After I left the psychic gym, my first instinct was to head back to the dorms and lock myself in my room. Sabrina had really hammered home that the students and faculty at this school had more power than they knew what to do with, and the only responsibility they had was to themselves. And with this damn collar around my neck, I was powerless.

Not that I would stand a chance if I had it off. I’d had a late start on all of this and I was still trying to catch up to the other freshmen, let alone the upperclassmen.

Which meant that I didn’t have time to coop myself up in my room hiding or hide under the covers and sulk. If I was going to survive in this school, I needed to put in the work.

The obvious next stop was the Fire Gym. My powers might have been sealed, but a quick test with my lighter showed me that my immunity to fire was still working, at least. So I wouldn’t be in any danger. Probably.

Following the map on my phone led me out of the main building and on a fifteen-minute walk. The Fire Gym was walled off by thick stone slabs twelve feet high with sloped green tiles on top, like it was the entrance to some kind of ancient castle, but the double door gates were wide open, so I headed on inside.

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting for the Fire Gym, but it definitely wasn’t a bunch of natural hot springs. Hot springs full of girls, some wearing bathing suits, others more bold. I swallowed, worried that I wasn’t supposed to be here, wasn’t supposed to be seeing this, but a burst of giggling made me turn my head and I saw that I really wasn’t the only guy at this school.

Lounging in the water, a girl snuggled under each arm, a blond as masculine and handsome as the girls at this school were pretty, was laughing it up as four other girls fawned over him. He wasn’t the only one, either. Another boy was in relaxed conversation with a single girl a way’s off, while the last boy I could see was sitting neck deep in a pool of boiling water.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit overdressed?”

I turned around and saw a gorgeous woman smiling back at me.

She had entered the gym right behind me—or maybe not, just how long had I been staring?--and even as I watched she was stripping down, wiggling out of her tight jeans so that the only thing she was wearing was a tiny thong my monkey brain was dying to see from the back and a bikini top doing its best to contain bouncing breasts a size too big for it.

“Come on. Lockers are over here.” She lead the way, and her ass was even better than my imagination had prepared me for, flexing with every step, the black floss completely swallowed up by those round cheeks. “Just grab one of the empty lockers. You can bind it with your phone for now.”

She tossed her shirt, jeans, and heels into one of the lockers, closed the door, then pressed three fingertips against it before a satisfying click sounded. I followed suit, but before I could close the door, she interrupted. “Boxers too. You’ve got nothing to hide, and those don’t look flame resistant to me.”

“Uh… yeah, okay.” I blushed as I took them off and heard her let out a wolf whistle. Ignoring her, I pulled out my phone and saw a new Locker app had been installed, with the only directions being to place it inside the locker with everything else. When I did and shut the door, there was the same click as before. “How do I unlock it, though?”

“It’s your phone. It’ll respond to you. Try it.”

I wasn’t sure what exactly she wanted me to try, but when I tried to open the door, it popped open as though it hadn’t been latched.

“See? And it’ll only work for you.” She demonstrated, yanking on my locker door hard enough to almost make her breasts bounce out of that top.

“Huh…” I wondered if there was a Gym to learn more about just how these phones worked. The mix of technology and magic had so many rules I needed to learn. But before that, I had a burning question. “This is the Fire Gym, right? Not the Water Gym?”

She laughed. “Of course it is! Look around. Notice anything?”

I’d already been looking around plenty, but I did as she asked and tried to keep my eyes focused on everything but all the naked flesh being paraded around. One thing that caught my eye was that I’d missed the showers. Girls sitting on stone stools, lathering themselves up with soap and rinsing it off under a gentle waterfall. I’d also missed that some students really were creating fire. Holding a flame in their hands or breathing it out into the air. At the corner of the Gym, a small group was going at it in earnest, sending jets of flame into the stone wall.

“Oh… that’s why you put the Fire Gym here.” It finally clicked for me. “Everything here is water and stone, aside from these lockers. Nothing flammable. Including clothes.” I remembered that night, training with Yang. My outfit hadn’t lasted even a minute. “And plenty of water around to quench the flames too.”

“Bingo! You’ve got a bunch of horny teenagers with uncontrollable pyrokinetic abilities. You don’t want to put them near any tinderboxes. But that’s not the only reason. Fire isn’t just about flames. It’s energy and transformation. Before you’ve learned to control it, the one you’re most likely to hurt with fire is yourself, so these pools are there to train you to take in the heat and release it safely.”

“Huh. That makes sense too. You, uh, you wouldn’t mind being a mentor, would you? You make it sound like you’ve got all this stuff pretty well-figured out.”

