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 Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 3:48 am
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:02 am
1
MY BroTHeR is a dORk
Shoubu picked up Stayne's work book and showed the scawl to him. She waited for him to read what he had written and then looked at him pointedly.
"He is a dork," insisted Stayne.
Shoubu clamped her lips together. "If you can't take going to school with other kids, including Kensei, seriously, then you can be homeschooled alone."
Stayne blanched. It was only a scribble. He hadn't hurt anyone, he hadn't even said it to Kensei's face. Why was he being threatened with banishment away from other kids? Kensei always made things out to be so much worse than they actually were.
"That," Shoubu continued, "means doing what Emma says to do."
"I do do what she says!" interrupted Stayne.
"Even when she tells you to be nice to your brother and the other kids?" asked Shoubu severely.
Stayne knew that his mother already knew the answer to that.
"Please just try and get along a bit better," sighed Shoubu.
Later, Stayne stalked through the woods near the herd grounds. The herd had moved from a bunch of huts, to a bunch of houses, and now it looked like a small town. The pele here were even thinking of getting a town name.
Stayne picked up some sticks and leaves and pelted them at the trees. He didn't care about towns of names or even the shops that were operating more like shops. He didn't care that there was actually a structured schooling system run by Emma, or that there was an entire magic guild, which his mother and father kept trying to tell him to attend. He could control his power just well enough. Kensei didn't want to go to the magic guild, either, but Stayne felt, with mild horror, that hiss brother's resolve was weakening against the united striving of their parents. If Kensei decided that it was his duty to go, then Stayne would be forced to go as well.
Stayne didn't want to go and train, not because he didn't like using his dark pulse ability, which he didn't like to use much, as it made him sick and weak, but because the people in that guild were scary and freaky. Not that he would tell anyone else that that was the real reason why he didn't want to go.he would just keep on telling everyone that he was too cool to do everts schoolwork.
But... The thought suddenly occurred to him that if he was kicked out of normal school with all the other kids, they might make him be homeschooled... In the magic guild!"
Stayne dropped all of his remaining sticks, picked up a rock and pelted it at a tree in fear-fueled fury. He heard a sudden scream and dashed through the bushes and branches to find who it was, to see if they were all right and, as it had sounded like the scream of a child like him, to trash them if he decided they deserved it.
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:09 am
2
It was Emma's own daughter, Pleia. She looked at Stayne as though the sight of him revolted her, the same way she might look as a spider, or something dead. She cringed away from Stayne's angry face.
"What?" demanded Stayne, enraged by her presence and her appearance. "Here to spy on me, to get me in trouble so I get kicked out of school? Bet you'd like that, wouldn't you, you little suck up! You and my brother are probably in it together!"
Pleia started to cry. "No," she said quietly.
"Here to laugh at me, then?" If Stayne hadnt been so angry, he might have been in tears as well. The horrible things he was saying seemed to swell in him and hurt him more with every word, but he couldn't stop. He felt like the world was out to get him and he couldn't understand why. "Following me to tell your stupid friends that you saw me going crazy in the woods? You're the worst! Picking on people when they're low!"
"That's not what I meant!" sobbed Pleia. How could he know, how could he possible believe that she had just been sitting under a tree with a book that her mother's friend had given her, trying to understand the big words? That she hadn't even known he was there until he had thrown the rock; she hadn't even realised that the crunching of his feet of the small sounds the sticks and pebbled had made were anything but the noises small animals in the woods made. Nowhere was shouting at her and she just wanted to hide.
Stayne stopped. Something In what she had just said seemed to echo in his head, not in her voice, but in his. He remembered when he had broken Kensei's duel disc, completely by accident; he hadn't even played with it roughly, it just snapped and he pulled it to its proper shape. Everyone had glared at him and told him off, they didn't believe him when he said 'I didn't mean it." or when he had been practicing some martial arts moves he had seen on the video game he had been playing and he had backed into his father and tripped him up. He hadn't meant to do that, either. Or when Kensei had wanted To show Shoubu something when she had finally taken some time to talk to Stayne, all by himself, and he had insisted that he could tell his whole story to Shoubu and Kensei could show her what he wanted to after, but by the time he had finished, the sunset was over and Kensei had been angry at Stayne. He hadn't realized that what Kensei had wanted to show Shoubu would sop being there to see, he hasn't meant t run it. He had said he didn't mean it, but, as usual, nobody had believed him.
