Chapter 6 – Flames Everywhere

Pushing open the heavy door, the scent of paper and cleaner hit me square in the face. All of the scenes that had been scattered around the small shop had disappeared, leaving a huge studio like area open in the front of the shop. On the desk were a pile of towels as well. Looking around I couldn't spy Ms. Cloud anywhere and couldn't hear any movement from the back. Shrugging, I took off my jacket and hung it on a peg beside the door. I also took this time to remove my ring and tongue ring while I wasn't being watched. I had decided that learning without the inhibitors was probably the smartest idea so that I wouldn't become dependent on them and my magic wouldn't just get stronger so the point that they would be nearly obsolete.

As I dropped the metal pieces into the pocket of my jacket I felt something slide along my leg and jumped, immediately feeling the gut wrenching tug that hadn't felt for the past week as my magic lit up sapphire all around me. There under my coat where I had just been standing was the cat, looking quite confused and like he was about to run. I released a breath shaking my head and took a step toward him. At the first step he bolted for the hallway, claws skittering on the hardwood floor as he slid around the desk and thumped into the wall. He skidded around another corner and seconds later I heard a shriek.

"Fitzgerald! What the hell?! The heck, what time is it even? Oh shit!" this was followed by a thump that I could feel through the floor. Seconds later the woman's head poked out from the door the cat had shot into. I was glaring at a now green flame that hovered on my shoulder. No matter how I breathed, they were not going out this time. I looked up, feeling her gaze.

"Am I early?"

"Ah, no, er, just give me a minute. I seem to have overslept." This was emphasized with her obvious bedhead.

"Sure hun. I'll keep trying to get these blasted shits to go away. Breathing ain't doing shit right now." I swatted at a shoulder flame, as if that would do anything with my hands flaming as well.

She giggled and popped back in her room. Five minutes later she came skidding out of the room, heading for another door. A hairbrush was buried in the wreck of her hair and she only had one sock, but it was enough to distract me and make the flames I had turn white as I tried to look away but still watch. She was kinda cute like this. The second that door closed and I heard water start to run, I realized that must be the bathroom.

Clearing my head, I started to try to put the flames out again, with no noticeable change. Finally I threw my hands up and gave up. I couldn't even do the most simple tasks. Walking over to my jacket I grabbed the ring and slipped it on. Immediately the flames dissipated, and from there I could put them out. Once out, I slipped it back off and shoved it back in the pocket. When I turned around, she was watching me with raised eyebrows.

"That's cheating. Don't use objects unless I give it the okay. Bring them back and try again without that. I'll be with you as soon as I can." She sashayed down the hall and turned the corner at the very back where I could see some of those scenery pieces.

'Damn, she has a really nice ass. Hell, she is really nice all around. No! That's not why I'm here. I'm here for the magic training only! Now get to work!' I conversed in my head. It was a habit I picked up on the street to help keep my sanity. Taking a deep breath I summoned my magic back to the level it had been before and the pull was almost sickening in my nonexistent gut. I then attempted to try putting it out again. That was slightly nauseating as well. I ended up sitting down hugging my abdomen.

"G? You still out here?" I heard her call.

Why was she calling me by my father's street name? Instead I called out "Here." Weakly. Wow, I really was weak.

"Oh God, G, are you okay? You can use that thing you used before if you need to. You weren't supposed to make yourself sick. Oh, where is it, I can grab it for you?" she was looking around as if I had it on me.

I pointed to my jacket and groaned as a shiver ran through me, tightening the pull in my gut. It felt like the magic was trying to come out even more. She darted across the shop and dug through the pockets, finally coming to the right one and pulling both pieces out. Without even looking at them she ran back and slid in a crouch to me, offering the pieces. My clouded mind laughed at how she was acting and that she was still in just one sock. With the hand I hand pointed with I fumbled in hers to grasp the ring and get it on. She seemed to realized how out of it I was and finally grabbed my hand and forced it on. The effect was immediate. The pulling in my gut disappeared and over half my flames disappeared. I didn't even try to dismiss the rest of them. I just focused on getting my breath back and calming my stomach.

"G?" I flinched at the name, but looked up. She looked worried. "Can you… are you able to put those out on your own?" she nodded to my other flames. They looked really weird now, flickering between a blackish green and white.

