Lina sighed, jogging to the bus stop. Taking the bus was a nuisance, but less trouble than being pulled over by every cop between home and the High School. Being a high level spell-caster did have it's downsides. While slowed aging was an advantage, being a magical prodigy at three had not helped. Lina was painfully aware that her body looked only fifteen dispute her true age of twenty-five. And the bus was leaving.
"Hey! Wait for me!" The bus driver quickly jerked to a stop, almost half-way out in the street. They were well-trained. Burning rubber did not smell good.
"Hey teach, nearly didn't make it on time." Brednat, one of Lina's student for her first period class, Para-Biology, called from his perch on the lockers beside the class door. Brednat was one of the two types of gargoyle common in Japan, which in that he was made of stone, and didn't become stone during the day. Of course, gargoyles, period, were a recent addition to the everyday scenery of japan, only having been their for three hundred years.
"Don't get your hopes up, Brednat. You still have to take today's test."
"Awww!"
Lina sighed, pulling her lunch out from under her desk. She also grabbed the roster for the next class from within a desk drawer. Unlike most of the other classes, it was taught for only one semester, and not for a full year. It also required the student to have taken both the first-level offensive spells test, only available after taking the first level spells class. The other required class was basic sword/weapon usage. And it was this class she would be teaching with Mr. Akoushi. A pleasant shiver went up her spine as she remembered how the pleasant young man had sounded, the faintly archaic inflections in his words, the formal cadence to his voice, the faint whisper to it. She, almost absent-mindedly, munched on her sandwich as she stared off into nowhere, thinking about him. Which is why the tap on her shoulder came as such a surprise. Lina shrieked, nearly jumping out of her seat. And promptly whirled around, ready to fireball the impertinent being that had touched her.
"Please pardon me. I did not mean to startle you, Miss Mizuno. May I sit down?" Zel Akoushi, the man she had just been daydreaming about, stood behind her, looking politely curious. Lina hastily choked down her fireball-the-thing-that-startled-her response, nodding rapidly and gesturing to the spare chairs over by the wall. She took advantage of the brief pause while he retrieved a chair to regain her composure. "How may I help you, Mr. Akoushi?"
"Please, just call me Zel. I wanted to ask your advice, mostly about the school's layout."
Lina tried her best to not laugh, but a rather goofy smile managed to escape. This was something that she was long familiar with, concerning new teachers and students. "You got lost."
"Yes." Zel tried to remain polite, but he didn't find it one bit funny. It always unnerved him slightly when he couldn't find his way around, and he knew this building wasn't following normal physics. He had been in a hall which had windows, showing the hall next to it. The students had been walking the other way, but they had also been walking upside down, looking, for all the world, as if they were the ones rightside up. He was particularly sensitive to ambient magic, and quite frankly, the continuously fluctuating 'feel' of the various magics around here already had him on edge. The weird layout didn't help either. Zel felt like he was walking around in a giant gorgon's knot.
"I know, the place is confusing, but here, take a look at this." As he watched, she pulled a long strip of paper from the desk. He picked up the end she was unrolling from the main roll.
"This is the main doors?" He pointed at the map. Lina nodded. "Here, let me activate the latent spell." "<<Kumir>>" "There, the red dot shows where you are, here in room 2374. You just have to say the name of the room you wish to get to, and it will show you the quickest route. This'll do for now, until you visit the focus room and get your teacher's version of this."
"This map is the student's version?"
"Of course. Would you expect our own to be so bulky? This one is mine." Lina reached her left wrist forward for him to look at. As he watched, the simple bracer she was wearing flickered to life, showing a comprehensive map of the local area. "It doesn't have to be in the form of a bracer, but it 's one of the more practical forms available. And it looks like you're looking at your watch when you use it."
"Thus preserving the illusion that teachers never get lost?"
"Ah, but they don't ever get lost." Lina grinned as she said this, and Zel found himself smiling back, amused.
"Let's go get you your map, shall we?" Lina was still grinning as she gracefully stood up, gesturing towards the door.
"I would be most grateful, Miss Mizuno."
"Call me Lina."
It was definitely impressive. That was Zel's first opinion of the focus room.
It was also incredibly silly. That was his second opinion.
The people who built this place were insane. That was his third and final opinion of the focus room, and he never saw any reason to change it.
"This place is nuts." Lina nodded in agreement with him, watching a rather large fish drift through an aquarium made of crystal in the form of a larger-than-life nude woman.
