Shoot…me…now…
They just won't stop! I've tried detention, threats, blackmail, screaming, crying, excessive homework, rewards, hell, even begging.
I'm not cut out to be a teacher…especially not to the Tentai brats.
"Yo! Teach!"
I gave a noncommittal grunt before thumping my head back down against my folded arms as I slouched over the desk. Speak of the devil and all that. Kuwabura I could stand. Yusuke, maybe. Both? Hell no! Are you kidding!
"So whatcha got for us today, Teach?"
Then it hit me. Reverse psychology. I grinned into my arms before blanking my face and leaning back in my chair. I raised my eyes up to look at the two standing in front of my desk. More specifically, at the smirking gaki who excluded arrogance like a bad stench.
"Yusuke Urameshii. Congratulations. You are the first student I have ever given up on. And from the moment forward, I will ignore your very existence until you can prove to me that you can act semi-decent. Until that point, incidentally, you will also receive an automatic 'F' in this course. Bye-bye now." I smile sweetly and proceeded to ignore him, instead pulling forward the tests from yesterday that I had yet to finish marking. I looked back up at the two startled boys in front of me. "Oh! By the way, Kuwabura, congratulations on your test. You scored a 64. A personal best for this course." I shifted my gaze to Yusuke. " You, however, received a score of 47. Better luck next time, gaki."
He snorted and the two boys moved towards their seats as the tardy bell rang, one elated, the other disgruntled.
I finished the test I was marking and stood up. "Hora, class."
The class stood and bowed, with the exception of the unhappy gaki up the back. "Hora, sensei."
I waved for the class to sit before turning to the board and started writing as I spoke. "Today we will be contemplating the phrase; 'War doesn't decide who's right, it decides who's left.' I want a 300 word essay done by the end of class, at which point I will collect them and hand out yesterday's test." There was a universal groan from the class but they settled down after a few minutes. Even the gaki was actually doing his essay.
I looked down and continued marking the tests. My mind drifted back to the others. There were seven of us in all. Firstly, there was myself. My name is Amaya, meaning 'Night Rain', but I am using the name Misato Katsuragi after my favourite anime character from Neon-Genesis Evangeleon. I'm around 5'6 and look ageless but am really only 19.
My hair falls down to mid-back in a dead straight blue-black silken sheet where it was cut in a flat horizontal line. My skin is pale marble that looks like it glows from within but is in no way sickly. More milky than pink or ivory and obviously never tans. My build is incredibly and deceptively delicate, almost like an oversized porcelain doll, right down to my angular little face and pale pink lips. My eyes are tilted and large, but the navy blue is always half hidden by my overly thick coal black lashes and heavy lids. My eyebrows are almost pitch lines against my skin and match my face well. Now, you're thinking, 'her voice was like a flute' or some such nonsense. Nup. My voice is surprisingly deep and husky, contralto. I'm told I'd give good phone sex.
I am human, contrary to popular belief among demons and spirits. Koenma himself believes me to be one. But, no, I am a human who looks almost like a wind spirit. I am considered by some to be a genius, but all I will admit to is a photographic memory and a love of games and tactics. I am also highly spiritually aware, but through some kink in my reiki, I feel like a youkai though I have no demon blood at all. My powers, however, are just like my reiki in that they are unique. I have mixed powers that I have to keep a strangle hold on or they go berserk. I have power over what can only be called natural disasters. I can influence wind, storms, rain and lightening. I can feel the ebb and flow of the tides in my blood and harness the power of earthquakes by binding the power within objects. I see pictures on the wind and hear conversations on the breeze. I can make a sword sprout from my hand using the natural metals in my body. I was kidnapped when I was nine and spent three years in a Makai Lord's castle being used like a tool.
It was there that I first met the first two of my team, my friends, my family. The first one I met was the river dragon spirit, Riku. He was the enslaved spirit who was to act as my bodyguard, body servant and, as they hoped eventually, my pleasure slave. As I grew, he became loyal to only me and would serve me not because of the slave rings around his neck, wrists, ankles and…uh…thing, but because he cared for me as one would an almost sister and friend. It would have been pretty sick if I had taken him as a pleasure slave because he looks like a boy-doll. A 12-year-old boy-doll with almond-shaped olive green eyes and grey-green silky hair cut to just above shoulder-length. In his dragon form, his scales are pearly white and a blue-green mane runs down his spine. He has five talons on each claw, as opposed to the common dragon spirits that only have three talons, and he has a fox-head with two long spiralled goat horns and catfish whiskers that move around like five-foot long tails. Last I checked he was 18.4ft in length. After myself, he was probably the most intelligent of the team, but probably also the weakest. His river dried up with most of his power about two hundred years ago. I'm not sure how old he is really.