Pleia noticed something in Stayne's energy change; it was still black, but it did not seem to roil and billow so much. It was calmer, quieter. His face had changed also; he looked concerned for Pleia. She staredd at him meekly, her eyes drying.
"Hey," he said in a different, more quiet once. He was about to say that he hadn't meant to upset her, or that he was sorry, but he had been made to say those things so often by other people that he didn't even know how to apologies sincerely. "Want to come and get an ice cream with me?"
Pleia sniffed grossly. "yeah," she said hesitantly.
Stayne took Pleia down to the grocery store run by Prometheus. "Can we get two ice creams please?" Stayne asked. It might surprise anyone who met him elsewhere to see that he said 'please' and 'thanks' to sore clerks, but he didn't Cary money with him, and if he needed something he had to put it on an account which was sent to his dad. He didn't want sore people reporting that he was a rude little snot t his dad. He might lose his buying privileges.
Prometheus narrowed his eyes at Stayne. "Two?" he asked.
Stayne wrinkled his nose. "Fine, one of those splitting share icy poles, then."
In the end, they ended up with a toucan double icy pole which had two sticks to split and share between two people. Stayne supposed he might have been asking for two much from Prometheus, even for two people. He had wanted to get Pleia a proper ce cream, though.
Pleia, for her part, didn't mind that her icy pole wasn't an ice cream. She licked it very happily. "it was nice of him to give this to us."
"My dad will pay him back," said Stayne.
"Oh. That's good."
"It was only a dollar eighty," said Stayne defensively. "And half was for you."
"Thank you," said Pleia, even though she had said it before.
"That's okay."
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:11 am
3
Emma was the teacher for the foals in the town. She had no special teaching talent, nor any training, but as a decent amount of the foals were hers, she was a logical choice. Her mate and the father f her children was also a zombie-looking utterly terrifying demon, which helped ensure that the class did not muck up too much.
The worst of the class for playing up was Stayne, followed by her own son Crux, though Abyss could give them a run for their money. They were not friends; Stayne appeared to have no friends, while Crux got along well with his sister Matilda, and even Kensei, who was not the type to be scared by a demon, even one as intense as Crux, while Abyss sat next to Matilda and was best friends with Carmine Masque.
Emma noticed a change in Stayne's behaviour after the incident with Pleia in the woods, though all she herself knew about it was that Pleia told her that Sayne bought her an icy pole.
Stayne was sometimes disruptive off the class, and the way that everyone grumbled about it made him sulky and angry, which made the class more disrupted. He liked to write notes to the other kids, who wouldn't take them, so he had started screwing the items up into balls and throwing them at the other students. This method didn't work as well as he had hoped, because usually the other kids would ignore these balled up notes as well.
One day, not long after the sharing of the icy pole, Stayne threw a balled up note at Pleia, hitting her in the arm. She glanced at him, and at herself and started to get upset; usually Stayne ignored her in school, unless he was hiding her work books or swapping her lunch for his, which didn't happen very often; he always felt too bad about it because she took it so seriously when he teased her or payed tricks.
Stayne frowned when she did not open his note. He was bored as all get out. They were supposed to be doing silent reading, but the stuff they were reading was about as interesting as sucking on a washcloth.
He screwed up another piece of paper and threw it at Pleia.
Pleia covered her head with her hands as another paper ball, missing her completely this time, landed on her desk.
Stayne looked annoyed, watching Pleia ignore and then get upset about his notes. He glanced up at the teacher, who was marking worksheets. He slid out of his chair and sneaked along to Pleia's desk. He rescued the. First note from the floor, crouching low, and opened it on The flat desk top, smoothing it out inches away from Pleia's nose.
The note had a nights and crosses game scrawled out on it with a large X drawn in the middle square. Pleia looked shyly at Stayne, still hunched on the floor near her desk. She looked sideways at her mother, who was completely aware of the transaction, but was watching them from under her lashes while pretending to go on with her marking.
Pleia wrote a large O in one of the corner squares diagonal to Stayne's own X.
Stayne was so happy that someone was playing with him. The first game didn't last very long and, unsurprisingly, ended with Pleia, the psychic, winning. Stayne slunk back to his own desk to pretend to have been reading all the time when the teacher called for the end of silent reading.
