I open my eyes as the first crack of the morning light filters through the spaces in the shutters. I get out of bed and stretch my body, loosening up the muscles from rest, I put on my track suit and begin heading through the house to the lawn, I can hear rummaging in the rooms, so I am aware that the girls are awake. As I stand on the grass I hear trumpets from the other side of the hedges, "Must be the cadets getting started."

My shoulder begins to tingle and that indicates to me that at least one of the girls has come outside, "Should really find out more of how that rune works."

I hear a high-pitched voice behind me, "What was that Mr. VH?"

"Good morning Phanty," I call to her, without looking. "Will the rest of the girls be down soon?"

The girl ghost floats in front of me, "Yuppers, they just need to get dressed, unless…" she trails off. "Maybe you'd like to do a little bit of naked running." She squealed as she flies up, doing a loop.

I smirk, "Sorry I only do that on the thirty-second of every month."

"Oooh, so you do… wait a minute," She puts her hands on her hips, "There's no thirty-second."

"Yuppers, just like I don't do any naked running." I stick my tongue out at her, "So how is everyone taking my being here?" I ask, knowing she would be the most forthcoming of the girls.

Phanty places her finger under her chin, before getting a mischievous look in her eye, "Well Winnie wants to run you ragged, Elsa wants to see what she can bounce off you and Sibella says you're everything a ghoul could want."

I begin coughing, "What, they said all that?"

"Not in that context no," I hear a voice behind me, "Phanty has been driving us batty with how much she talks about you." Sibella and the other girls come out, stunning me.

Phanty floats over to the other girls and lies in the air like Kate Winslet in Titanic, "Oh ho ho, see something you like?"

"No," I say bluntly, shocking the girls. "This is what you're going to wear?" I walk over, to them. "Dresses, seriously, none of you have anything better suited to exercising than those."

The girls scowl at me, Winnie steps up though, "We have been wearing our normal clothes for years when we exercise it's never been a problem with any of our other coaches, even if they didn't last."

"Then it's high time you had a coach who will take your fitness seriously. I think I passed a sporting goods store on the way into town, so I'll find time to take you all into town and get proper attire." I contemplate finding time today to get them clothes better suited for exercise before I slump my shoulders. "Oh well, this is what we'll work with for now." I pull out a few stop watches. "Okay so the trail Matches and I set up is marked, so we're going to run it for a warm up. I'll be timing you and taking notes on where you're at currently before I start making plans to hit target goals."

I stand in front of the girls who are clearly displeased. "Alright let's begin with our stretches, no point in spraining something."

Tanis raises her hand, "Umm Stevan, we've never learned stretches, we do ballet though."

"That's fine, dancing is a very invigorating activity, but for this I just want you to follow my movements." As I spread my feet apart and raise my hands. I wait for the girls to mimic me before flowing through the routine I use every morning.

"Hmm, seems a lot of you are pretty stiff, we'll make sure to work in time to help limber you girls up, no reason you shouldn't be able to do a standing toe touch." I say as I watch them struggle to get low enough to the ground. When Elsa falls over to her side, "And some gymnastics for balance."

After the ten minutes spent stretching and showing them how to do so properly. I line the girls up, "Ok make sure you follow me, I'll go slow so you can all keep up, after a while I'll fall behind you girls to watch your form."

I see Phanty lean over to Sibella and whisper something, which seemed to make the violet girl tinge her cheeks with a more plum looking color. "Ok, on the count of three;" I grab the whistle from around my neck, "One, two, three." As I take off at a comfortable pace.

After a minute I look back and see that the girls are nearly specks in the distance, so I jog back towards them, "What seems to be the problem?" Sibella and Elsa are panting like dogs, Tanis is lying on the ground and Phanty is floating lazily in the air, Winnie is crawling on the ground.

I hear Winnie wheezing some words, so I lean closer to hear them, "Tried… to keep… pace… not human," she said as she collapsed.

I chuckled, "Yeah I guess that's my fault, I assumed you were at a certain fitness level, which was a mistake, I need to treat you all as if you have had done nothing in your entire lives." I looked down at the girls, "Ok so we'll take a five-minute break, let you catch your breath then I'll follow along behind you and see how you all do."

The next hour was me stopping and starting when the girls would pause to rest. "So the 10k was a bit much for a warm up I take it."

The girls look at me in shock, "That was the warm up" shouted Phanty.

