but his expression, a sort of pleased half-smile, didn’t quite match his tone of voice.

“Me’n Hio have known each other for aaaaaages.” Kylie said, spreading her arms wide.

“Are you the tutor they said we were getting?” Hio asked, looking Rhen over critically. “Because you look kind of pathetic.”

“Thanks,” Rhen drawled. So these were the kind of students she would be tutoring? Well, she had wanted a challenge.

“Um, excuse me,” someone said. “This is room 112, right?”

“Yes,” Rhen said, turning back to the doorway. She braced herself for the kind of person she would see.

“Oh, great,” the boy said, “I was worried I’d gotten lost again. Um. I’m Gaden, by the way.”

“I’m Rhen,” Rhen said. “Um. Your teacher.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, politely.

“Likewise,” she said.

Somehow they managed to all sit down, a miracle made more miraculous by Kylie’s ability to occupy lots of space above and beyond her actual mass and volume.

Rhen felt she ought to say something.

“So,” she said. “It’s a… nice day.”

Hio rolled his eyes.

“I’m just deciding if I should wait for any more students to come or not,” she said. “Technically you were all supposed to have been here already, but I’m trying to decide if whether that time actually passed nearly half an hour ago makes it more or less likely that someone else will decide to show up, based on your own performances.”

She sighed. “Fine, if there is anyone else-“ she didn’t really think so, hearing the students’ names said out loud was helping her fill in her memory of the schedule and she was pretty sure this was it- “then they will just have to find us themselves, as it really is their own fault at this point.”

“Find us?” Gaden asked.

“Yes.” Rhen said. “Today is for getting to know you, correct? I can’t do that in this… small hole.”

Kylie snickered, and even Hio looked slightly amused.

“Alright, get up,” Rhen said. “We don’t really have any time to waste, let’s go, hurry up.”

“Where are we going?” Kylie asked.

“Why, where else? The training fields, of course. If I’m going to evaluate where each of you are, ability-wise, it’s best I witness it for myself.”

---

Hio was not feeling in a particularly good mood that afternoon.

It still stung that he had to be taking these stupid lessons. “Assisted Learning” his foot. A person from his background didn’t need “assistance”, they needed honors placement and respect that he simply hadn’t been getting.

But what really, really got to him was that, once he already was taking these stupid supplementary lessons, the teacher he was having them with was such a…

In front of the group, Rhen- what a stupid name, he thought sourly- laughed at some comment she herself had made.

A stupid ditz. That was the phrase he was looking for.

“We’re here!” Rhen said.

Well, obviously. Any person with eyes could see that they arrived at a… uh… grassy field. It wasn’t like she had to announce it.

By the side of the field was a rack of weapons. Rhen strode over to it and gathered up several swords in her arms.

“Take your pick,” she said. “Personally, I’ll be using…” She lifted a sword in each hand and considered for a moment. “This. It has a nice balance even if it’s a bit on the light side.”

All the swords in the pile looked exactly the same to him. Finally he chose one that had a nice design running down the hilt. Kylie and Gaden chose swords after him, Kylie heading straight for a large double-handed sword and Gaden hesitating before choosing an extremely plain, small sword.

“Interesting choices,” the idiot teacher said, a smile curling at the edges of her mouth.

“Alriiiight,” she said. She held her sword out in front of her, and something… changed.

Where a moment ago she’d been smiling, now no trace of such an expression remained. Her eyes had narrowed, her posture had sharpened. She looked…

Ready to kill. It radiated off every inch of her.

Hio swallowed and found himself taking a step backwards.

“Who wants to go first?” Rhen asked. There was an awkward silence for a moment.

“Um, I’ll try.” Kylie said.

Hio drew in his breath. Kylie had flattened two of her previous teachers- it was one of the reasons she was here now.

He wondered if Rhen was able to tell how dangerous Kylie was. For a second, he actually believed it was possible- he’d been shaken by the sudden change in the woman.

But no. She looked completely unconcerned. She was… smirking, actually. Teachers always did that with Kylie, dismissed her as an inept blabbermouth.

He thought it would be kind of funny when Kylie wiped the floor with her.

