Shackles & Animation

Upon their arrival to their first class they realized that there were assigned seats which weren't next to each other. Karma's seat was in the row behind Dash's, making him on the third row and Dash in the second row though Karma wasn't directly behind Dash. There were six rows available but there weren't enough students available for that period in order to fill them all so only the four rows closest to the teachers desk were filled.

While Dash and Karma were relatively close to one another, Arcuate was on the other side of the room for some reason. He didn't want this, so he decided to stand up and ask the teacher to move seats. "Hey uh Mr. Teacher guy, can I get another desk? Preferably one closer to my friends Dash and Karma over there." He stated, pointing over to them. The teacher, Mr. Donovan just started laughing a bit like he couldn't believe he'd gotten a request like that in the first few minutes of the first period on the first day. Sure it wasn't an odd request, but people usually didn't already have friends in their first year.

"Unfortunately, I don't think I can move you at the moment but perhaps in the future I will, until then you'll have to wait." Mr .Donovan said in response. Arcuate crossed his arms and sat back down. Karma snickered at that whole little situation and anyone who could see Dash would see him holding back a grin. Mr. Donovan stood up from his desk and went over to the whiteboard, clearing his throat to speak.

"We're learning about shackles, everyone grab whatever you'll be taking notes in;." He said aloud, grabbing a marker and beginning to write down some information about shackles, proceeding to read it aloud afterwards. "Alright, so some of you may have heard about shackles and some of you may have not, regardless we'll be going over it from the beginning. Shackles are supernatural abilities that develop around the age of thirteen years old, everybody has at least half of a shackle and depending on your race, it's more likely for you to have certain abilities, the Loki race typically have shackles relating to deals or wishes and the Dominoe race usually have time related abilities. Most races have a single shackle, but elves have a half of one. " He explained, waiting on the noise from the swiping of pencils and pens as well as the tapping on keyboards to become silent before continuing on.

Mr. Donovan erased his whiteboard before writing on it and reading it off once again. "There's still quite a bit we don't know about shackles, but what we do know is that they can pretty much be anything under the sun. Something that they all share is that a literal shackle with chains attached to it manifests somewhere on your body once you begin to use one. We also know that their strength correlates to the strength of your will and the abilities themselves are based on personality more often than not. So, this means that if your will becomes stronger, sometimes your shackles will become stronger, and if your personality has a drastic change then your shackle may change as well." He said to the class, sipping on some cola from his mug while he waited for all of the students to catch up.

"The final amount of basic information I have for you guys today is that shackles run on a special energy. This energy is called zest, and the more you have of it the more defined the colors and shape of your shackle will be. Once you run out, if you try to use your shackle again it can backfire. Now, with this knowledge in mind we'll be doing some field testing once some of your birthdays pass to see how powerful your shackles are and what potential they may have to get stronger if you kids improve your willpower." Mr. Donovan explained to everyone, leaving what he had written on the board and sitting down. The class now had a little bit of free time to do whatever they wanted, within reason of course.

Arcuate went over to his friends, pulling up a chair. He heard what the teacher had said about shackles and was hyped, especially now that he knew more about what they actually were. "Huh, I wonder what my shackle will be." He said to the two of them, to which Karma replied. "Well, it'll probably have something to do with time since you're a Dominoe. Huh, I wonder what Dash's will be considering his isn't more likely to be anything." Karma stated, trying to make Dash feel included in this discussion of what one another's shackles may be.

"Well don't forget, you might end up being able to grant wishes!" Arcuate practically yelled at Karma, the Loki boy, to which Karma nodded and grinned. You could see mischievous intent in his expression. Arcuate paid no mind to it while Dash raised an eyebrow. "Hm.. sus." He said to Karma, who laughed in response. A few minutes later, the dismissal bell rang and they went to their other classes.

