Old Legends Beginnings: Classes start
Waking abruptly, James sat up in bed and almost got knocked back out. “Where am I? And why do I feel like I am burning up?” he says after getting another hit to the head.
“Jesus-Mary and Joseph! Don’t do that!!” yelled a startled girl. James looked followed the fist to the person it belonged to and found a mid-height brunet with a slim figure and mid bust size. He gave his best smile to try to calm her down a bit.
“Sorry about that. I kinda wake up with a rush if something does not seem right.” He says in an apologetic tone. “I am James Hail by the way.”
Taking a few relaxing breaths the healer final calms her nerves and speaks with a more calm voice. “My name is Debra Carie and I am a healer. Before you ask I am a sophomore… And I am also dating someone.” She giggles out at the end.
Being embarrassed, James started to blush until her giggles started to subside. “Well thank you for healing me, but why does it still feel like I am burning up?”
“That happens to be a side effect from when I heal things. I think of it as the body fighting infection heats it up, but my healing just leaves the heat after all is healed.” She states in a practiced matter.
While she was speaking he looked around to see if anyone of the other people he meet were around. Seeing none and thinking that it would be nice to see how the rest of the battles went; he started to stand. When he was about to get completely on his feet he became dizzy. “Woe, why am I dizzy if I just got healed?” he stated as she finished her explanation. He turned his head to look at Debra and found her looking puzzled.
“Hmmm. It could be that when I hit you in the head it gave you a slight concussion. Want me to check?” she asked with a little concern.
“That would be great! I would rather be in full health again instead of having to worry if I will tumble-down the stairs when I have to climb up to my room tonight.” James says with a smile.
Debra laughs as she puts her hands on the side of his head. He feels a slight heat increase on his head and then it disappears with the rest of the dizziness. “There you go James. I bet you are itching to see how the rest of the fights went.” He bobs his head as she finishes. “Well you can follow the yellow lines they will take you to where the brackets are. If I recall correctly, the guys bracket just finished up a little bit after you got here, so your ranking should be up by the time you get there.” She finishes with a smile and excuses herself to go see how someone on another bed is fairing.
He follows the yellow light back to the main hall to find that most of the guys have left, and a few of the girls still standing around waiting for the final match to be finished. He takes a quick glance to search for his name among the rankings, and found that he is in fourth place. It seems weird that after all his fights that getting to fourth place is as far as he got. He also checked for Robert’s ranking which took a bit longer than his first search did ending with Robert being in twentieth place. After thinking it could have been worse, he turns to find Julie coming towards him.
“Hey Julie, how did you end up doing?” he says as he walks over to meet her. He looks her over and did not noticing any lasting injury.
“I did okay. I was beaten the round before you got knocked out, but that last round for me seemed like it lasted forever! I mean the guys finals match was half way through when we finished, so I would estimate it took about thirty minutes for my match to finish.” She said in a tired voice, but with a smile.
“Damn that is a long match! Did your opponent have invisibility or something?”
She turns her head and blushes, “Well one of us had an ability something like invisibility. But my opponent happened to be very durable and could withstand all my hits. So when I started to get tired my arm finally got caught to end the match for me.”
“What do you mean by ‘something like invisibility?’ Do you mean like an illusionist?”
“Well, I am a kind of illusionist, but that is not true either. I am a shifter that has a few other exceptional talents. I would try to explain what I look like, but seeing it is so much easier.” She says as she starts to change forms.
In a few moments, Julie is gone and standing before James is a human-bird hybrid with gorgeous fiery feather colors. The only bird type he could even think of being similar in description leaves is mouth without him realizing it “Phoenix?”
“Yup, that would be it.” She says as she changes back and wobbles a little bit before he catches her arm. She smiles back up at him before speaking again, “but can we leave some of the other details about powers for another day? I am kinda drained from the day’s events. Mind walking me back to the dining area?”
James gives a nod, as they start heading for the elevator. He starts thinking that this training will not be so bad if he can spend some more time with Julie.
Without many people realizing it, a grin appeared on Dean Rica’s face thinking that many of these kids have no idea what is going to happened starting the next day.
***
After Robert was healed, he did not wait around for standings. He knew roughly were he stood with the performance he had given. It did not bother him that he went out in the second round since most teleport supers did not tend to do well in the battle rankings at first. He was heading back to dinner when he notices a female that was following him. He thought about when the school term would start and realized it was most likely another HCP student like him. So he slowed down to let her catch up a bit and to see if she noticed him.