Emma was not fooled, but she was interested. Pleia was a very surprising friend for Stayne to choose, and she was be of the best readers in the class, so she didn't feel that Stayne was taking too much away from her when he played a game with her. In fact, it was that Stayne had decided to sneakily engage with another student when he was bored rather than disrupt everyone in the class that really shocked Emma. She decided to keep a watch on the situation; hopefully calm, placid Pleia would be able to calm Stayne down and stop him being such a paaaaain!
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:43 am
4
Pleia sat in the woods, sniffling a little. Suddenly, she ears a creepy voice hiss out of the surrounding trees.
"Heeelloo little giiiirl."
Pleia sniffed a little, wiped her nose and hid a smile. She heard rustling and the cracking sounds of sticks hitting tree trunks. It sounded like someone was stalking around her,l surrounding her.
"you look tasssssssty, little giiiirl," the voice hissed again. "Won't you come home for diiiiinneer?"
"I can't, Stayne," said Pleia. "How would. Get home? I don't have at wings."
Stayne lurched out of the trees. "How did you know it was me," he complained.
Pleia gave him a watery smile. 'I sensed it was you."
"Does it always work like that?"
"Yeah. You feel different, everyone feels different."
"What do I feel lie?" asked Stayne curiously.
Pleia hesitated, then decided t tell him the truth. "You feel like black storms."
Stayne was taken aback. Black storms... Like his power, his talent, the dark pulse; opposite to his brother, who could use luster purge. He didn't know whether to feel insulted, or feel bad at himself, but it apparently didn't make Pleia mind that he felt like black to her. He decided it wasn't such a bad thing, then.
He wasn't to know that she had in fact been scared if his energy when she had met him and only recently been able to see past it to the little boy who wanted to matter as much as his brother, and never meant any real harm.
"Okay then," was all he said about it. Then, "You look upset. Were you in here crying?" he said with his usual lack of tact.
"No," Pleia replied. "Not crying. I was just sad."
"Why?" asked Stayne, throwing himself down into the leaf litter with Pleia.
Pleia dug her feet into the crushed leaves on the ground. "Why are you here?" she asked, trying to change the subject.
"I was looking for sticks and wood and stuff," Stayne answered, showing her a few thick sticks and a small branch, all fallen from trees, not torn off, at least not by him.
"Why?"
"So I can make things out of them," Stayne said, taking out a short knife. He showed the knife to her and she gasped and leaned away. Stayne grinned at her. "I only use it on wood, see?" He held the knife and, working away from himself, he scraped off some bark from one of the bigger sticks like he was peeling a carrot. "I might make this one... A lizard!" he scraped a little twig off the stick and looked at Pleia searchingly.
"Hey, you didn't answer me, Pleia. Why were you alone in here, not-crying?"
"That's really cool," said Pleia softly, ignoring him. She peered at the stick. She noticed that the look on his face was stubborn and annoyed and she relented.
"Someone just... They were a bit unkind to me today."
"Who?" interrogated Stayne in a barking voice.
"Some stranger," said Pleia. "They just looked at me strangely and backed away from me when I tried to be polite and said people like me shouldn't be out in the day." She looked at Stayne's thunderous face and added. "I don't think they meant to be mean, I think they were just frightened, but it was... I hated it... I feel bad."
Stayne didn't know what to do r say so he continued to scrape away at his stick. "That's not nice," he said finally. "If I knew who they were, I'd go give them a piece of y mind. Maybe a few punches.
Pleia giggled. "You're just a kid, what can you do?"
Stayne grinned at her. "I know I'm a kid. I probably couldn't do anything. But you reminded me f am funny story."
Pleia sat up and edged closer to him, eager to hear it.
"my dad was telling me once that when he was a bit older than us, he went and challenged a full grown pony to a fight over a girl! Because he said the other guy was really bad... Badly behaved. He did something ring and my dad was going to teach him a lesson."
"Did he do it? Teach him a lesson, I mean?"
Stayne chuckled gleefully. "Nope! He got his face pounded in! Turned out the other pony was an experienced fighter. Though Dad does say that the other guy didn't do it on purpose; he only hit Dad to stop Dad hitting him. But Dad got so creamed!"
Pleia giggled, then wondered why. "Why is that a funny story?" she asked.