She had to cover her face as her laugh turned into a short snort. “Hah! I mean… ehehe, wow, you’re a real charmer, aren’t you? I’m Professor Asuna Flannery. This is my Gym.”

“Ah.” Now would be a good time to find a pool to sink into. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

She gave my shoulder a light punch, which just reminded me that I was standing here naked in class in front of my teacher. And for once, I wasn’t dreaming. “Relax, kid. Hearing that I can still pass for a student? I’ll take that as a compliment. For now, there’s no need to rush. Why don’t you head over there and figure out your tolerance for today?”

She pointed to a set of a dozen pools arranged like a stairway, the higher pools letting their water lazily flow into the lower ones. The third pool had wisps of steam coming from it, and it looked like it only got hotter as you went higher. “Get a good soak and count to a hundred. If you aren’t dying, then try the next one. See how far you can go.”

She gave my ass a slap as she walked past me. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, kid.”

I blew air out of my cheeks as I watched her walk away, whispering under my breath. “My name is Ben. Not kid.”

I walked over towards the ascending pools. For now, a good soak sounded like just the thing to clear my head, even if none of this water would be hot enough to be really satisfying.

“Woo woo! What is with you and taking off your clothes, dude?” I turned around and saw Yang, who was running up to me. She was dressed in a black bikini, the same design as Asuna’s, even if she didn’t fill it out quite so spectacularly.

My cheeks felt hot, and I wanted to curl up and run away at the same time. No, I didn’t want to do that. That was what my instincts were telling me to do. What I wanted to do was…

“Well, I’ve got nothing to hide. And a guy can enjoy the attention sometimes, y’know?” I forced myself to stand up straight, and I felt my cheeks cooling. “Hey. I was just about to test my limits at those pools over there. Want to join me?”

Her eyebrows went up for a second before she grinned back at me. “Yeah? Let’s do it. But let’s make it interesting. Whoever can’t stand the heat has to do one thing the other person tells them to.”

“Deal.”

We climbed up the steps, Yang dipping her toes into the water at each pool, shaking her head. “Tepid. Lukewarm. Oh, here we go. Next one ought to be just right.”

We settled on the seventh pool, stepping in from opposite sides. The water wasn’t quite boiling, but the stone bench I sat on felt hot enough to cook a fried egg if it was ever dry. Yang got in slower than I did, letting out a long sigh as she sank into the water.

“Fuck, that feels nice.” She swam over to me, treading water so that her breasts were floating half-submerged on the surface. “What do you think?”

“It’s not bad. Don’t think it’s pushing either of us to the limit though.”

“Well, yeah. I just don’t want you cooking like a boiled egg, dude. Safety first, right?” She was trying to play it off, but from the flush on her face, I could tell that wasn’t the only reason she’d picked this pool.

“You can stay here. I’m going to the top.” Even so, she was right behind me as I went back to the stairs, climbing up the pools until we reached the final one. The water was at a rolling boil, a cloud of steam ascending up into the air like it was the top of an active volcano. I touched the stone rim and immediately my hand sizzled.

I’d read that for the really serious burns, the nerves were cooked so thoroughly you didn’t even feel the pain, but looking at my palm, it was only the loose water that had evaporated off. The pool was small, barely enough room for two people. When I stepped inside, I felt like a king on his throne, a view of the whole gym laid out in front of me.

“...how is it?” Yang asked. She reached out and touch the stone rim, then jerked her hand back, sucking on her fingers. “Damn! Are you okay, dude?”

“My name is Ben.” I said as I relaxed in the water, leaning back and closing my eyes. “And it feels nice. It’s warm.”

My mind drifted back to cold winter days, coming back inside half-frozen, then defrosting myself in a lukewarm shower, slowly turning the heat up as much as I could handle. It wasn’t that same feeling of a hot shower… but that sensation of the cold in my bones seeping away. That was the same.

It was nice.

“Huh… well fine. You win. Now get out of there before you turn into a prune.”

We went back down the stairs together, down to the eighth pool. Yang soaked in the water, and after a minute, her hair caught on fire. No, that wasn’t right. Her hair was transformed into flames, the heat lifting it up so that it was flickering like a candle. “Yeah. This is it for me. Any more than this and I can’t vent the heat any faster than it’s coming in.”

She looked at me with a challenge in her eyes. “But I’m all topped up like this, you know. I could kick your ass twice as hard as last night right now.”

I held up my hands. “I don’t doubt it. But that’s not what we were competing over, was it?”

She swam over to me again, and this time she didn’t stop until she was sitting in my lap, her knees resting on either side of the bench. “A bet is a bet. So what’s it going to be… Ben?”

Thanks for reading! If you want to read more of my writing, including many more chapters of Pocket Monster University, all the relevant links are over here: https://linktr.ee/griztorc