"Nora?" Stan asked, his voice laced with annoyance. "Yeah?" I replied. "Do you know the answer?" "To what?" I questioned. "Do you know the answer to the question?" "What question?" I asked, confused. "A Strigoi attacks you from behind. You have no weapons, and you can't run. What do you do?" he asked. "Well…I would try to subdue them as best as I could and then if there happened to be a window, I would let the sunshine in and allow it to turn the Strigoi into dust. If there wasn't a window, then I would use the shoes that I would be wearing and turn it into a weapon capable of killing just about anything. This would be the best means of doing the job since I would 99.9 percent obviously be wearing these shoes." When I said the last part, I reclined my feet up onto the desk so that everyone would definitely know what the hell shoes I was talking about. When they noticed that the heel was a blade, almost everyone happened to visibly pale. "Well, Nora that would probably work, but what else could you do? Class…would you please care to share with us other theories?" Alto asked. "Actually Alto, may I share?" Dimitri asked. "Go right ahead. I would introduce you but I don't think you'd really need it." Stan replied. "OK. So in a situation such as this, the way to kill the Strigoi would be to snap their neck and twist it until their head and body were no longer intact. As easy as this may sound, apply the knowledge of the amount of strength and energy it would take to do this." Dimitri said, once again, a man has to make me look incompetent in front of a class of my peers. Everyone was in awe at just the knowledge that I had been proven wrong by Dimitri. "Guardian Alto, may I please go to the bathroom." I asked in an attempt to get out of the room and as far away from Dimitri as possible. "Sure. Guardian Belikov, since you're one of her new mentors, would you please escort her out?" he asked. He didn't reply, instead he went over and opened the door and gestured for me to come. I got up, taking my books with me and forced myself not to sprint out the door. Once out in the hall I turned towards him, rage rumbling through my body. "What the hell? Why'd you have to go off and do that? My answer was perfect. I have thought about all possible ways to kill a Strigoi and all the possible situations to do what in! Then you pipe up and make me look like a fucking incompetent fool! God damn it! Do you realize what it is like for people to make fun of you because you're not like them, to laugh when you don't know the answer to a simple question, to make you feel like you do not belong? Well, let me tell you something. The only goddamn reason why they don't anymore is because they're afraid of me. I don't want to be the one that everyone fears but I can't just sit around while they make my already miserable life a living hell!" I was yelling by the time I finished. Before I could help it, everything froze. Not again! This time, my hair was black with gold streaks. No. it was only one stage from the worst. And usually when it turns this color, I…great!
Next thing I knew, I was waking up in my dorm room. "Melanie?" I asked, groggily. "She's not here." Somebody replied. It took me a minute to realize who it was. "Rose? What happened?" I asked. "You passed out in the hallway so Dimitri and I took you to the infirmary. Dr. Olendski told us to just take you to your dorm room and monitor you there. I was worried, so I told Melanie to stay in a guest dorm last night. You slept through the entire day and night. You ready to go to training or do you just want to rest?" she inquired. "Like hell if I'll miss out on a session of practice. The activeness will keep my mind off of things anyway. I've been thinking about the past to much lately. I need to move ahead with my life." I stated. "I'm truly sorry about the things you've gone through. I'd say you have it worse than me, but I have been told by some of my colleagues that you won't talk about what happened before you came here. You know, you can trust me. I have been through more than you could possibly imagine. I watched my friend Mason get killed, I have died twice, I've watched the love of my life slip through my fingers, I have watched as my friends' relationships shrivel up and die, I broke the heart of an amazing man, I murdered Victor Dashkov, I almost killed Dimitri, I was falsely accused of killing Queen Tatiana, and I watched the people around me as their lives began to fall apart because of me. This isn't even the beginning of it. I had my heart ripped in two when Dimitri broke up with me after he was restored from being a Strigoi. You think you've had it hard, you should walk a mile in my shoes." Did Rose realize that she had begun to ramble? "OK! If I tell you, you have to swear that you won't tell anyone." I could see the answer in her eyes. "I swear that I will not tell anyone."