"Well," said Statne slowly. "It's funny to think of a kid fighting, and funny to think f my dad being a stupid kid who got beaten up. But mostly... It's kind of funny that something. Wanted to do was something my Dad did do once... Since everyone says Kensei is the most like Dad, and I'm nothing like Dad." he trailed off quietly.
"Do you want to be like your dad?" asked Pleia.
"Yeah! My dad's the best! Hez's the coolest!"
"I think you could be cool like your dad," said Pleia earnestly.
"Yeah?" asked Stayne.
"Yeah."
"Cool.
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:58 am
5
oodly enough, out of the two brothers, it was Stayne who finally caved into being educated at the magic guild. Kensei went because Stayne was going.
Stayne confessed to Pleia that the only reason he caved into going to learn there was because he wanted to be the brother who was more like their father and their father was never scared of anything, or if he was, he never let it stop him.
The magic guild wasn't so bad, Stayne decided. After you got used to the people who lived there. Some of them were bad news, but a lot of them just looked kind of scary. He was learning a lot about his ability and could use it more without hurting himself as much. This was a good thing and a bad thing, because he liked to practice using his ability on his brother, who could defend himself against it by using his own ability.
One afternoon, Stayne wated for Kensei to come around the corner after school, a potent cloud of dark energy waiting in his hands. He saw a shadow and jumped the gun, launching the dark pulse at-
Abyss?!?
Abyss took the attack straight in the front. She was flung back by the force of it; she had no aptitude for magic, for attack or, to her detriment in this case, defense. She didn't cry out. She landed in a crouch and jumped up like a sprinter, throwing herself at Stayne with her arms held forward, forearms snapping out to punch him twice, once in the face, and, had he not jerked back at the first blow, the second blow would have struck his throat, but it missed and hit his collarbone instead.
Abyss stood over Stayne, who covered his chest with his arms. She wouldn't hit someone who wasn't hitting back
Matilda had been walking behind Abyss and she stood guffawing at Stayne now. "Serves you right!"
"Stayne!" cried Pleia, putting her arm to him in case he needed help. Of course, he didn't.
"Sorry," Stayne gasped to Abyss. "I thought you were- Kensei."
"Do I look like Kensei?" snapped Abyss.
"No," Stayne choked, recovering. "I'm sorry."
Abyss thought that he really did seem to be sorry and brushed him off. "Okay, fine."
"How did you get to fight like that?" asked Stayzne, still protecting his throat in case she lashed out again; he wouldn't blame her.
"From watching action movies and playing games," said Abyss, not sure where this was going. "My dad doesn't fight, but his dad does. I'm pretty sure he learned from video games, too!" she turned to Matilda and they both laughed uproariously.
"Really? Games?"
"Yeah, why not?" asked Matilda.
"I can't be playing the right kinds of games," mumbled Stayne.
"You want to come with us?" asked Abyss, almost reluctantly. Matilda was giving her a 'What are you doing?' look. "We're going to play some games at Matilda's... She has the best system..."
"I'd like to do that," said Stayne, grinning. "I need to learn how to fight."
"Why?" asked Matilda mockingly. "You got a war to win?"
"I just want to know how," said Stayne.
Later that day, Stayne sat in Pleia and Matilda's darkened bedroom, which was in use as a gaming room, playing a game ona screen with Abyss and Matilda while Pleia watched.
Stayne had never been in a girl's room before. He thought he could see things Pleia owned, as opposed to thinks Matilda owned. The games station was obviously Matilda's; she bragged to Stayne that the system had been given to her my Kaiba himself so she could beta test his games for him.
"Queen Matilda is in the building!" crowed Matilda.
"Brawlingblader has your back," replied Abyss.
"What's my nickname?" asked Stayne.
"Didn't you ask him before you started, Mattie?" asked Pleia, sitting on the bed behind them.
Matilda smirked. "I picked something for him."
"Knave Heart?" read Stayne incredulously. "You're a queen and I'm a knave? You even had to put 'earth' in there, like a girl?"
"Like a suit of cards," growled Matilda. "I am a freaking queen!"
"I like Knave Heart," supplied Pleia. something in the way she said it made Stayne think that maybe she had chosen it and he shut up about it.
