Yorick waved back at Cheryll quickly before furiously finishing his notes after which he finally responded to her question. "Good morning, Cheryll. I became somewhat distracted from Luthas' poetry lesson." He returned his attention to class only to find that Sensei was no longer teaching, rather he was speaking with Trix about Solo and his voice being inside Trix's head. It made no sense to Yorick. Did Trix have a PA system inside his head that Solo was speaking through? Even so, how could he speak when he is dead? They also spoke about alien Lycans. It seemed that was what the word "Alien" was on the board for. He quickly made a note of that, although he would have to ask what exactly "alien Lycan" entailed.
Soon Allister stood and left, claiming that he planned to shove his head into a pile of books. While he questioned the benefits of doing such a thing, he made no effort to stop him and only said, "Goodbye, Allister!" Next, the boy from the infirmary yesterday who was the same species as Solo walked up to them, specifically Cheryll, and told her "happy birthday" and hoped that it was a good one. Yorick understood that it was the anniversary of Cheryll's birth, but still failed to see what was so important about it. Wouldn't a birthday imply it is the day one is born? Such a day happens only once for an individual and that is when it should be celebrated. Regardless, his parents would hold a celebration for him every year after his birthday on the same month and day. Many of the things his parents did made no sense. Although this proved that the celebration of the anniversary of one's birth was not something exclusive to his family and he supposed that he needed to provide a gift for Cheryll as part of the ritual.
Yorick thought of what he could give her for a moment before realizing it was a chance for him to try something as well. He tore a sheet of paper from his notebook and began to write.
It is your birthday and here is your gift,
a poem like the kind I was just taught
called a sonnet, though I'm writing it swift-
ly since it's the first thing of which I thought.
It's not as nice as the one Luthas read
Or as the ones that maybe you have seen,
Though they had more time to plan in their head
But this is still hard from what I can glean.
You called me friend which implies affection
Like the kind which I have for my parents,
And so since they brought gifts my direction
The need to bring you one held apparance,
And so this is my birthday gift to you,
A poem, something which to me is new.
He looked it over and figured it was the best he could do for now so he handed it to her and said, "Happy birthday, Cheryll." While birthdays, or rather, birth anniversaries were nonsense to him, maybe they were as important to Cheryll as they were to his parents. If so, it wouldn't be right to not give her a gift. He had no money to buy anything and couldn't hunt for anything else with his previous prey still in his closet, so this was the best he could do for now. Maybe when he had found a place to cook and was uninterrupted, he could give her some of the meat from the creature.
Raka stood across the room from the newbie, furious. Why the hell do they keep putting me up against useless little wimps? She sighed as her Tsuchigumo opponent, if you could even call him that, tried futilely to jab her with his eight spider-like arms. He was slow, predictable, and overall pathetic. Raka dodged each strike with ease before she kicked the boy in the gut, knocking out his air and throwing him to the ground several feet away. With another sigh, she further pondered her question. When she had asked the commander the same question, he told her that apparently it was because she could control herself. Of course she could control herself! Anyone who knew how to fight could! That didn't justify him wasting her time like this!
"Get up," Raka barked. She was finding it a little hard to keep herself from crushing this weakling like the spider he was. She was angry enough with Divine's disappearance and Solo being a traitor, and Solo promising a fight then dying like an idiot. Now she had this idiot to deal with. The newbie struggled to stand up then tried shooting web at her. Raka sidestepped the desperate attack before dashing forward and, instead of finishing the fight by striking at his pressure points, she grabbed his neck, strangling him. He tried to jab her a few more times, but he had no hope of penetrating the telekinetic barriers that spawned to protect her. She glared at him, unable to savor his expression of pure terror in her rage, and simply said, "Stop wasting my time." With that, she tossed him to the ground and left the room.