The other was a prisoner like myself only he was being used as a battery whereas I was a weapon. He was summoned from another world by a spell. He was called because his youkai was compatible with the lord's youkai and he was powerful. However, his power was much differently used that the Lord's. He used his powers through elements. He can use incredibly hot fires, even handle molten rock for short periods of time. Contrastingly, he can also summon blizzards and freeze opponents from inside out, though he professes to hate the cold. Side abilities include absorbing the power, and sometimes abilities, of beaten opponents and artefacts of power, and using self-glamour. Like illusions that are effected by what one expects to see. His name is Rath Illusar, Dragon Knight of Fire and Heir of the Dragon Lord, Lykouleon of Draqueen. Or so he says. He once hinted that he was something else besides that but if asked directly, he closes ranks. He's taller than I am by an inch of so and looks eighteen or so. He's pale in the same way I am and could probable pass off as my brother our facial features are so alike, but he is immortal and so much older than I will ever be. His hair is absolute black with no coloured highlights but the single stark white lock in the bangs on the right side. His eyes aren't the same shape as mine, rather, they are long and cat-like, but the lashes that hide the tri-irises of fire-red, crimson and holly-red are just as long and thick. He is slender and lean, like a leggy, graceful blade covered in smooth velvety skin. His hair was cut sort when he came but since I've been with him, he's let his hair grow to feather around his shoulders, his beautiful elfish ears peaking through the sides. As far as I am concerned, he is my best friend, brother and sometimes lover.
I won't speak of how the three of us escaped. None of us do. It was too harrowing and painful to remember. We still have nightmares about it. But we somehow stumbled across a rough portal into Ningenkai and met up with a gang let by the next member, Squall Leonhart. We stayed with that gang, the Kurai Tenshi, until I was fifteen. Then the Lord's henchmen found us. The survivors scattered but Squall, a throwback hanyou, a human with far back youkai blood that was dominant in form, youki or both. That youkai blood actually belonged to a snow-lioness youkai from five generations back. She had left her half-human child with its father and never come back. Everyone thought that Squall's opalescent pale-blue hair was a good dye job and his slit-pupiled metallic blue eyes were contacts. No one ever gave thought to his extreme strength and speed, nor his ice-cold skin. They didn't notice anything amiss if he growled or purred. Let's hear it for denial.
We went back to Makai after that. We met up almost immediately with the besieged inu-hanyou twins Gin and Kin. Gin's life-magic and healing and Kin's death-magic and necromancy were a powerful and valuable asset to the team. It was, by then, generally accepted that we didn't speak of the past so no questions were asked of them. Gin was a little shorter than me, probably 5'3ft, with fluffy black hair hanging like a soft could to just above the shoulder blades, merry and mischievous wolf-grey eyes and fluffy black puppy ears on top of her head. Her twin, by contrast, was tall, nearly 7ft, with thigh-length silken straight white hair and elf ears, cold and closed off golden suns of eyes and a long bushy soft tail he wrapped over his shoulder like a boa.
The last member joined us by complete accident. Gin and Kin had been uncharacteristically arguing and their youkai had started to fluctuate and, from what we could gather it was because of a twin thing, their life and death magic had merged and drawn a 16yr dead chimera youkai corpse to the surface where Kin's necromancy had reconstructed it and Gin's life and healing magic had reanimated the body and dragged the soul out of the afterlife. Bada-bing, bada-boom, alakazam! And you have a butt naked, pretty damn hot, shivering and strangely wet chimera blinking around blearily. His name was Kuronue and he was a thief. A great and renown thief who had been the partner of the great Youko Kurama. We eventually, after hours of digging in the light of Makai's three moons, unearthed Kuronue's still intact leather clothes and gold and ruby star pendant. Kuronue was the tallest of us all, 7.2ft tall with a surprising wingspan of fourteen meters. His hair hung in a high ponytail pulled through the top of a European-ish witches/Amish hat. His ears were long and pointy, almost as bat-like as his wings and his eyes were a very pretty shade of pale purple laced in black.
The recess bell screeched and knocked me out of my nostalgia. I looked up, then at my now marked tests. Sighing, I stood up. "Alright. Move in an orderly fashion. Place your essay on the table as you pass and pick up your test as you leave but I want it back tomorrow so we can go through it as a class. Now, shoo."
The class filed out, and I sat back in my desk chair in the empty classroom. And cried for what could have been, what was and what had yet to come.
Unaware of the concerned brown eyes watching from the doorway.