Perennial

Chapter 9 -- Perennial

Today begins much like yesterday did; with Psaqua leading me to the cafeteria for breakfast. Unlike yesterday, we will not be going to the school office afterward. Also unlike yesterday, today we are joined for breakfast by a few others. (Not Maria, though. She is suspiciously absent...)

Aether is one of the people who join us, sitting across from me. I wonder if he's here because I'm here and he's my spirit guide or whatever, or if he's here because Psaqua is here. He sits silently, finishes eating quickly, pulls out a pen when he's done, and begins to doodle aimlessly on a napkin while keeping an eye on the rest of the room.

I'm doing that too, (observing the room, not drawing) so I guess that's something he and I have in common. The main difference is that I'm getting the sense he's enjoying people watching. I only do it so I can keep an eye on what's going on. I don't like to be left out of the loop.

Around us, the other students are enveloped in a constant chatter. Everyone has to speak up to be heard, and it appears that everyone has something to say. I don't know if listening to their conversations while I'm visibly sitting close by to them counts as eavesdropping, and I don't care. I can't bring myself to care about anything this early in the morning.

Currently, I'm half listening to some guy by the name of Tempest, one of the boys at our table. He's also the same boy I saw in the waiting room yesterday, the one with the closely shorn hair, who looks vaguely familiar. He arrived earlier, with Aether. Now, he's rambling on and on about something to do with hockey. To be honest, I couldn't care less. It's not very interesting, but seeing him up close, listening to him and watching his mannerisms, I'm pretty sure we've met before.

I'm watching him through narrowed eyes when he turns to Aether and says: "That's what I think, anyway. What do you think your dad would say?"

This catches attention because of only one reason: Why do we care what Aether's dad thinks about anything?

Aether squints at Tempest and hesitates. "I... don't really know. He might think they could be used as weapons, and so he wouldn't allow them in the school."

I stare at them, confused, until Psaqua pokes my arm and whispers in my mind, 'Aether is Headmaster Valor's son.'

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. I knew who the headmaster was before I came here, he's Valor, who was formerly the leader of a cell of super-human operatives. I'm actually quite familiar with Valor's exploits. He's been tasked with taking down the Overlords before.

There are plenty of pictures of him in newspapers and things. That's probably what makes it so hard to compensate Aether with Valor. In the pictures, he's always kind of depicted as looking like a young, blond, surfer dude who wears ridiculous outfits (it was the eighties) and is always spoken of as being outspoken and friendly. Aether not only does not look like his father (but that could be due to the perception filter in his nametag) but he doesn't act even remotely similar to how Valor was described.

He isn't outgoing. He's very introverted at best and shy at worst.

I don't think he's a morning person either, judging from the size of his coffee cup. Mine's only a little smaller than his, but that could be because I am a lot smaller than he is.

Aether must take my staring at him as an invitation to talk to me, because he says, "Looking forward to ET today?"

"Extra-terrestrial... what?" I ask, confused.

Aether gives me a wry smile, clearly thinking that I'm joking. But, just in case, he explains. "ET stands for Elemental Training, aka Psychokinesis Classes? Today is your first day. Are you looking forward to it?"

I frown at him, and then answer truthfully. "No."

I hardly ever look forward to anything. Simply because in life, there isn't much worth looking forward to.

"It's not that bad!" Aether tries to reassure me. I'm sure he would have succeeded had I needed reassurance, which I don't. Annoyed that he thinks I need to be coddled, I briefly find myself tempted to see how much force would knock his teeth out.

"You told me yesterday it would be hard." I level him with a bored stare.

He elects to ignore my expression and press on. "It's challenging, but fun."

Oh, yay. Fun.

Whoop-dee-doo.

Because I'm definitely here for fun. It certainly has nothing to do with my strategy to get out of DSHA while not risking my life. Nope. Not at all.

"I like challenges."

"Then you'll love ET," he says with finality.

"If I find it challenging." I mutter, taking a sip of my coffee.