---

“I’ll give you a fifteen-second head start,” Rhen said.

The girl lunged forward- ooh, nice, she was quick on her feet. Rhen neatly side-stepped the movement, and amended the previous thought. Extremely quick on her feet.

The girl went plunging forward before catching herself, swinging around for a wide stroke, green light flaring on the blade-

“Fifteen seconds over,” Rhen said, and disarmed her with a flick of her sword.

Kylie’s sword went flying. Rhen gritted her teeth- she wasn’t used to using flimsy, light little swords like this one. She’d intended for the sword to drop only a foot or two away.

“Go get it,” she said to the girl. “But before you do, let me explain- It’s great that you’re very fast, and most people would not be able to avoid that initial attack.” She grinned, as she found the wors she was looking for coming easily to her. It really was a completely different experience from Sirona’s stifling classroom.

“Key phrase? Most people. You run into one who can, and you’ve wasting energy unnecessarily by lunging ahead like that, not to mention that you’re leaving yourself wide open.

Also, you never, ever swing from behind like that- or rather I should say that you’re only allowed to do that once you have enough experience to tell if a gamble like that is worth it- because you can’t keep a proper grip in that position and it’s laughably easy to disarm you.”

Kylie was panting hard, staring numbly at her empty hands (which were probably in pain from the over-enthusiastic disarmament, Rhen thought ruefully). Over on the sidelines Hio looked shocked- he’d probably seen plenty of people defeated by Kylie’s insane speed and hadn’t considered that she could lose.

Good for him, then, Rhen thought, remembering his snide comments from earlier.

She turned back to Kylie.

“So on two counts you’re dead right now- first for leaving yourself open in the beginning, although since I gave you a head start perhaps we won’t count that, and second because your sword is now lying several feet away and the time it takes you to reclaim it is all I need to get in a fatal shot.”

Kylie gulped, for once left with nothing to say.

“You can go get your sword now,” Rhen said, and turned back to the others, twirling her sword. “Alriiiight. Hio, you’re up next. Fifteen seconds, once again.”

Hio wasted his fifteen seconds dancing around her, carefully seeking an opening. She noted approvingly that his technique was actually pretty good, but…

This time she was careful to disarm him more gently, relying less on brunt impact than on the twist of the sword.

“Your technique is fine for now, appropriately cautious,” she said, “but after watching Kylie you should have realized the value of that fifteen-second window of opportunity and used it, not squandered it by fighting in the way you’re accustomed.”

He nodded sullenly and went to pick up his sword.

“Alright, Gaden-“

He came running at her before she had even turned around. She laughed and dodged, but as she did he changed direction suddenly and-

BOOM.

She reeled back from the blast, felt the skin on her face peeling…

What kind of swordmagic was that? It was incredible, she had never experienced anything like-

“Oooooh,” Gaden moaned. He was lying on the ground clutching his arm and looking awful. His shirt sleeve had been ripped apart, baring an arm that looked swollen and purplish.

“Oh lord,” Rhen said. “I think we should…”

The skin of the arm was beginning to crack, oozing a pussy goo.

“That definitely needs a healer,” Rhen said, feeling slightly sick. Her face was still stinging in pain, but she ignored it. She crouched down by the boy and gingerly placed her arm around and under his shoulders, lifting and supporting.

“Can you walk?” She asked.

He whimpered. His complexion was nearing pale green. So no, he probably couldn’t.

“Alright. Alright. It’s going to be okay,” she said, quelling the rising fear in her stomach for his sake- how had this happened?

“Kylie.” She said. “Go get the healer. Cut the line, tell her it’s important. Hio, do you know where the nearest supplies closet is?”

He shook his head no, wide-eyed.

“Alright. Um… In Field B- do you know where Field B is? Good. In Field B towards the far end of the field there should be a big wooden chest with some basic supplies in it. Just grab a potion or something and run back here.”

Hio nodded and ran off. Rhen turned her attention back to Gaden.

“You have to remember to breathe,” she said. “The pain is helping speed up your body’s healing process, that’s what pain is supposed to do, what you need to do is stay as calm as possible until help comes.”

“Okay…” He said, limply.

