13 Chapter 4: Light and Fire

Back on the island of Patch, where some of humanity and faunuskind's future best and brightest were being trained…..

Lux shook his head, his ruffled, blonde hair shifting from side to side as he did so. There'd been several fights after the fist one had ended but he honestly couldn't pay any attention to them whatsoever. Even as sparks flew down in the arena and metal screeched against grinding metal, his mind was still stuck trying to process what Professor T had shown them after the first match.

[Saggy lumps of flesh with glassy eyes, stacked in piles. Red covered the floor like a frozen river, frost glittering in the cold. Gaping holes on the torso, guts piled next to each corpse in an unholy mess. A flickering neon sign in red. FROZEN MEAT.]

It stuck in his head like nothing else.

For the 4th time since class started, Lux swallowed the vomit rising up in his throat.

He was so preoccupied that he completely missed the buzzer going off and the participants of the current match heading back to their locker rooms to clean up.

An elbow to his ribs got him out of his head. "Dude!" The boy next to him furiously whispered, nudging his head towards their teacher. Idly, he noticed that the guy was a faunus, judging by the fox ears twitching on top of his head.

Looking down from the bleachers that surrounded the arena, the Vacuo native found every pair of eyes in the class looking in his direction, Professor T included.

"Mr. Aero." The man called out to him with his arms crossed, an eyebrow raised. "Will you be heading off to the locker rooms to change or should we take this as a sign that you wish to fight barehanded?"

Lux blinked. "Uh, no sir. I'll get going." He replied, before picking himself up off of his seat and striding towards the Boy's Locker Room entrance.

He shook his head as he entered. 'Just gotta get my head in the game.'

_____________________

Hestia smiled as her friend chattered away, making sure to properly laugh whenever her friend's voice got higher pitched, and gasp whenever her friend lowered her voice down to where she could barely hear it.

She honestly loved Vesta, the other girl was the first friend she'd made when she first got to Vale after all, but there were times when her friend just wouldn't stop talking!

Her friend's voice lowered again and Hestia leaned towards her, her black hair shifting to the side as she did, while trying to make it seem to her friend that she was listening. "-told Allison who told me that Levi and Ruben totally have a thing for each other!" Hestia gasped, even though she was barely even paying attention to what Vesta had been saying at all. "I know, am I right?! Those two are totally not meant for each other. I mean, I guess I could see it since it looks like those two have known each other for a long time, but…."

The black-haired, Mistrali native completely tuned her out at this point. 'Just breathe, Hestia. Everybody's got their own way of coping with things….even if it is a completely annoying way.' Her eyes subtly drifted towards the clock on the big holoscreen, above where they were showing the live feed of the arena, as she desperately prayed for the class to end soon. 'Shit.' Her smile turned brittle.

…..At the rate they were going, she'd probably have to sit through at least two more fights before they could leave.

She turned her eyes down to the arena. The entire classroom was shaped like a mini-colosseum, with more seats branching outwards and upwards the farther you got from the arena in the center of the room. With the giant hologram screen hovering in midair above the center of the room though, it didn't really matter how far away you were. You could still easily see all of the action happening on the battleground. And that's exactly what she was doing right at that moment.

Steel clashed with steel, a spark flying up and illuminating the hologram screen.

Hestia flinched, before she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. She internally breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that no one had seen it. Fear was lethal. It locked you up in a cage of your own making, unable to move in a prison that was your own body. Fear killed you and everyone standing behind you.

Vesta's voice went up into a higher pitch again. The Mistrali native was getting more than a little tired of having to pretend that she was listening to her Valean friend on the latest gossip. So much so, that she actually completely missed her timing and failed to laugh at the right moment.

….luckily right then and there, the buzzer sounded to end the match that had been going on.

She turned to her friend. Honestly speaking, it was probably a miracle that she and Vesta hadn't been caught talking and not paying attention in class yet. "Sorry, Vesta," She said with a rueful smile. "That buzzer is like, so annoying. What did Lana say again?"

Her friend huffed, a little annoyed at the fact that she had to say it again but not really minding it all that much. "I said that Lana told me that Brad was talking about-"

"-Wait," Hestia interrupted, actually getting into the conversation for once. "Which Brad? The one in the class 2 years older than us with that crazy blonde-haired girl?"

"What?!" Vesta looked at her incredulously. "No! Cardin's the one in the class with that 'Touch-my-hair-and-I'll-Kill-You' psycho. Brad's the one who goes to Valley Junior High and knew Lana since, like, forever. How could you even mix those two up?"

Hestia compared the two boys in her mind. Cardin stood with his chest puffed out, brown hair slicked back, in a cocky stance holding a mace over his shoulder. Brad stood posed self-assuredly with one leg up on a chair with short-cropped brown hair, a football tucked under his arm.

"Yeah, sorry about that." She laughed awkwardly. "You're totally right. I don't know how I got those two mixed up all!" She lied. The two were practically the same in her mind. The only difference to her was that Brad was their age and Cardin was a little bit older than them. "Anyway, come on! What did Brad say?" Hestia urged, doing her best to move the conversation back to where it'd been, hoping that her friend would just forget and not take it as a sign that Hestia didn't pay much attention to all the gossip that she kept spewing on a daily basis.

Vesta stared at her in the eye, before throwing her hands up in the air. "Ughh, fine, you're forgiven." She said. "But you better not just be ignoring me!" She stuck a finger in her face. "Anyway, Lana says Brad's been talking about this new kid at his school. A total weirdo," Vesta emphasized. "Who has this thing where he, like, always wears the exact same blue overshirt every single day. What a weirdo, am I right?"

Hestia giggled. It was a little weird but she didn't really care that much one way or the other. Still, she had to laugh at it if she didn't want Vesta to find out that she didn't care for gossip at all.

Something caught her attention and she looked back down at the arena, and the teacher that was standing in the middle of it. The 2 fighters were already heading back to the locker rooms. "-xt up will be Hestia Noon and Lux Aero. Both students should hurry and get changed into their battle attire. The match will begin in 10 minutes. If you're not out by then, you'll be getting the first F of the semester."

Hearing that, Hestia immediately apologized to her friend before she ran off towards the Girl's Locker Room entrance down near the arena, her heart pounding and her fist shaking slightly.

Hestia didn't fear anything. Fear made you weak. Fear got you and everyone behind you killed.

An image flashed through her mind. One of the photos that Instructor Tai had shown them after the first match which had been haunting her the whole time she'd been enduring Vesta's unending pool of gossip. A small, familiar hand, jutting out of one of the piles of corpses.

Hestia shook her head. That was all in the past. It was done with. Kaput. Over. She had to focus on the here and now.

A fight was just what the doctor ordered.