Aether smiles a sickeningly sweet smile, one that tells me he's a rotten piece of trash that heard exactly what I said and is going to give me a hard time for it. I know that expression very well because I myself wear it a lot. "And why wouldn't you find it challenging?"

I stare at him with a withering glare that dares him to ask another stupid question. After all, there's only one reason I wouldn't find something challenging: I've already mastered it.

It occurs to me then that Aether is Valor's son. Valor works for DSHA. DSHA is very interested in whatever hole I crawled out of because where there's one super-human, there's more. Aether could be working for his dad, trying to manipulate me into giving something away.

I don't particularly like this idea, but it is a very real possibility.

Of course, I have no proof. I would say there's no way to find out for certain at this moment, except for the fact that there is a way. I just don't like it.

After all, why wouldn't I hate something that gives me migraines?

Aether says something else, but I'm too busy not listening to know what it was. It takes a lot of effort to zero in on his mind out of hundreds, so sacrifices must be made. Paying attention to whatever he's saying is the first thing to go so that I can focus and get this over with as migraine-free as possible.

I reach his mind as quickly as I possibly can.

What I find there makes me recoil.

His mind has a barrier around it, but it's not like any of the telepathic barriers I've sensed before. Aether isn't even supposed to be telepathic in the first place. Not only that, but his mind feels... wrong. All I can pick up on are shattered surface emotions, the things he tries to emulate, but not who he truly is or what he truly thinks.

"... Are you okay?" When I come back to reality, Aether is leaning over his tray, posture bent so that we can be on eye level.

I shake my head and lurch backwards in surprise. "I'm fine! Are you fine?"

Embarrassingly, as I lean back to get away, I lose my balance on the bench and start to fall off backwards. Aether, ever the hero, almost jumps the table to catch me. (Okay, so I may have embellished that a little. In reality, he just stood up and leaned over further so he could grab my shoulder and steady me, but it happened so fast it was almost like he jumped. Thank goodness for these narrow lunch tables, though.)

"Be careful!" He scolds.

I try to wriggle away from him, ignoring the slightly hurt expression he gives me as I brush him off.

"Are you a telepath?" I ask just to be cautious.

He shakes his head, apparently bewildered. "No. Don't you think that if I was I'd be attending that same special class you do?"

He has a point, I grudgingly think. "Okay... Just... curious."

His voice takes on an intrigued tone. "Why? Are you wishing there was more than two of you? Tired of Psaqua already?"

"Psh, no..." I dismiss, my mind too occupied to come up with a more eloquent response.

Is he a robot? Could science have really advanced that far? I wasn't aware that programmers had found a way to perfectly replicate human emotions and responses already. How odd...

I feel a hand rest on my shoulder. I glance over and see Psaqua. Almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head. Her voice surfaces in my mind moments later. 'Don't say anything about it.'

I don't ask 'About what?' because it's no use denying what I was thinking about to another telepath. So instead, I ask, 'Why?'

'Just... think of it as a taboo.'

I make a mental note to interrogate Psaqua about this more later on. As of right now, Aether is trying to say something again.

"Are you sure you're feeling alright?"

"I told you, I'm fine! Just a bit... jumpy! You of all people know that this is a new environment for me!"

He purses his lips, looking like he has something to say but is holding back from saying it.

"Speaking of being new here, is it true that you were arrested because you set a school on fire?" Tempest speaks up before Aether can make up his mind.

I squint at him. "Yeah? What about it?"

"Why did you do it?" he asks.

I shrug. "Do I need a reason?"

Now Aether speaks up, but he doesn't make eye contact with me. He simply scribbles on his napkin and says in an almost-mutter: "You don't strike me as the kind of person who does things without a reason."

"I do plenty of things without reasons. Things like burning down schools." I roll my eyes, my dry sense of humor kicking in. "Who knows, I could even burn down this one."

I ignore the sound of Psaqua choking on her orange juice beside me. At least she gets my sense of humor. Aether looks like he isn't sure whether I'm being serious or not.

"I doubt it. Icarus was made to withstand pyrokinetics and worse." Aether says.

I have no doubt about that.

