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Level: 1 Ki Reserve: 350 Ki Color: White with a light blue aura around it. Gene-X-Kinetic Weaponry

||Level One||Devil's Rhapsody||Ki Reserve: 350||

"CAN YOU KEEP IT DOWN OVER THERE?! I'M TRYING TO KEEP THIS BYTCH FROM DUMPING ME!" Hot Shot started yelling over at where Arete had just strummed really loud. Del smashed her fist on top of his head and started pointing her finger in his face.

"I really am very sorry about them. But this Devil's Rhapsody business? That's pretty sweet. So how do I go about making it stronger? I bet it would certainly make my music sound better!" Aaron looked down at the acoustic in his hand, and picked at the duct tape holding it together. "Granted, I bet my music would sound better if I hadn't received such a busted instrument. . ."

Aaron nodded his head and placed his hands on his guitar. He strummed a few times, trying to focus the sound, but to no avail. He closed his eyes and concentrated. He was able to drown out most of the world around him, but Del and Hot Shot's bickering was still persistent in his mind. Aaron took a deep breath and concentrated harder, melting away the voices of his friends.

The world became still and black around Aaron. There was no sound. No light. No Del or Hot Shot or Yue or Arete. No Jungle. No Island. Nothing. A perfect silence. In this silence, Aaron moved his fingers unconsciously along the strings of his guitar. They made a soft hum, and Aaron saw within himself a soft azure glow. it pulsed at first, along an axis, waves touching high and low registers in time with the gentle pluck pluck of the string.

Aaron focused the wave and found that without moving his hands he could alter it--make it bigger or smaller--push it away and draw it near. He made the line do loops and shapes. He focused on the wave and opened his eyes.

The world was back. Clear, focused. Aaron looked at his guitar, and saw the tinge of blue around his fingers. Like he did with his eyes closed, he willed the blue to move onto the guitar strings. When he pulled his hand away, the blue remained, like some sort of liquid magic, focused along the strings. Aaron gave the guitar a strum, but no sound came out. The blue--the Ki took the shape of the vibrations, though. Aaron released his focus on the ki and he heard the sound of the note he'd just strummed, but delayed. He looked up at Arete and smiled.

"Control where the sound waves go..." Arete had said. Aaron looked back at the guitar, and over at his bickering friends. Smiling, Aaron drew himself back to his Ki and brought it to his lips. Aaron then whispered under his breath, but no sound came out. He focused behind him--at Hot Shot, specifically. His ear. A second later, Aaron released the ki, and Hot Shot heard Aaron whisper "Just give it up, jackass!" into his ear.

"Like that, Arete?"

||Level One||Devil's Rhapsody||Ki Reserve: 350||

[/enter Trailer]
Aaron nodded to his teacher and got to work. He started flipping through albums the albums in Arete's collection, and picked out songs that he enjoyed. He found himself troubled, though. The music didn't come as easily to him as he thought. Something seemed distracting to him.

After listening to the songs once, Del came into the trailer, followed by Hot Shot. "Hello, Aaron. I wanted to apologize for earlier. I don't usually fly off the handle like that, but I don't typically appreciate it when I am blown off. Anyway, I want into your band."

"My what?--"

"Your band. Alexander told me all about it. I want in. I can play basically anything, and I can do technical stuff from my laptop. It'll give me something to do here anyway."

"I think you're--wait." Thinking about it, Aaron realized that a band would actually be exactly what he would need. It would be perfect! "Ya know what? Welcome to the band. You can drum? Hot Shot can--"

"Just Alex now, I think, man. I got your bass." Del pulled something from a small backpack and began to unfold it. It was some sort of collapsible drum kit.

"Oh, I can drum." Del winked.

"Well perfect! In that case, I have to play these six songs for Arete, but I have to sit here and focus on them first. I think it might help me if I can concentrate on them while thinking about how the different rhythms could be overlapped. I'll start running through them and you guys let me know what you think of the set!"

Aaron started running through the songs and telling each of his new band-mates what he'd like to do with the music. As he spoke about the music, he began to see and feel the way the music affected the world around him. He became attuned to the subtle variations of vibrations on glass and the music, itself, was affected by the smallest things in the world around him, like the thin walls of the trailer or the silverware sitting in the sink. Aaron found himself at peace as the three of them listened to the music, and in peace, he felt himself at one with these two people. . .

||Level One||Devil's Rhapsody||Ki Reserve: 350||

Arete went to sit in the audience, as Aaron, Del, and Alex ascended the stage. They set up the mics and their instruments and began to warm up. Del got the lights and everything set up through her laptop, and loaded up her synth.

Aaron stepped forward and looked at his audience of one. Aaron had only ever been to one concert before, and he was in the rafters, there. He tried to be professional, though. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Are you guys ready to rock?!" Aaron shouted into the mic. Arete bemusedly clapped his hands and smiled, nodding. Aaron felt a bit like a dork performing for a single person, but it wasn't going to stop him! "Without any further ado, I'd like to introduce you to..." Aaron smiled, and looked back at Del and Alex. They had agreed on a name earlier, and it only served to amuse him. "..Kajura of Ludus Academy!" Alex strummed into his bass hard, and they began their set.

[1/6] Del started out, lifting the sound on her synth board and pushing them through her speakers. She tapped her mini-kit and Alex changed a setting on his guitar, strumming a very simple beat. Aaron stepped up to his mic. "In this desert/ in darkness/lying with the gun across his chest" Aaron kept singing, and as he played and the song continue he could feel himself become pumped. He could also see and feel the strength of the song's vibrations pushing into the air around them.

[2/6] As the final vibration of the last song melted away into the night air, the group changed settings on their instruments. Because Aaron only had the dinky acoustic, he pushed his ki into the instrument so he could replicate the sound he'd heard from the albums in Arete's trailer. Aaron strummed really fast on the strings for the rhythm line, while his mates backed him up. This time Alex stepped up to the microphone and sang, rather pointedly, at Del. "It's time to take ahold of what belongs to me/ it's time to walk away with no apologies...".

[3/6] As they started into their third song, Aaron started to notice new guests coming into the crowd and gathering around Arete. They were children, but looked like...strange hybrids of people and animals. He could swear that one of them had only one large eye on her head, and another had the wings of a bat. . . To cool down after the last vocal song, the group decided to play something with a little more ...electricity. Aaron used his newly found Sound control skill to cause delays and make his guitar strings sound like synth keys.

[4/6] Del's turn to sing. Aaron was surprised that she would want to sing an Offspring song, but in practice he was amazed that this quiet little girl had the energy for such a song. Del walked right over to Alex while she sang: "Now Dance, fugger, dance, Man he never had a chance..." and then she spun around to Aaron and danced her fingers across his shoulders: "And no one even knew it was really only you..."

[5/6] The next song on their set list was a bit...eccentric. Of Aaron's choices this was the most experimental, but he wanted to show that he understood the mechanics of sound. And so, Aaron stepped forward and sung a song in a language he did not understand. The audience at this point was not so bad, and they actually seemed to be enjoying the music.

[6/6] The final song was one that Aaron had never heard before, but it's lyric touched his soul in a strange way. It was almost as though the lyrics were trying to tell him something, but he couldn't quite catch the meaning. But he sang, and as he sang, he felt the strength of music surging and coursing through his existence. As he finished the song, the audience stood and clapped, and Aaron could hear the applause thunder from that concert that he had once attended. "Well, you could say that I'm well liked/ But I'll never be friendless/ You could say that I'm alright/ Or you could say I'm schizophrenic. . . "

As the concert ended, and people started leaving, Aaron walked up to see Arete's opinion.