I scratch the back of my head, "It was supposed to take about a half an hour, then we would get onto the real exercises," as I begin listing the intended lesson plan of pushups, squats, sit ups, side hops, wind sprints, lunges, I notice horror creeping on their faces so I pause for a moment.

Winnie whined, "That's not exercise, that's torture."

I look at how the girls agree with the werewolf, "Dang, is it, that's what I would have considered a light workout. Since it didn't have any combat in it."

"My muscles are sore, and I don't even have any," Phanty whined.

"I just want to replace all my limbs to make them stop aching," Elsa said as she stood wearily.

"Ok, look how about later, I give each of you a massage to try and get the tightness of the muscles out, since I made the mistake of over working you all so much." I offer.

"It better be the best damn massage I have ever had mister." Sibella growls before she flops back onto the ground.

"Okay, I'll make sure to warm some oils and prepare a nice," I start to say before I pause, I can hear whispers behind me, the girls are in front of me, Ms. Grimwood is still in the house and I saw Matches paddling out in the lake a few minutes ago. I spin on my heel and see a glimmer in the hedge, I shout at the girls, "Gun, get inside," and sprint the distance from the side of the school to the hedges, it's roughly fifty meters, I cross it in under three seconds, I leap over the twelve foot hedges and look below to see boys with something metal sticking through the foliage, as I begin descending I pull my knife from behind my back and twist and grab a small red headed boy by his hair and put the knife to his throat. "Drop whatever that is now, or he dies."

I feel the boys squirm and squeal in my grasp, everyone in a commotion at my entrance and threatening posture. "DO IT!" as I press the tip of the blade into his skin a thin trail of blood leaks at the small nick I make in his neck.

"Alright, we're dropping the telescope, just," At tall blonde boy raises his hands, "Don't hurt Baxter alright man." The other boys are sizing me up.

"Don't try, he'll be dead before he hits the ground and the two boys failing to sneak up behind me will be next." I snarl, as I hear their footsteps cease.

"Stevan," I hear Ms. Grimwood shouting. The hedges clear a path for her to easily walk through them, "Where are, OH MY GOD, let little Baxter go, NOW!" she orders me once she sees the position I am in. Following her instructions, I pull the blade from his neck and push him to the blonde boy. Ms. Grimwood walks over and slaps me in the face. "How dare you, the girls come running in that there was a gun and you just took off and hopped your way into Calloway's and I find you attacking the cadets." She stands indignantly. "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I'm sorry, I saw a scope peering through the bushes and it was aimed at the girls, so I," I stammer out my reasoning, "Kind of went to neutralize a perceived threat to their safety."

I watch the boys, they look between the witch and myself, obviously unsure of what to be doing in this situation. Before a loud voice comes out. "What is going on here, You boys had better be preparing for, Abigail," As a rather French looking man in military dress hustles over to us. "And, you," he looks at me, "Are not one of my cadets. What is the?"

Baxter shouts, with his hand on his neck, "He was going to kill me."

"Stevan!" Ms. Grimwood gasps.

"I wasn't going to have to, they backed down." I say quickly showing my hands, before realizing I still have my knife out, I drop it on the ground where it sticks into the moist morning grass. "I think there was a misunderstanding."

"Can someone tell me what is going on?" the man shouts, before the blonde boy stands up straight and addresses him.

"Sir we were performing reconnaissance until he," as the boy glares at me, "Infiltrated our facility and took a hostage." The mustached man looks at me.

"Is this accurate?" he asks me.

I shrug, "S'bout right, I mistook their telescope for a rifle scope and thought they were like the locals and were going to try and take a shot at the girls, so I figure the best way to keep them safe is if some people you know, lost some blood." I awkwardly state.

Ms. Grimwood groans, "Stevan I am glad that you are so active in the girl's safety, but you cannot have this attack first attitude. Now I want you to apologize to little Baxter and then go into the school," she sighed.

I grab the knife and put it back where I keep in on my body and walk over to the nervous redhead, the other boys form a wall to keep us separated, "Look, I'm, sorry. It was wrong of me to assume that others around here will try to attack the girls, and I overreacted." The boys just glare at me and I back away and leap over the hedge again, before silently walking back to the school, and I notice the girls looking at me in a window, I can't tell what their thinking, but it isn't making my mood any better.

Author's Notes: Uhoh, I guess being raised to fight has some problems when you're instincts kick in.

So Stevan wants to take the girls shopping, clearly this will end well, but first, what's going to happen to him for preparing to decapitate one of the cadets.