Isaac kept his head down, pulling on the threaded strings of his hoodie. The hood closed around his face a little, and he glanced around watching the other students carefully. He really, really did not want people approaching him. It wasn’t that he hated other people, he just wasn’t a fan of talking. He could very much enjoy companionable silence with his good friends, but the idea of a stranger approaching him was panic-inducing. Noticing some of the students’ glances in his direction, he felt his heartbeat pick up.
People knew about him now, even though he didn’t want them to. That stupid trial had recordings of each and every student, and he could do nothing to hide himself in it. His reputation as the mysterious number one had ironically drawn more attention than if he had just screamed his rank at the top of his lungs. He shuddered as he felt eyes on his back.
He wasn’t normally this nonfunctional. During the trial, he had worked with his teammates easily enough. Hell, he had even managed to talk himself out of many fights with other students. Well, it was more like they ran away once they realized who he was. Little did they know he was a terrible fighter. In fact, he wasn’t a very good healer either. Oh, he could heal with his gift, but he was terrible at the science stuff. He was just bad at studying, and no matter how hard he tried, he knew that he would never become an expert in medicine.
All he had was his gift. His wonderful, terrible gift made him one of the best healers in the solar system. That turned his mundane life into something far less enjoyable. That made his talents and desires worthless.
His thoughts were spiraling, and only the notification at the edge of his vision pulled him out of it. He had an email. With all of his filters in place, this email must be important, or from the school. He opened with a thought, the highly advanced contact lens responding to the movement of his eyes.
Hello Isaac Burton,
I am emailing you in regard to your performance at this academy, and your earlier message.
You have informed me of your talent and desire to proceed with ranged weapons, but I believe that would be a waste of the wonderful gift you have been given. I suggest that you take more private lessons, which I would be happy to offer you, in physical combat and medicine. By properly learning these subjects, you will grow to be like Alexa Tarragon, the famously undefeated brawler. As you know, she is blessed with your same gift and is a prime example of your potential.
Please let me know when you are available to continue your studies.
From,
Professor Caleb Orange
Following the end of the message was a series of contact information and accolades that he didn’t much care to look at. His professor, like everyone else, knew what his gift could make him, and wouldn’t let him do anything to jeopardize it. And he hated them for it.
Oh, he understood why they did it, but that didn’t make him like it. His gift could, in a sense, reset his body, as if he were some character in a game. It took a lot of stamina to do, but so long as he had some energy in his body, the only kind of death he needed to fear was the instant kind.
That kind of ability tailored itself around two very distinct roles. One was obvious, he could be a healer and restore people from literally anything. That was not the one that people were pushing him towards. They wanted him to take the much more painful route of becoming a tank. Someone who strolls into battle and just outlives his opponents until he can get close and beat them to death.
He sighed just thinking about it. The kind of lessons his teacher talked about sounded a lot more like torture. He froze, noticing some subtle movement behind him. Was someone following him? That was a very disturbing thought, and he quickly turned toward the nearest building around.
It was a restaurant, a café, and it was busy. Of course, the only building nearby would be packed. He glanced back and still saw two people tailing him, or at the very least they were looking his way. Steadying his heart as best as he could, he strolled into the building, deciding that a crowd was better than some stalkers.
The building was old-fashioned with brick walls, and a push-open door. The doors were glass panes framed with metal, and he scoped the room out before opening it. There had been a few tables on a terrace connected to the building, and those seats had been filled. Thankfully, there were a lot less people inside. Despite the antique appearance of the building, the interior of the café was modern. Green tiled floors and walls covered in menus and art filled the room. Several serving robots scrolled across the floor on a preset track of tiny grooves that he could only barely make out. He was relieved to see that people could just order from their tables, and he could avoid an awkward conversation with someone like a cashier or server.
He glanced around the room finding an empty wooden table meant for two in the corner. He quickly wove his way through the tables, making sure to steer clear of any of the occupied ones. While he wove into the isles, he glanced back toward the door and was relieved to see that no one had followed him. He couldn’t help but imagine how that encounter might go, and he hated every single one he thought of.
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He quickly made his way to the empty table, sliding into the seat, and pulling down his hood a little more. Hopefully, that would be enough to deter any sane person from talking to him. There was a tablet embedded into the wall by the table. The screen flashed between different specials and discounts, and he groaned internally imagining how his choice might be judged by the other student. The logical portion of his mind told him not to worry about it, since, in reality, most people wouldn’t care about his order at all. That knowledge didn’t stop his heart rate from rising. His knee bobbed up and down as he quickly ordered something.
In fear of any kind of judgment, he just picked the first special available. A quick glance at the nearby tables showed several other people enjoying the same thing. It was a simple meal, with a burger some chips and a drink. Unsure about what to do while he waited for his order, he began browsing his emails. The ones that didn’t manage to get through his filters. Plenty of them were messages from students asking if he wanted to work with them, or just to meet and hang out. Little did they know how much that idea made his skin crawl.