"I quite agree, but it's presence was one of the things the school's maker demanded to be put in." They watched a rather small transparent purple cow drift by, heading for some spot in the ceiling. "I still think the guy was insane though."
She began heading towards the center of the impossibly large room. "However, as far as I can tell, the only reason why the school can even exist, it's because of this room. You may have noticed how the halls turn and twist, and rooms are much larger then they should be. Have you seen any of the students in a fight yet?"
Zel blinked, taken aback by Lina's matter of fact manner about student fights. "No. Is there something unusual about them?"
"Have you ever seen a fight between two magic-users?"
"Quite a few, but what does this have to do with the studen-ah ... Most of the students here are being trained in magic."
Lina nodded, her steps unhurried, not bothering to look at the one walking beside her. She knew he would look as handsome as his voice said he was. "Magic, the use of various weapons, the training of powers both psionic and innate magic, the best ways to counter attacks of all sorts and various types, and all with a basic education that other students receive. This is one of the main reasons why this school is so over-crowded, and why a teacher such as myself can be hired here."
"But why wouldn't you be? You seem to be a quite capable person, and although I can't vouch as to your teaching ability, I can't see any reason why they wouldn't hire you."
"Zel, I look like I'm fifteen. Now what place is going to hire me when I look like a teenager? The Sorceress Protection Laws don't mean a thing in the hiring market. There's still prejudice against those who don't look older than eighteen. That reminds me, you're going to need to register your uniforms."
That made him stop cold, exactly three inches from a rather silly looking, fluorescent green, life-sized, statue of a dwarf. "The teachers wear uniforms?" Zel asked cautiously, his eyes narrowing.
"Not quite. The student maps also provide pictures of the teachers via a link to the matrix, but the pictures don't update to show the current outfit of the teacher. So we register a certain 'style' of outfit with the matrix, which we wear to school. Some teachers are allowed two pictures, especially if some of the classes they teach are for phys ed. You and I, because we're teaching one of the specialized classes, get a set of two, one of our regular outfits for classes, and one for the swords 'n' sorcery class."
"I see .... " A butterfly constructed from garbage cans drifted slowly by, humming Beethoven's sixth symphony. "This place is utterly nuts."
Zel looked towards Lina, who was waiting beside a semi-transparent statue of a robot with one side done in orange, black, and green-striped brown, and the other side in blue, white, and brown-striped green. Lina gestured towards something in the dead center of the room. "That, is the matrix."
Zel's eyes widened in wonder, staring at the beautiful pattern of crystals of myriad colors, some veined with precious metals, twirling and spinning in ... midair?
"Amazing, isn't it? The matrix, and the one thing that keeps this school ticking. Once a week, one group of us teachers feeds power into the main battery, and once a month into the back-up systems."
Something that looked like a toffee with eyeballs spun past them on a direct collision course with the garbage can butterfly. They met with a sticky splat and became a chocolate moose that ambled it's way in a slow circle around Zel and Lina. The hummed music changed from Beethoven to a bad rendition of the Spice Girls.
"To key yourself into the matrix, just stick your hand and bleed a little on this." Lina pointed to a rather large crystal imbedded in the floor, which the other ones in the pattern seemed to be orbiting. Zel pulled his dagger from it's sheath, praying silent thanks to whatever gods or goddesses that might be listening that he had remembered to bring his own weapons and not been required to hunt down an enchanted blade or abstain, either one of which would have been suspicious, especially since he was trying to pass as full human. With a quick slice across the base of his thumb, a slow series of blood-drops fell upon the crystal.
An awareness filled his skull, a feel for the pattern of the spell upon the stones blossomed within his mind. He knew now what he needed to do.
"Since you're to - what are you doing?!" Lina stared in shock as Zel plunged his dagger, up to the hilt, into the key crystal. As she watched, Zel placed his still-bleeding hand upon the stone, a wash of red color flushing through it from hand and blade as his eyes closed. The pattern of the orbiting crystals, always a bit erratic, stabilized for a brief second. And then, sighing faintly, Zel withdrew both blade and hand from the key crystal, the red flush within the stone fading.
"Most interesting ... " Zel murmured, resting his chin in his hand, supporting his elbow with his other hand. And immediately had to dodge a punch to the gut from Lina.
"WHAT the HELL did you think you were DOING?!?!!" She screeched at him, badly shaken by the ramifications of what might happen if the spell upon the crystals failed.
"Don't worry, I didn't change anything, just showed it a shortcut. I have an affinity with stone-based spells."
Lina glowered at Zel, still scared and pissed off about being scared.