"Yeah, true." Aiki laughed weakly. "There's bad people everywhere, you know? I'm sure we'll be talking about some criminal organizations, too. Not just self proclaimed 'villains'. You know… um… like the people who took me when I was ten. No one knows about that, though, so I guess I'll just have to sit through it if we talk about them…"
Farah frowned. “No one knows?” she whispered. “But how can you expect there to be justice without incrimination of the guilty? Don’t you want them to pay for what they did to you? It was horrible, a wrong that must be righted.”
"No, no. I mean… people know that they're criminals. They just don't know specifically that they… you know… kidnapped me in particular." Aiki looked away, seeming uncomfortable.
Farah’s eyes widened, seeing that she’d made them uncomfortable. “Sorry,” she quickly apologized. “I didn’t understand. I didn’t mean to make you…” She sighed gently. “I’m sorry.”
"It's fine…" Aiki replied softly, still looking pretty tense. When class ended, he got to his feet and gathered their things so they could go to the next class. "Um… my next class is a physical training one. We'll be put up against each other, most likely. The students, anyway."
"Oh," Farah sighed. This was what she'd been looking forward to the least. It was situations like this when she didn't know how to carry herself. Against a Burned One, she could use as much magic as she desired without fear of hurting anyone. But against other people… specifically, First Worlders whose abilities she'd never seen before… What if she did something foolish, or if she hurt someone by accident?
"You won't have to participate if you don't want to, Farah. You can just observe if you want." Aiki shrugged and started walking. "We might see Eiji since they sometimes bring in the healers just in case somebody gets hurt. They might pit us against one of the other classes as well, so… we might see Roka and Oukami."
Farah rose from her seat and followed Aiki while listening to him explain everything. "Right," she murmured. "So how long will we be there?"
"Mm… a little longer than the last class we were just in, but not by a whole lot. It also runs long sometimes if it needs to." Aiki shrugged and led Farah out to a training area, where some other students had already come in. Roka was there, and he was standing with four other students. One was Koji, who had fluffy, stark white hair and freckles. Koji was the shortest of the group by a few inches at least. Kenishi was there as well, and he had darker skin and ginger hair. He was the tallest by an inch or two, standing at about 6'0. There was also Hiroki, who was the second shortest and had black hair and pointed ears. The last one was the one Aiki seemed to be paying the most attention to, since it was Oukami. Oukami and Aiki were about the same height, and he had choppy blond hair that hung over his face a bit.
(Pictures of them)
Koji
Kenishi
Hiroki (they don't typically have the rabbit ears/tail, that's a shape-shifting thing)
Oukami
Farah only recognized Roka from the brief interaction she’d witness with him and the twins before the history class. Everything else was new and unfamiliar. She stayed close to Aiki.
"Looks like we're up against the other class today. They actually pair me up with Oukami pretty often so we can work on fighting people who aren't necessarily a good match up. We're both fire types, after all." Aiki sighed and went to change into his gym uniform.
Farah nodded. “Are there any First Worlders with Mind abilities?” she asked, looking around at the two classes worth of students. “Or Light or Earth?” she added, thinking of Ben and Luna. Those three abilities weren’t all fairy abilities, but Farah found herself looking for any connection, no matter how unreal, to her Otherworld friends.
"Mind abilities?" Aiki asked when they came back. "Yeah, Roka does. His power is a sort of electricity that allows him to take control of the neurons in people's brains and do mind control, basically. As far as earth or light… kind of. Kenishi can turn into metal, Oukami can turn into magma… Ouku uses plant life. Stuff like that."
“In the Otherworld, electricity-like powers belong to Air fairies,” Farah remarked. “The differences between the Otherworld and the First World are extremely interesting…”
Aiki shrugged. "We don't have any fairies here, and anybody can have pretty much any kind of power. We've got all sorts of varieties of powers here."
Farah nodded. “It will be interesting to see them all,” she considered. “Where will I be able to sit without anyone noticing?”
"Uh… you can just sit over in the bleachers if you'd like. I'll be back after class!" Aiki waved and ran off to start training with their classmates.
"Oh, um… alright. Good luck!" Farah called as she waved to Aiki's retreating form. She sat down, smoothing her skirt relentlessly as she did, and observed the decent view she had of where the fighting match-ups would be. Her eyes watched with keen interest.
(What if Aiki gets in a fight where they're going to lose, and Farah intervenes???)
(Sounds fine to me aha)
Aiki soon made it back to the field and watched a match or two before they were paired up with another student. He was paired with someone from their own class who was a bit taller and much more filled out. Aiki looked a bit nervous, but got into the right position anyway.
When the match began, their opponent ran towards him and they let flames swirl around their shoulders. He dodged a couple of attacks, but it wasn't long before his opponent hit them hard and pinned them to the ground, grinding their head into the asphalt. Their teacher called out to him to tell him to pull away since he had already won, but he only pushed Aiki's face harder into the ground as they struggled against his hold.
Farah leapt up from her seat and was storming toward the fight in an instant. Without thinking, her eyes turned silver-blue as she used her magic to flip Aiki’s opponent off of them and sent him flying across the arena. She jogged the rest of the way and knelt beside Aiki to check on them. “Are you alright?” she whispered.
The rest of Aiki's classmates looked very confused as the random shadow ran in to break up the fight, but they didn't really do anything else. Aiki managed to push himself up a bit once their opponent wasn't weighing them down, but he didn't look like he was in great shape. They were shaky and looked dizzy, and there was blood dripping from his face and nose. There was a noticeable wound on their cheek and around their eye, and it looked like his nose might be broken.
Farah didn’t need Aiki to respond to her question; it was obvious that she could already tell. Her gaze sharpened into a fierce glare, and she looked up to where Aiki’s opponent had landed thanks to her powerful blow.
The kid who had been thrown looked angry as he sat up, but he didn't approach again. It was clear that Farah had intimidated him enough to discourage him from attacking. Aiki properly sat up and held one hand up to his bleeding nose, trembling a bit where they sat. "I'm fine… f-fine…" They insisted weakly. Eiji, who had been sitting in as one of the onsite healers, rushed over to his brother to tend to their wounds.
With Aiki's attacker at bay, Farah focused her energy on caring for Aiki. She wrapped her arms around them to make sitting a bit easier. When Eiji approached, she smiled briefly in greeting before her eyes turned silver-blue and calming feelings transferred from her to Aiki.
Eiji helped Farah to move Aiki out of the way so he could treat them without hindering the next matchup. The teacher dealt with Aiki's opponent while he was taken to the sidelines to be healed up. Eiji sat beside them, resting one hand on his brother's shoulder. Aiki's wounds steadily began to fix themselves and fade, and by the time he was back to normal, both they and Eiji looked pretty tired.