He summarily began ignoring and blocking those emails, Hopefully, they would stop trying to contact him altogether. It was one thing to get along with his team, and another to talk to a bunch of random people. As he was scrolling through the emails, a new email caught his attention. It had gotten through his filters, and the email address was one he didn’t recognize.
Hello Isaac Burton,
You may or may not have heard of me. I am a teacher of another class, though you may know me as Mr. A. Let me keep this brief since as I understand it, you don’t like conversation much. I’ve come to hear that you do not like what you are learning. You don’t want to fight upfront or heal. Well, to put matters simply, I have been asked to offer you a seat in my class. The choice is ultimately yours but knows that I will do my best to make it so that you can do what you want, even if your gift doesn’t have good synergy with it.
From,
Mr. A
P.S: Gifts don’t decide everything. And look up Caleb Irving, if you want to see a good example of what I mean.
That was not a message he was expecting to see, and the first thing Isaac wondered about was whether a teacher could just poach students like that or not. It seemed unethical at best. But Isaac couldn’t lie to himself. The message gave him some hope that there might actually be a way out for him.
Isaac immediately looked up the name that the teacher had provided and was surprised by the results. He was expecting some kind of fabled warrior with his gift or something along those lines. Instead, all he saw was page after page of scandals. Dozens of links and articles about one thing or another. The more he read the less he understood. Did the teacher give him the wrong name?
Although, his interest had been piqued. Caleb was an attractive man, who had earned a reputation for his appearance and personality. There were entire articles on his long blond hair that ran down to his waist and on how the man maintained it. Those articles weren’t as interesting to Isaac as the scandals. One article had been about some scandal with almost two dozen married women at once. In fact, the more articles Isaac clicked through, one thing stood out to him above everything else. This dude had a thing for married women. Despite the odd nature of what he was looking at, he found that he couldn’t stop clicking links, even after the food arrived.
The special included a burger with some kind of brown sauce on it. Taking a bite, he expected to taste barbeque. Instead, the brown sauce was teriyaki and there was a pineapple relish on it too. A smile crept onto his face as he took another bite of the surprisingly good burger. The sweet and spicy relish went really well with the tangy teriyaki sauce. The burger patty itself felt a little cheap, but it wasn’t dry which was good enough for him. The chips were salty, and he had gotten a Coke to go with it. This wasn’t the healthiest meal, but he liked it. He ended up ordering another burger and an ice cream. He didn’t really feel like leaving anymore.
Satisfied with food, he kept researching Caleb Irving. Eventually, he got through pages upon pages of scandals and decided to switch over to videos. The articles, while interesting, felt a little mean-spirited. The videos seemed a bit better since Caleb was actually in some of them. There were plenty of videos of him punching some random press guy, but there were also a lot of videos of him in the arena. He was pretty famous in the dueling, having earned a reputation as a weirdly straightforward fighter. It was here that Isaac finally got why the teacher had suggested this person to him.
Despite the man’s obviously problematic personality, he also had a gift that was better suited to stealth than dueling. He had an ability that let him manipulate shadows. A little bit of targeted searching was enough to dig up more specifics about the gift. The man’s gift let him move and shape shadows, and it seemed like it had a massive range too. There were a lot of comments about how he was underutilizing the gift, by not remotely striking people. Apparently, he didn’t manipulate anyone else’s shadow. He’d been put on blast on social media because of it. People seemed to see it as a sign of disrespect, an insult meant to make them seem pathetic. Caleb himself said something else, and Isaac couldn’t help but stop at the comment.
My gift is mine. I earned it for being who I am and doing what I want. I’m not about to betray that gift, and myself, by fighting in such a cowardly manner. You don’t need to shape yourself around your gift, it was shaped around you from the start. Too many people forget that.
That comment resonated with him, and he sat a little straighter. The teacher had not sent him on a wild goose chase but had reminded him of what he had done to earn his gift. Isaac stood up, paying for the food with the simple touch of the tablet. He didn’t need to change for his gift, and he would show the rest of the school that too.
He began pulling his hood off, then paused, realizing how awkward that would be from the other students’ perspectives. A kid who sat at a table with his hood on for the past hour or so suddenly got up and took it off. Yeah, that would be weird. He changed what he was going to do, and just adjusted the hood a little bit. He glanced about the still busy café for a second. None of the other students were really looking at him, which only made him feel more embarrassed. He casually walked out of the café. As he approached the glass doors, he tried to see if his stalkers were still around. And while the streets were relatively busy, he didn’t see his stalkers from before. Sighing, he made his way home, trying to come up with a polite way to respond to the teacher’s email.