Hio came running up carrying a handful of supplies- clearly grabbed at random- only a few feet ahead of the healer, being dragged along by an insistent Kylie.

“What’s going on?” The healer said, and then saw Gaden.

“Oh,” she said. “Gaden. It happened again?”

Gaden nodded weakly.

“Wait… again?” Rhen said, as the healer began busily sorting through the supplies Hio had brought. “This has happened before?”

The healer nodded, putting her hands together and closing her eyes in concentration. “Hold his head for me, will you? And yes, that’s correct. Several times, actually- each time while he was practicing swordsinging.”

“Wh-Why wasn’t I told this?”

The healer looked surprised. “I have no idea,” she said, “I would have assumed it would be mentioned quite clearly in his file.” She turned her attention away from Rhen and focused entirely on Gaden, holding her hands out towards him so that Rhen could see a web of power pulsating between the healer’s palms.

Then she pressed her hands down firmly and the web of light pulsated, flickered, and… vanished.

“Alright,” the healer said, briskly, “all that’s left is some healing salve and a bandage and you’re good to go!” She applied the dressing quickly and got up to leave.

“That… That’s all?” Rhen said, still in shock.

“There’s not much more we can do, is there?” The healer said. “I used a pretty potent spell, he’ll be fine by tomorrow. And I really have to be back in the office now, there’s a boy in there with a fractured ankle and a new girl cast a spell wrong and is temporarily blind and having a panic attack.”

Rhen stared after her as she left, in new-found awe of what must be involved in the position of school healer.

Back to more pressing matters.

“I’m really sorry,” she whispered down to the boy still lying in her lap. “I had no idea… I didn’t think they would mention something like this only in the files… But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Wanted to try beating you,” he said, smiling weakly at her. “And it’s not like it… happens every time…”

“Hio, Kylie, can you bring Gaden back to his room, please? I need to go retrieve my files now. Class is dismissed for today.”

They left, supporting Gaden between them. Rhen stayed kneeling on the ground.

Oh god. She had nearly maimed a student. It was entirely her fault- why, why had she left the files in the library, why hadn’t she read them much earlier?

Shakily she got to her feet.

It was a bit late now, but she would go get the files immediately and sit down and read them on the spot. It had been unconscionably irresponsible of her to not do that in the first place.

She took a deep breath and headed for the library.

cruel cliffhanger?

DONT POST IT NOW!!!

within the next hour...you're making me wait too long.

I apologize for the total lack of Lars in this chapter. He was supposed to come in right at the end, but that section has now been moved to beginning of next chapter...

This chapter was a very scary chapter for me to write, which was partially why it took so long. I agonized a long, long time over having OCs. I'm not particularly fond of OCs in fanfiction. But I needed them, for multiple reasons, some of which will come up sooner or later in the story.

This chapter they were the focus. I'm sorry. The spotlight will mostly get back to where it belongs very soon.

pardon me...maybe im being stupid. what is an OC?

oh, no, you're not.
sorry.
shouldn't have assumed I could use the abbreviation, it means original character...

ahh, i see. thank you for writing this! its great!!

and that said, it is time for me to pester you on the next update again!

sooo...whens the next update?

*laughs*

I dunno. I can't write another word tonight, that's for sure- I have slept 2 hours of the past 40 and the only reason I'm still awake right now is because I'm waiting for somebody to get back form the airport.

Tomorrow... We'll see.

tommorow!! fine, then, better than the day after.

...poor you, waiting 40 hours for somebody to get of a plane?! get some sleep...i dont envy you!

no, the 40 hours were because of horrible, horrible insomnia. Just the reason I'm not asleep right now is because I'm waiting...

Oh, I feel sorry for you. Thanks for updating! I really enjoyed reading it!

have you written a word yet?

Great, I loved the part where Rhen can demonstrate her super power.

*ahem* UPDATE!?!~~~

I'm really sorry, I don't think I'll be posting anything tonight after all... Messed up my time management.

(wanna know what I'm doing right now? Tryign to decipher my book to find out where phyoplankton is most common- in the littoral, limnetic, or benthic zones...)

tomorrow, then?

I hope so...
But it might not. Just be prepared for that possibility.