***
Back in her own room, Raka stared at the ceiling from her bed. Her actions against the idiot spider were more effort than they were worth, and unlike her at all. What was wrong with her? Immediately upon her return she gave a beating to the punching bag in her room, and when she tore through it was when she first realized just how out of control she was. Sure she could tear through that thing easily at any time, but she never did because usually she was in control enough to limit her own strength. Raka began to wonder why this was. It didn't make sense for the reason to be Divine, because while she respected the mermaid's devotion to her principles, she didn't really like her at all and didn't care that she was missing. She babied the newbies far too much, and it was because of her that people like spider kid back there were so useless. It didn't make sense for it to be about Solo either because he was a member of Fairytale for a grand total of two days, and all he proved to her in that time was that he was an idiot. In fact, she should be happy for both finding an opponent with potential like that Allister kid and for getting to go back to that academy today. They would probably hold a funeral for Solo, and Raka should enjoy crashing it. Then why was she so angry, so off center?
Raka's mind drifted to her loss the other day against her friends. She felt happy for having been able to have such a good fight, but now she began to wonder if she was really fighting at her peak. If she had been and still lost, then there would only be happiness from it, so maybe she hadn't and that was what was causing this. Of course, that brought up the question of how she could subconsciously know she wasn't doing her best to the point that it angered her without her knowing the reason, but she had to take this one question at a time. She stood up and wandered to her mirror where she took a battle stance with her staff and proceeded to analyze herself. To the untrained eye it would seem that there was nothing wrong, but the longer she looked the more problems she found. For starters, she was too rigid, her muscles too tense. She gripped the staff harder than she should and even her normally calm expression was off. While it was true that she couldn't possibly be at her best right now, the reason for it was clearly her anger at whatever it was she was actually angry at. But that meant that the reason for her anger couldn't come from her lowered quality of battle if her lowered quality of battle was because of her anger.
Moving from her mirror to a clear space on her floor, Raka sat down in a cross-legged yoga position and steadied her breathing. The reason for her anger could wait. For now, she just had to get back to tip-top shape, and that meant calming down. She touched her hands together, letting her mind focus on only the touch of one palm to the other before emptying her mind completely. She made sure to maintain that steady pace of deep breaths. In, out, in, out. She then moved her hands to her knees began to flex her back, arching her spine and pushing her chest forward then back, forward, back. While she once practiced this form of yoga in order to help awaken her Kundalini energy, she still practiced it to maintain the balance within herself in order to practice her martial art unhindered. Keeping her hands on her knees, she now began to revolve her torso in a circular motion with her waist, the base of her spine at the center, all the while continuing her breathing pattern. Most of the motions involved the spine, since Kundalini energy resided at its base.
After over half an hour of breathing and different positions, Raka took a final deep breath and walked to her staff. She felt relaxed, and lamented the fact that she had been slowly leaving her Indian culture behind. Maybe once upon a time there were humans worth saving in the age where enlightenment was something highly sought after, but now their numbers paled in comparison to the foul poison that was the rest of humanity. Once she had hung up a new bag, Raka extended her staff and took a stance in front of it. She felt light and focused. She took a few moments to practice the movements with the staff as if it were a completely new weapon. Using the hand at the base of the staff, she moved it so that she manipulated the position of the front with minimal effort, setting it up to strike different points on the body unpredictably. She then practiced gracefully shifting the positions of her hands on the staff so that she could flow from using the staff in a hammer grip to holding it at each end for blocking to holding it in the center for holding back multiple enemies. Soon she began with stance changes, footwork, weapon spinning, and evasive maneuvers. Raka was reinforcing her fundamentals, being sure that the foundation on which her style was built was secure.
Once she was satisfied, Raka faced the bag once more and began striking. Her movements were slow at first, then gradually became faster and faster. Silambam centered on speed, unrelenting and precise strikes at a rate that gave an opponent no chance to fight back. The movement was like water, a fighter's movements flowing from stance to stance, one spinning direction to another, even opponent to opponent allowing for them to adjust to any new situation without losing momentum. The pauses between strikes on the bag grew shorter and shorter until it seemed like there would be none, and once she incorporated her telekinesis, there pretty much wasn't. It had been years since she had last done this, far too long. The almost-ritual served as a purification of her style for whenever it had been dulled or tainted, and this time it had done both.
Raka trained for another hour before searching for something to drink. She felt good, good enough to take down her friends, maybe Oz or Divine, or even… Solo. It really was a pity she never got to fight him. For now, though, she had a job to do. It would soon be time for the Rakshasa to commence her assault on Youkai Academy. Raka downed another bottle of water before stepping into the commander's office for her mission briefing.
