Loop Two - Chapter Twenty-Eight - Greater Potential

Amber spent half of her lunch hour pondering over her essay. She had her phone out next to her plate, the page with Soul loving souls unlock greater potential, and can be returned by soul loving soul open and staring back at her.

Still don’t know what it means, she thought. She decided that the essay would have to question the rule itself, then. A sort of meta essay admitting that she didn’t understand. She’d done that once or twice before in some science classes, and when the teacher wasn’t too bad, it generally worked out for the best. But then, science thrived on a lack of understanding coupled with a willingness to discover. This was magic, and it felt as if it should be entirely different.

“What happens when you break one of these rules?” Amber asked.

Morgan, sitting across from her and reading from a little paperback, looked up. “Hmm?”

Jade and Cassy were both on their phones. Cassy on some sort of fashion blog--with frequent complaints that the school wifi made images load slowly--and Jade on some social media texting someone. Family, maybe?

“Magic, it has rules, right?” Amber asked. She pointed to her phone with her fork. She was full, for the moment, but there were some leftovers on her plate that she was picking away at. There wasn’t anything better to do at the moment and she didn’t want to leave food on her plate. “So, rules can generally be broken. What happens when you do?”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Morgan said. “That’s an interesting question though. You should ask Professor Ploof about it in our next magic theory class. She might like it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Amber said. She checked her mental clock for the time, then sighed. “We should get going soon. It’s High School EQ next, right?”

“That’s what’s on the schedule,” Morgan agreed.

“Boring class, that one,” Cassy said. “Well, so-so boring. I think I’m doing math today.”

Amber finished up her food, dabbing away at some remaining sauce with a piece of bread. “Don’t like math?” she asked.

“Huh? I’m really good at math,” Cassy said. “Practically an expert. It’s English and all those subjects that I’m crap at.”

They returned their trays and cutlery, then headed out towards their next classes. The room where they had High School EQ was nearly full by the time they ambled in and found some seats.

Amber’s tutor was waiting for her already, and after a few pleasantries, they dove right into it. Since they were tackling some English stuff, she decided to rope the teacher into helping her with her essay. It was a bit of a stretch, and required some convincing on Amber’s part--the teacher knew exactly what Amber was up to--but in the end she got help writing her essay.

Having someone walk her through each grammatical mistake she made as she made them was interesting, as were the lessons on sentence and paragraph composition.

In the end, the essay was complete, and Amber was pretty happy with herself, even if she was no closer to understanding the magic itself.

Class ended soon after, and Amber rejoined her team by the door. She was about to propose that they head over to the gym or to a training field or something, but she paused as she noticed team Helskor, or at least three of its members, talking to Professor Ploof in the corridor.

Margaret had a hand pressed over her mouth and was very obviously crying. Evalyn looked shell shocked.

“What’s going on with them?” Cassy asked in a low whisper as she followed Amber’s gaze.

“I don’t know,” Amber said. “Do you think we should...” She gestured vaguely towards the other team. She didn’t know what was going on, or if she could help, but it felt like she should at least try.

Professor Ploof nodded to the girls, almost a bow, then spun on her heel and ambled off.

Amber turned to her friends, then nodded towards team Helskor. “I’m going to go check on them, do you mind waiting around for me?”

“We’ll wait outside,” Morgan said. “It’s good to get some air.”

Amber nodded her thanks, then moved over to team Helskor. Evalyn was rubbing Margaret’s back while their third member, Victoria, scowled at the floor, arms crossed and eyes blinking quick. “Hey,” Amber said as quietly as she could. “I... I saw Professor Ploof talking to you guys, is everything okay?”

Evalyn blinked and looked up at Amber. “What’s it to you?” she asked. It was a little sharp, a barb sent to ward Amber away.

“Amber?” Margaret asked. She sniffed. “Hey, hi. Um... Mary’s... dead.”

“Oh,” Amber said. She felt a cold shiver run down her body, as if she was plunged into a freezing lake. “Oh, crap. Wow, I’m sorry.”

“We hardly got to know her,” Victoria snapped.

“What happened?” Amber asked. She flinched back at Victoria and Evalyn’s looks. “I might be able to help? Maybe? I can heal.”

“She’s dead.” Evalyn repeated.

