Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kimo was a native islander. He was also a PE coach at the local high school. And he was a recruiter and mentor for the DA. He didn't know Daniel, but that wasn't a problem. He was well liked by the community. He didn't expect there to be a problem in recruiting the child. He'd already taken necessary measures to make sure that no official would contact any other officials. No use in losing someone with fire powers. He could prove handy.

He found Daniel outside near the school, "Aloha! Pehea `oe?" He greeted Daniel, and asked how he was, "I'm Coach Kimo, from the high school. The wailua kai," he winked. He was considered to be a very good surfing coach, and had earned the nickname of water spirit in the native language, "You sound like a wailua ahi," he tagged Daniel as a fire spirit, and as he spoke, held a glass of water he'd had in his hand upside down. The water didn't budge, except for a drop which game out slowly. He move the glass right side up again, letting the drop fall down at his feet, and then handed the glass to Daniel, to show let the boy explore for himself that it was indeed really water.

"I know fire and water are opposing elements, but evolved powers have been proven to be similar. I won't tell anyone that you are wailua ahi, and will make sure that all rumors are stopped. We'll keep it quiet, so no one comes after you, like we see in the news sometimes. I can help you, if you'd like. Would you like that? We'll have to ask your parents too. We can be good friends. Us wailuas should stay together."

Wailua-ahi Kimo smiled warmly at Daniel, waiting for his answer.



Daniel was sat out in one of his favourite places. He'd been seeing more of it ever since the incident - whenever he couldn't stand the looks people gave him anymore, he would come here. A set of stairs rose up from the ground, with a bland, uniform metal railing running along the exposed edge. As many children before him had discovered, the spaces between railings were the perfect size to slot their legs through. Then you could let your legs dangle off the edge and rest your forehead against the bars. From this vantage point, you could see down across the short distance to the beach where the sea roared. It wasn't very well known amongst adults, who didn't have the time to think about hidden places and metal railings. It surprised Daniel when he was spoken to, shocking him out of daydreams about dinosaurs and soccer. It didn't surprise him much that whoever it was knew his name though. A lot of people knew his name these days. He only wished it wasn't because of the fire.

"O ia mau n?He felt the same as usual, different and strange. How else could he be expected to feel? "A `o `oe?" He asked how the Coach was, listlessly, out of politeness. He smiled at the talk of spirits. Somehow, being a wailua ahi was better than being a fire hazard. Resting the side of his head on the railings so that he could see the wailua-kai, he watched wide-eyed as he did his trick with the water. If he could do that, that made the coach the same as him. But he'd never heard of Kimo, had never seen him in the papers or anything. Did the coach hide his powers? Or was it just that the water control didn't scare people? He stared down into the water as he swirled it around the glass. Real water, not some kind of trick. The wailua-kai was just that.

"You can do that? You can really make people stop talking about it?" Caught by the idea of everything going back to normal, he pulled himself out of the railings to swivel around and face Kimo. "Will things go back to normal?" Daniel didn't know anything about training. As far as he was concerned, the fire had been a one-off. He didn't really have fire powers, just a tendency to make embers appear. There was nothing dangerous about embers and fire in his hair that didn't burn. He wasn't like the wailua-kai, was he?

"Yeah, I'm sure you can do little tricks like that," Kimo winked, "But your power might be weaker or stronger than mine. That is something we will have to learn. You probably aren't going to do anything too big just yet, it took me a long time to learn some of what I can do. Hey, summer's coming up, we'll have a lot of time to explore. What do you think? Would you like to? Would your parents mind? But, remember, it'd have to be our secret. People won't stop talking if you tell them."



Daniel shifted around a little bit. The coach actually made the whole deal sound exciting, rather than some kind of illness, like a wart on his face. At least with small stuff he wouldn't be able to do much damage to anything anyway. And it wasn't like he had much to do with his summer anymore.
"Ok! I don't think my parents would mind. They keep worrying that I'll suddenly explode or something, so I guess they'll let me do stuff. Especially with a teacher." Daniel grinned a little. "I won't tell anyone, I swear."
Getting a little bit over-excited, a fat ember jumped into existence and wound its way upwards vefore fading. Daniel looked rather nervous and tried to calm himself down, taking a sip out of the glass.
"How do you teach something like that anyway