“Hey are you following me?” He states. He noticed that she did not even realize that he was around her until he spoke. “Sorry about the fright. I just wanted to see if you wanted to grab something to eat at the dining center before all the others come back up.”
“Umm… I would be okay with that…. By the way my name is Jill Aviator and I am a…” She trailed off realizing speaking about that in the halls on the main campus would be a very bad idea, “freshman.”
Robert was thanking whatever god out there that she caught herself before spilling that stuff outside a closed room. “Well me too. Aviator… I have heard that name before. Isn’t there a few politicians by that name?” He says and turns to face her again.
“Hmph. Well I always thought Aviator was a common name.” Jill says as she tries to move it away from the politicians. Robert is not fooled, but he would not want to talk about his family on the first day either.
“Well there probably is, but I would have no idea. I come from the middle of nowhere Minnesota. Heck I could be thinking about someone who was called an aviator for as a title from a movie or something.” Robert says in a friendly voice.
Jill visible relaxes when he says this and puts on a smile of her own, which stuns Richard for second with her beauty. They walk to the dining center and take their time eating while others that they saw down below start to pop in. As they leave they see James and Julie heading into eat, but Richard decides to forgo talking with them since he is making a new friend.
“Well it has been fun getting to know you Robert, but I feel like I might fall over from being so tired. Do you mind if I call it an early night?” Jill says as she covers a yawn.
“That is fine I was thinking something similar. Mind if I walk with you at least to your dorm building?”
“I would enjoy that.” Jill says with another dazzling smile.
With that they start walking towards the dorms. Robert realized that she also got stuck in the same crappy dorms as him. But she was luck and only had to hike three floors up while he had to go six. He was starting to head up more stairs as she turned around and spoke in a shy voice, “Um if you do not mind could you help me get the final items into my room? I kinda forgot about them since I was running late when I arrived to the dorms today, and then I forgot all about it when we started to climb the stairs….If not I can always grab them by myself but it would take me more than one trip.”
Robert smiles and starts to think that since someone helped him move he should at least help another to pass along the good karma. “I have no problems helping.”
So they went back downstairs to find an expensive looking car which seemed to be half full of clothes and other items. Jill piled all the stuff onto Robert so they could make the trip in one load. It was not too heavy so he did not have to worry about bringing them up the stairs. Jill grabbed the remaining items, and by the time they reached her room they were both panting due to being exhausted from the day’s activities. He brought the stuff in and said goodnight before heading back to his room. When he laid down to go to sleep he realized that her room number seemed familiar, but he could not place why room 352 would seem familiar.
***
The first day the students thought would be the worse. But the next two days were ten times worse than the first. They met up with the Dean for their first ethics class. Dean Rica seemed pleased to see only five students dropped after the trials the day before, but she knew that the coaches would bring down that number a bunch more in the weeks to come. “Good day everyone. I hope you rested well after the trials yesterday,” seeing some strain on her students she could not help a small smile from showing, “For you todays Hero ethics class we will just be going over the syllabus and which should allow you some extra time in Gym today.” She says as she searches the room to see who would get that the thirty minutes extra would be harsher than staying in her classroom. She only sees a few with widening eyes and continues on with her plans. “Now who can tell me why we have hero ethics? Jill please let us know why you think we have hero ethics as a main freshman course.”
Jill did not raise her hand but she knew she still had to answer, “Um… to help the students understand what certified heroes will face in emotional situations.”
“That is correct, but let’s go a little deeper than that today. Angel anything else to had to that?”
A white-haired, black pupil student said, “Heroes face an abundance of missions which can be seen as harsh with no right answer on how to complete without someone being hurt. I believe we will be taught about how to see how both the right and wrong answers would have an effect on the hero world and the individual heroes.”
“That was well thought out Angel, and will be a few of the topics we discuss throughout the year.” Dean Rica says as Angel sits down. “Those were two good examples of what I hope you all take out of this class this year. But there are others such as why heroes are needed, what to a hero can and cannot do, and how to perceive the rankings of threat levels. There are others but I hope you will be able to spot them for yourselves. With that enjoy your thirty minutes extra in gym today.”
As the students leave, Dean Rica starts to grin and hopes that more than a few will have a greater appreciation for her class in the week to come.