“Right, sorry,” Amber said. She figured that the school’s staff knew about her abilities already. If the girl could be retrieved from death with time magic, then they would ask her, right? “Uh, I’m sorry, again. If you guys need anything...” It was a lame platitude, and Amber bobbed her head a few more times before slipping away.

She exited the school building with a great big exhale. That had been pretty stressful.

“You alright?” Cassy asked. “What was up with them?”

“One of their teammates, Mary, died,” Amber said.

“What happened?” Morgan asked.

Amber shrugged and pulled out her phone. She shot a quick text to Professor Ploof while she started to walk towards the far end of the campus. “Can time magic heal death?” she sent.

“That’s disturbing,” Jade said. “I know our jobs aren’t exactly safe but still. A first-year student passing away in the first week is disturbing.”

“All the more reason to get stronger, then,” Morgan said. “Did any of you have plans for the evening?”

“Not really, no,” Amber said. It was a Thursday night, she had nothing to do now that her essay was complete. “Want to hit the gym again?”

“Maybe one of the training fields instead?” Morgan asked. “It’ll be a bit more private, and we can train magic as well as our bodies... though we should get changed at the gym first.”

With that, they headed towards the gym. The place had a number of teams already there, as well as a few solos and pairs working out at various machines or crowding around the locker rooms at the back.

Amber and her team squeezed into the locker rooms, found some cubbies they could use, then changed into fresh gym clothes from the racks on the far wall. There were outfits in every size, and every colour as long as it was grey.

Amber stepped out of a changing room to find Cassy twisting around left and right before a floor-to-ceiling mirror. “What are you doing?” Amber asked.

“Wondering about these shorts,” Cassy said. “I don’t like how baggy they are.”

“Uh,” Amber said. She glanced down, then shrugged. “I guess? They’re gym shorts.”

“Yeah, I know, but I have a fantastic butt, and these are hiding it.”

“I’m sure we can all gaze upon your fantastic derriere some other time,” Jade said with an eye roll.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Cassy said. “The school uniform isn’t doing me any favours either, you know?”

“You know what would help?” Morgan asked as she stepped out of a changing room. She had Cassy’s full interest. “Squats. Come on, you can do a few hundred while I set things up for us.”

That deflated Cassy’s mood a bit, and she sulked as she followed after Morgan out of the changing rooms and across the gym’s main floor. Amber was a little confused as Morgan led them out of the gym entirely. “Where are we going?”

“I checked, no one’s using the power testing rooms, so I took them for our use for the next two hours,” Morgan said. “They’re just large, magically reinforced rooms. Nothing too special, except that the walls are... hard to break, I suppose.”

“Oh,” Amber said.

Morgan opened a small, unassuming door next to the gymnasium that Amber would have ordinarily written off as a maintenance place or something. That led to a small corridor and down a set of stairs that went on for a while. At the bottom was a landing with a few doors, and Morgan opened one of them into a large room. The room had stone walls, some lights hanging from the ceiling, and a floor with a bit of padding on it. Other than that, there was nothing of note.

“Nice place,” Cassy said.

“Isn’t it?” Morgan said as she started to stretch. “I’ve been thinking. We have two heavy power users, Cassy, then Amber as a trump card. Amber’s magic is tricky to train, and I don’t want to risk it. So... we’re going to have Jade and Cassy on one team, sparring against Amber and I. Obviously, no crotch shots or blows to the head, this is a spar, not a fight.”

“Alright,” Amber said. “No transformations?”

“No, that’ll make us all a little weaker, and that means weaker, more survivable blows,” Morgan said. “Mostly I want to work on our teamwork. Cassy’s area-of-effect attacks are disruptive, and Jade needs practice with her scarf.”

They split apart, and after Morgan outlined a few more rules for them to try to follow, they got down to fighting, and it was immediately a messy affair.

Cassy swept Amber up in her opening gravity attack, and somehow managed to completely miss Morgan. Amber ended up tumbling over to Jade’s side. The smaller girl flung her scarf at Amber, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop Amber from hastily grappling Jade and pinning her to the ground with her added weight.

Morgan, meanwhile, reached Cassy and kicked her legs out from under her at the same time as Cassy reversed gravity and sent both of them flying up to the ceiling. Then Morgan hung onto Cassy’s clothes and Cassy’s magic gave up.

They both came crashing down, and fortunately for Morgan, she had Cassy to cushion her fall.

“I think,” Jade said from under Amber. “That I’m starting to see why we need so much practice.”

***