"Yeah," I rasped, and then dry swallowed to try and help. "Give me a minute. I don't know what happened. It just kept pouring out of me. It was like it was being pulled out. Now it is just stagnant, but I'm a little.." I quickly covered my mouth as a burp escaped me. I was never more glad of the biker gloves I had on at the moment. "Excuse me, I'm a little off. Give me a moment, sorry."

"Sure." While I tried to get my head back in order and calm my stomach I saw her watching and examining my remaining flames. As I slowly settled, they were bleeding into a calm yellow kind of flickering. "I've never seen magic change colors so often. Have they always changed colors?" she asked quietly, quite entrances with the flames movements.

Taking a breath and another swallow, I dismissed the rest of them and nodded. "Yeah, since they've appeared they always are all sorts of colors. I don't get it, but there it is." I shrugged weakly.

"Interesting. I wonder what it means. Usually a monster's magic is a reflection of their personality and stabilizes a color at a young age. You said that you didn't have access to your magic until recently though." She went quiet for a few moments thinking.

"You think that because I couldn't access it all those years it never settled?" I probed.

"Well, that would normally be my assumption, but I remember when we were kids, you used your magic back then occasionally, so it's not like you didn't have the capacity to use it all this time. I know you told me not to pry, but I'm going to need to know a bit more about why you couldn't get it stabilized before now, or why you couldn't use it. For you to suddenly not be able to access it, that just doesn't make sense with everything I've studied." She sat back on her heels, then got up to walk across the room. She came back with a bottle of water she had pulled from under the desk which she handed to me.

"Your memory is really good. I can't remember a time before recently that I was allowed to use my magic. The idea that I was allowed as a kid is a bit much for me to believe. Are you sure it was me that you knew and not some other skeleton?" there were so few of us that it was unlikely. There were only about six families in the city that I knew of. None of them shared our name though, so if she recognized me by my name then it was unlikely but worth a shot.

"No, it was you. I'm sure of it. The last time you used your magic around me it flickered different colors a little then. I had a diary back then and wrote about it. After my classes on monster magic, I realized that it probably due to it not settling yet, although it should have. But I also remembered that you rarely used your magic, so it may not have had a chance to. Looking back, it is strange how much your dad kept you from using it. Most parents encourage magic usage in their kids." She seemed lost in her musing again.

Sighing, I ran a hand over my face. I really didn't want to explain how my life had gone since she left, but if it was going to inhibit my training, it was looking like I was going to have to share a little. I missed having my old inhibitors. Life was so much easier before they broke. "Fine, here is the short version." Her head snapped up as I started speaking. "My magic has always been more powerful than normal. Due to that, my father felt that there was nobody who could teach me the amount of restraint I would need to keep it under control. He found a strong set of inhibitors and made sure I wore them at all times. I can't remember when I first started wearing them, but they broke recently and now my magic is out of control and I don't know how to put it in its place. That's why I never learned control. That's why I'm here. Maybe that's the reason it hasn't settled. Maybe it won't settle just because of how strong it is. I don't know much about it other than it's a nuisance. I got this ring and that thing recently to try to help keep it a bit more manageable so I could keep working, but they are nowhere near as powerful as the pieces I used to have. I can still summon or accidentally light up with these. I couldn't even feel my magic with my old set."

"Your dad suppressed your magic? That's inhumane and illegal! I've heard of people doing that, but," she went quiet shaking her head. Then she looked me in the eye. "I'm sorry G, you shouldn't have had to go through that. We will work through this and get you to where you won't need these anymore." Her hand clenched around the piece in her hand.

I just looked away ashamed that I had to even rely on them. I didn't want her pity, I just wanted to be done with all this. "Oh, and I'm gonna guess that 'G' is something you called me as a kid, please don't call me it now. That's what people called my dad."

"Oh, sorry. What would you prefer to be called? I can stick with Gaster if it would make you more comfortable?"

Hearing my full name from her sounded wrong after being called G all day, but the name rubbed me wrong. I wasn't G, but it felt wrong to have her call me by my name. "I don't know. My friends call me Gaz or Gaster." I didn't want her calling me GJ either, that was my street name and I didn't want to get her mixed up in that.

"Well you can think about it. For now let's just keep working on your magic lesson, okay?" she stood and offered me a hand.

I grinned and nodded, accepting her offer and stood.

"Take the ring off for now and try summoning a small amount of magic. You don't need to bring out a huge amount. The more you bring forth, the harder it can be to dismiss." She instructed.