In the end, Stayne didn't learn a lot about fighting that day, but he did learn a lot of curse words from Matilda and Abyss; who we girls could swear so bad? He had a lit of fun. Pleia even played for a bit. Her nickname was PrincessPleia, which Matilda explained as being because she herself was a queen.
They made a regular event of playing games, sometimes inviting Kensei, who was not a good gamer. He tried, though, and he was good company to Pleia when they both sat back and watched the gamers.
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 6:01 am
6
Pleia ran up to Stayne one day before school started. She had grown recently to a teen and Stayne was just getting into his really awkward teen to adult growth. He was tall and thin and his head seemed too big, but Pleia didn't see any of that.
She herself was handling teen stage quite well; she may have gotten taller and a bit ganglier, but her face was as pretty as ever, and her eyes gleamed with purpose today.
"Please take me with you!" she cried earnestly.
"What?" asked Stayne, his eyes absently roving to watch a pretty girl walk by. "What?" he repeated, looking at Pleia this time. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to school."
"You're going to the Dragon Ruins today instead of school," Pleia said, with a tinge of accusation n her voice. "I want you to bring me. Please."
Stayne rubbed his chin with a rasping sound. There was thicker hair coming in here and it itched, distracting him. He didn't often wish to be different, but he kind of wished he was a dragon so he would have scales and no itchy chin hair, though Dad had explained that when e grew, his scales had itched. Maybe he didn't want to be a dragon.
"I'm on the odd side of teen," he said to her. "I don't think I could get anywhere near Dragon Ruins in a day, especially not with you."
"I can hold my own," said Pleia. "And I'm sure you can manage it. I know you can."
"How?" asked Stayne. The bell was going to ring any minute.
"I saw it."
"You saw it," answered Stayne, deadpan. "I thought you only saw little things. Weather and stuff. Not me running off no another land."
Pleia stiffened. "Those are just the things I tell you about," she admitted quietly. "I see other things."
Stayne himself went very still now. He was thinking of times that he really did not want Pleia to have been seeing in her head, or her ball; however it was she saw the future. I wonder if she told her sister I couldn't play that one time because she knew I was going to-
He cut off that thought, eyes bulging with horror.
"So, dragon ruins? And you saw me there? Today?"
"yes," said Pleia, grateful that he had made no fuss about her keeping Some of her more momentous visions to herself. "can I come, too?"
"Yeah, assured Stayne, still panicking. "We should go now if we're going." he stared at the door to his classroom and back away with Pleia beside him. When they were out of sight, they ran down the street and away from anyone who might ask them why they weren't in school.
"I still don't know why we're going," he said to her.
"I'm going because you're going," said Pleia. "You're not getting rid of me now."
Stayne pressed his lips together and couldn't help but think that the reason he was going was that she wanted to go. Still, he was young and impulsive and he might as well go see where his dad was from.
They left town and pushed through the woods.
"You know, my dad went on the first expedition to the dragon ruins," mentioned Pleia.
"Oh, yeah?" asked Stayne. "What was he doing there?"
"Trying to kill Kaiba," Pleia said matter of factly. "Your mum, Brittania, wanted him to do it. Well, she wanted him to cause trouble, which, for him, meant killing Kaiba."
"Why would he do that?" asked Stayne.
"He never liked Kaiba," said Pleia, climbing over a huge fallen log. "And he was troubled at the time; Aunty Grisamara was pretty repulsive to Daddy bak then."
"What could mum have done? To make him d what she wanted, I mean?" asked Stayne, clambering over the log himself.
"I think she offered to kill him properly," she replied calmly.
"Offered?!? To KILL? And that was what he wanted?"
"Yes, I said he was troubled at the time. Grisamara wouldn't even let him die in peace. He's much happier now, though."
"I hope so," said Stayne, a little weirded out. His mum wanted someone to do something and so she offered to kill him? That sounded weird. Almost as weird as him going to dragon ruins on a whim.
"I think this is going to suck for us, since we don't have wings."
"It will be fine," said Pleia blithely. "don't worry. This was all your idea; didn't you have a plan?" she laughed at him."
Stayne stared at her. No, it hadnt been his idea at all! It had been hers! What was going to happen to them?
He thought briefly about turning around and going home, but they were coming out f the woods now and... He did want to see if he could make it up to the dragon ruins.
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 6:09 am
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:22 am
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:51 pm
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:44 am
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:48 am
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:50 am
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:54 am
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Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:57 am
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