"Aside from that, if you set this school on fire, it wouldn't be very heroic of you, and, as we all know, this is a Hero School." Tempest speaks up once again, and the sardonic way he says it... yes, we've met before, under the perception filters. He must be like me, one of the denizens of the Paradis underground, caught by DSHA and now here on their good graces.

I raise a brow at him, unimpressed by his less than imaginative thinking.

"Heroic?" I ask, wryly, shaking my head. "For something to be heroic, it depends on perspective and circumstance. Would you set a school on fire to save the lives of the people you love the most?"

Tempest looks at me uncomfortably, shifting his seat. Beside him, Aether narrows his eyes, thinking on my point.

"That's ridiculous." Tempest scoffs. "When would that ever happen?"

"It's just a theoretical situation," I roll my eyes. "Or can you not comprehend that?"

I feel Psaqua turn to look at me. Surprise at my biting words radiates off her.

"Yes." Aether speaks up, quietly, drawing my eyes to his. He doesn't break contact. "I would set a school on fire for people I love."

I relax a little. "Well, there you go. If you set a school on fire in order to save lives, it's a heroic act. Although, if we're being truly philosophical here, I have to ask who sets the standard for what's respectively heroic and villainous?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tempest jibes at me.

"Being a hero isn't something that's taught. You can't make other people heroes, you can only make yourself one, and even then, you aren't the one to judge yourself to be a hero, only other people can do that." I explain like it's the simplest thing in the world, and for me, it is. For other people, however...

"That makes no sense," Tempest says.

"No, no... it kind of does," Psaqua finally speaks up. "If you think about it, no matter how much training we receive at Icarus, it's how we use it that matters."

I nod along with her. "Exactly. Now, something I see as heroic might differ from what you see as heroic. Sure there are some basic things that everyone would see as heroic, like saving a child from drowning. But other things, such as setting a school on fire, it depends on point of view whether or not they are a heroic act. If you were a teacher whose only source of income was the school, for instance, it would be a villainous act. But for a kid who hates school, they might hail it as an act of heroism."

Psaqua snorts and then quickly looks down at her breakfast to hide her smile.

Tempest gives me a tired look and grumbles, "It's too early in the morning for this."

If that's what he thinks, he shouldn't have sparked this discussion in the first place.

"You know," Aether begins slowly, in a tone of voice that makes me want to brace myself, "The people whose opinion matters here are the ones in DSHA. Someone must have seen something 'heroic' in you if they offered to train you here."

"Well... yeah." I say, slowly, tilting my head to the side. "Sometimes being a hero is being able to do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it means being seen as a villain by the public."

"And you think you have what it takes to do that?" Aether asks. He has no malice in his voice, only curiosity.

Memories of training with the Overlord flood back to me. All the hypothetical choices he had me make, each one harder than the last: Would you let one person die to save a hundred? Would you let a good friend die to save ten strangers?

The Overlord asked me those questions because he thought I had what it takes.

I'd like to think that I have what it takes, too.

I shrug. "We won't know for sure until it happens."

"I guess not." He agrees with me.

We fall into an easy silence as Tempest strikes up a conversation with Aether about hockey (again) and other things I don't have the patience for. In the meantime, Psaqua is distracted by the girl sitting next to her (her name is Azul, I think...) leaving me to my own thoughts and devices, just the way I like it.

The more time I have to myself, the more time I have to bring myself around to actually behaving civilly to the other people here.

I finish my food in good time, but the entire time I get the feeling that Aether keeps watching me out of the corner of his eye. I studiously ignore him.

When I'm good and done with my breakfast, he stands and I follow him to the disposal to get rid of our trays and leftovers. As we leave the cafeteria (two of my steps make up one of his) Psaqua catches up to us, breathing a little harder than normal, but not enough to be out of breath.

"Hey, guys!" she says. "We have the same first class today. And after that, we have the same ET. Can I come with?"

Aether gives her a friendly smile. "Sure. Why not?"

I shrug along with him. I'm not really a believer in the whole, "The more, the merrier" thing, but I don't hate Psaqua, so I'm not about to argue.

Together, we make our way to our first classes in comfortable companionship.