I slipped the ring into my jeans pocket and focused on summoning a single ball of flame in the palm of my hand like I had in Jerico's shop. I had been practicing this small bit in my room at night in an attempt to get some control on my own. It didn't always work, like now. The sapphire flame appeared in my palm like I wanted, but then started to climb up my arm. I pushed for it to stop. It reached my shoulder and finally stopped. I released a breath as it finally listened. I looked up disgruntled and shrugged.

"How much were you aiming for?" she asked with a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Just a little flame over my palm." I growled, still pushing for the flame to go back to my palm.

"Huh." She walked over and before I could react she caught the end of the tendril on my shoulder and somehow started to unwrap it from my arm and coil it into a ball. Once she got to my wrist, she took the ball and put her hand on the other side of the flame in my hand. "Take a deep breath." She instructed. I did, and at the same time she shoved the ball into the flame over my palm.

"Aheeee!" I shrieked "What the fuck was that!" I was seeing stars and felt like I'd just been cuffed over the head. I blinked a few times to try to clear my vision. The pulsing that came from the flame in my hand was stronger than it had been before, but I could feel how and where it was pulling from in my palm now, where before it seemed to pull a little from everywhere and nowhere.

"I made the magic anchor to that spot so it wouldn't travel. Part of the reason I'm able to be a magic teacher is I have the innate ability to manipulate monster magic. I went to school to get training on it and now I'm able to do stuff like that. You should be able to handle it a bit better for right now until you dismiss it ."

I tried shrinking the amount that was there, and watched as the flame shrunk, then I put a little more into it and watched it build a little. I bounced my hand a few times and the flame acted like a ball I was tossing, which was what I had imagined it would do in my mind. Grinning, I played with it few more minutes watching the sapphire fade into a purple color. "This is awesome." I whispered to myself. I didn't see it, but she grinned.

"Alright, enough playing for now. Extinguish it and try to summon it again. Remember how it feels now and try to replicate it yourself." She said with a slight laugh as I tossed the flame up toward the ceiling.

I closed my hand before it came back down and it went out easy as pie. I looked over to her grinning and nodded. I opened my palm again and focused on the center where I had been able to feel the pooling of magic around the edges of my palm-hole and with a deep breath gave a hard push. The magic exploded out, sending me flying back into the wall behind me and her tumbling away from me. It didn't stick around. I gasped, trying to breathe and when my vision came back and I saw her sitting on the other side of the room holding her head. I tried to push myself to my feet, which didn't work, so I just crawled over to her. "You alright hun? I don't know what happened. I've never created an explosion like that."

Keeping a hand to her head, she looked up smiling. "You really do have a lot of power stored. Dang. Maybe we need to move a bit slower. That was a good job though. You managed to focus it otherwise you might have torn yourself apart with that much force."

My eyes widened at that. "Are you serious?"

She nodded. "That, and this," she gestured around at the slight blackening of the wood on the floor where we had been and a few marks on the walls, "is why people often don't try to teach adults. Untrained adults are much more powerful and dangerous than children. I felt a second before it loosed what was going to happen to I was able to contain it a bit, but ordinary trainers would not be so lucky. That blast unhindered could have wiped out this building and one or both of us may not have survived it. We will definitely need to work on measuring how much energy you put out at once."

I nodded solemnly. The idea that I could have leveled a building or killed someone accidentally hit home strongly. Maybe dad had a point in restraining my magic.

"Hey, don't worry about it. I'm the one that pushed for you to try it. I knew that once you had a focus point the amount you'd put out would be stronger than normal. Don't blame yourself for this. It was my own recklessness. I was testing limits. I wanted to see just how strong you were."

I looked up sharply, a glare forming. "I told you my magic was blocked due to it being too strong and you tried to test it just because you could?" I snapped.

"Yeah, sorry. I had to know what I was dealing with. Don't worry, I won't do it again unless I ask you." She held up her hands in apology.

"I wasn't even putting out all my strength there. I just pushed a little harder. I barely scraped what I have. I can feel it coursing in my bones, through my fingers, from my feet up through my skull. I have a lot more where that came from. If you truly want to test my limits, we should probably not be around people or buildings." I said lowly, still angry at being tricked into nearly hurting her.

"Oh." Was all she said. When I looked back up to her, her eyes were on the floor looking at something I couldn't see.

The bell on the door suddenly rang as it opened and a man with a young girl holding on his hand walked in. He looked at the two of us, "This is Magical Photography, right? I was hoping to get an appointment set up for some pictures? Is now okay?"