Just a few periods later, they were in another class that they all shared. It was their fitness class, taught by Mr. Tamadaki. The three of them met up outside the school gym and waited for the class before them to leave. "Huh. This building is kinda small compared to our old school's gym." Arcuate stated. "Eh, we'll probably be doing outside stuff." Dash said in response to Arc's prior statement. Karma nodded to what Dash said and then the class from before came out of the gym and the three Goldhart boys went in.

Upon entering the gym, the boys were greeted by a stern looking older guy with bloodshot eyes and a tired expression. There was this intense feel about him, it was unsettling to say the least. He was wearing a suit and tie like most of the male teachers had to do and if you looked at his wrist there were some glowing white rings seemingly levitating around them. A few other kids came into the gym a few moments after the Goldhart boys. They only had about 10 kids in their fitness class total. The three boys didn't really even want to speak, and neither did the rest of the class. They felt like their teacher, Mr. Tamadaki may go off on them if they say something he didn't like. Once the late bell rang, Mr. Tamadaki got out his lesson plans and cleared his throat.

"Well, welcome to your fitness class. I'm your teacher Mr. Tamadaki. I'll teach you things like sword fighting, hand to hand combat, and more things such as that. But today, the curriculum states it's mandatory that I tell you about animations. Some of you may know what they are, even mastered a few perhaps but it doesn't matter to me because there are those who haven't so I'll explain it." He announced to the class of 10 children and grabbed his computer. Moments later, the lights all shut off and the projector came on. Most of the students got out their laptops, binders, or notebooks as well to take notes.

Mr. Tamadaki was projecting a slideshow with notes on each side and reading them aloud to everybody. "Alright, we'll go over the basics of animation first. Animations are pretty much weapon techniques with a special energy called Zeal mixed in. Animations can pretty much be used with any object, from traditional weapons such as swords or guns anywhere to rubber bands. Some people such as me, have an abundance of zeal either because of training or it's because of their race. The Jelkovlo are born with such a high amount of zeal that it manifests into physical form around their wrists, like this." He explained to the class, holding up his arms to show everyone the glowing white rings seemingly levitating around his wrists.

"Now, I'll show off my Animation as an example, cover your ears." He said to the class, and all of them listened. They covered their ears and watched as Mr. Tamadaki pulled out a harp and simply plucked one of the strings and pointed it at a glass vase across the gym. However, when he did this the sound was incredibly loud and intense, the vase shattered instantaneously. "OW!" Arc exclaimed, scrunching his face from pain. He wasn't muffling the noise well enough so he felt some pain from that. He covered them enough that there wouldn't be lasting damage to his ears but afterwards there was a ringing in his ears for quite some time.

After Mr.Tamadaki demonstrated his animation, he cleared his throat to speak. "You guys can have the rest of this class off. I covered what I needed to cover, play some dodgeball or practice swordsmanship if you know how to use a sword." He told them. "Huh. He's not mean, he just doesn't seem to care about much." Arcuate pointed out. "Yeah he actually seems like a pretty chill teacher now that I've actually sat through a lecture of his." Karma replied, a hand on his chin. "Hmm yeah. You guys tryna play some dodgeball?" Dash asked the two. "Yeah but for even teams we'll need another person." Karma pointed out.

"Then why don't we just ask one of those lonely looking people over there?" Arc asked, pointing at a group of kids sitting silently. He didn't wait for a response from Dash or Karma, he simply went up to a girl whose hair was in pigtails and poked her forehead. She had glasses and was wearing a polka-dot dress. The reason he chose her specifically was because he recognized her from both his shackles class and his dungeons class he had earlier in the day."Hey, what's your name?" He asked the timid looking girl.

"M-Mari, Mari Aoki." She replied, looking away. She was obviously a bit anti-social but Arc didn't seem to get it. "Huh, well uh, we need a fourth player for our game of dodgeball. You should join!" He exclaimed, to which she nodded hesitantly. "Great! C'mon we're gonna play over there." Arc explained to her, leading the way. Afterwards they played dodgeball until that class was over.