"Oh, yes, ah, right this way. One moment please G." she gasped and tried to stand, only to stumble. I caught her hand as she nearly fell away from me, stabilizing her.

"Careful, take your time." I looked at my watch. "My time is a bit past anyway."

She managed to stumble to the desk and glanced at me worried. I slipped my ring on and some of dizziness faded as the magic pumping through my bones eased. As she talked dates, times, and costs with the man, I slowly forced myself to my feet and looked over to watch them. The little girl's eyes were huge as they looked at me. I grinned and waved a little. She hugged the man's leg and buried her face in his pants, then shyly looked around his leg at me. When she gripped him, he looked over his shoulder and glared at me, putting a hand on her back. My smile dimmed as he brought me to the very real reality that not everybody liked the monster minority. I let my hand drop and moved to the door to grab my jacket and pulled it on. I stayed to the side until they finished their business and once they left I stepped up to pay for my lesson.

"One seventy-five, right? I asked, pulling out my wallet and starting to count the bills. I still wasn't used to using a bank or card.

"Let's make it one twenty-five since I made you wait and I wasn't ready. It's only fair." She countered.

"You also worked with me past time, so that made up for it." I handed her the full one seventy-five.

She sighed and accepted it, counting it to double check the amount and wrote it down in a notebook she had beside the calendar. "Thank you. So I guess I'll see you next week?" I nodded. "Keep practicing summoning a small amount, don't push hard, just a small amount. The finer you can get and more precise. The better your control will get. Eventually we can get to dealing with larger applications. Just be careful."

"I will. Thank you. Also, I think you still have my other piece. I tapped my ring to get the meaning across."

"Oh, oh! I'm so sorry. I completely forgot." She dug it out of her pocket and handed it over.

"Thank you. Do you mind if I use your bathroom real quick to put this in. I haven't tried putting it in blind yet."

"Oh, yeah, right this way. She led me to the room she had gone into earlier and let me have my privacy.

I rinsed the piece under water and then ran it through my ecto-tongue. It felt weird, but the disappearance of the magic flowing in my bones was worth it. If I really focused, I could still feel it deep in my soul, but it wasn't right under the surface anymore. I ran my tongue around my mouth, getting used to the feeling again and clicked it along all my teeth. Nodding, I made my way out and thanked her again.

"See you next week." She smiled and I made my way out. Her smile was pretty and she was really nice, if a little reckless.

I got home and Harold was actually at the stove and dressed. "You're up early." I commented as I toed off my shoes.

"Meh, some cop came around asking about a guy who goes by the name GJ and may have been part of an arson across town in a scent shop. Told him I didn't know anybody like that." The look he gave me told me he wanted info.

I put up my hands. "I had no part in any arson. I don't go around burning down buildings and shops." I defended.

"Maybe not, but it was a day after you came home with that ring and your magic started acting up less after that. It practically disappeared after that thing in your mouth." His face looked disgusted as he brought up my piercing. "I'm willing to bet that those aren't just for looks"

"Fine, they are inhibitors, but I'm able to remove these myself. I needed something so I could continue to work and not jeopardize everyone. I promise that I am taking classes now on control for the magic though. I don't know how much it's gonna help, but I am trying that as well and she knows about the inhibitors." I told him.

"I still don't approve of using them. They didn't have anything to do with that fire though, right?" he did seem worried about that. "They guy I got these from has plenty of enemies. That is not the first place he's had that got destroyed in one form or another." I shrugged.

Harold groaned and went back to his cooking.

"What you making?" I asked as I flopped on the couch, not bothering the tv.

"Eggs, why, you hungry?" he asked.

"Actually, yeah, I'm completely starved. That lesson really took it outta me."

He looked over at me, I was ready to pass out where I was. "What's up with you hand?" he asked.

I looked down and noticed for the first time a black mark across a couple of my knuckles. I had taken off my gloves and on my summoning hand the edge of where the glove had been was all blackened as well. "My magic blew up a bit. I didn't even notice the marks. I'll go get cleaned up."

"You okay?" he called after me as I went into the bathroom.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was more worried about the teacher. She got thrown hard." I yelled back. "We both came out okay though." When I came back out he was still shaking his head.

"You're dangerous, you know that. The sooner you get this under control, the sooner everyone will breathe easy." He laughed to show he was only half joking.

"I'm trying." I grumped.

He looked over his shoulder. "We know. I was only joking Gaz. Take it easy."

I grumbled some more, but finally turned on the tv to check the latest on sports and news. Just another day at the apartment.