Chapter Twenty

Amber expected her afternoon classes to be with her team. So she was taken aback a little when they were directed to a large room with desks in it, each spaced out far apart from their neighbors. At each station was a computer, with a different person’s image behind the screen.

Amber found the desk with a placard reading A. Green, and sat down.

“Hello,” said the person on screen.

Amber looked back, then back to the woman. She was older, in her mid-thirties, and had a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose. From the background, Amber guessed she was in some home office. “Hello?” she said.

“You’re Amber?” the woman asked. So it wasn’t a video, but a live feed.

“Uh, yes. Amber Green.”

“Wonderful! I’m Gwen, I’ll be your instructor for a few classes starting today. I’m supposed to give you the basic layout of the course, is that alright?”

“Sure,” Amber said as she settled in. She could hear a dozen other, similar conversations around the room. There was a teacher at the very front, but he looked a bit distracted.

Gwen grinned. “Alright then. Your course was set up based on your transcripts from your last year in highschool. For the next five months, you’ll be going through the equivalent of a year eleven education, though it will be abridged a little. Then for the last half of your first year, you’ll be going through year twelve courses as well as college prep.”

“Okay,” Amber said. So I need to cram two years of school in one. Awesome.

“No homework, so don’t worry about that, and I’ll be there the entire time to make sure you’re learning at your own pace. If you need more time, or want to push yourself harder, we can do both.”

Amber nodded. “Alright, so where do we begin?”

“How about math? From what I can see you’re fairly decent at that. Maybe a quick refresher then we can work through some exercises together and make sure you’re not too rusty.”

Holy crap this is sounding expensive. Amber couldn’t help but tally up the cost of a teacher, which admittedly wasn’t too much from what she heard, then multiply it across every magical in the room. “Math sounds good,” Amber said.

Gwen smiled and the screen split. “You’ll need pen and paper if you want to work these out. You should find some in your desk already.”

Amber searched around and did, in fact, find both. They didn’t even have normal disposable pens, but nicer ones, with the academy crest and rubbery grips on the end. Really?

Gwen and Amber covered the same sort of math Amber had been doing for a while at school, each exercise followed by another that was just a little more complicated until Amber was running into problems that she didn’t know how to solve. Gwen seemed quite pleased with the progress though, and said she was glad that she still had something to teach.

An hour and a half into the lesson, Gwen asked Amber if she needed a break, and on saying that she didn’t, they switched over to chemistry instead. Gwen mentioned hands-on labs later in the year, but that they would cover the more bookish side of things first.

In the end, Amber said goodbye to Gwen just as the lessons ended, and stood up to stretch. Her head felt a bit floaty, with so much stuff crammed into it all at once, but it had been... nice. Nicer than sitting in a class with thirty others and waiting for them all to catch up to where she was.

So, that’s what Morgan meant by teaching at your pace.

She looked around and found Jade standing up one row over. The girl’s scarf had fallen a little, so she was pulling it up to cover her face again. Morgan was off at the far end, and Cassy was drooping against her desk on the opposite end of the room.

“Hey,” Amber said as she moved over to Jade. “How’d you find the lesson?”

Jade looked up to her, and something seemed to click in the girl’s eyes. “It was great. My tutor let me skip by some things. I think I might be able to skip most of this year if I work hard at it. My English skills are a little bad though.”

“Your English?” Amber asked.

Jade nodded. “It’s my second language.”

“Really?” Amber asked. “You don’t have an accent.”

The girl blinked. “Why would I? You only have an accent if you don’t practice or don’t listen. That’s what my mom says, at least.”

“She’s bilingual too?”

“Polyglot,” Jade said. “Five languages.”

Damn. “And you’re just at the two?” Amber asked.

Jade’s eyes were rather expressive in the way they pouted. “Just two, yes. Mom says I should learn more before I get too old.”

“Two’s plenty impressive,” Amber said. “I only speak English.”

“American English,” Jade confirmed with a nod. “That’s half a language already.”

Amber blinked, then snorted. She hadn’t expected the joke, let alone a joke delivered with an entirely straight face. There wasn’t a hint of humour on what she could see of Jade’s visage too.

“Any plans for this evening?” Amber asked.

Jade shook her head. “Not really.” she shrugged. “Scroll through Facebook?”

“I guess,” Amber said. “That sounds a bit... I don’t know, mundane? We’re magical girls, right. We should be doing magical girl things.”

Jade tilted her head a little, then hummed. “I guess. I kind of thought this would be more like, ah, nevermind.”

“We should find something to do together,” Amber said. “Uh, I mean, the four of us.”

Jade nodded. “That would be fun.”

“Yeah!” Cassy agreed as she bounded over. “We can start by shopping.”

“Shopping?” Amber asked. “Oh, right, your clothes. I think you can get new things just from the admin’s office.”

Morgan arrived next and crossed her arms. “Or at the gymnasium. Which is a place we should probably consider visiting anyway.”

“God no,” Cassy said. “And I meant shopping-shopping. There’s stores here, right? I flew over them. I need clothes, proper clothes.”

“Didn’t you bring any?” Amber asked.

“Yeah, but not enough. I’ve got a serious need for some proper clothes. These uniforms are, well, they’re alright, you know?”

Amber looked down at her uniform. It was nice. Kinda preppy, but not in a bad way. “I... suppose? A bit of shopping then? We can do dinner after, then maybe stop by the gym for an hour or so. Might as well get some training wherever we can.”

Morgan nodded seriously, and Cassy seemed part excited and part reluctant.

They headed out, exiting the class behind the majority of the other first years. Cassy hopped onto her broom and floated ahead of them, legs kicking out in a quick, excited rhythm. The rest of team Svalinn was a little more restrained.

“So,” Amber asked as she walked between Morgan and Jade. “We’ll be getting combat training stuff later, right?”

“And magical training too,” Morgan said. “Depending on your abilities, one might be more interesting than the other.”

“Right,” Amber said. “So, is combat training a group thing, or mostly one-on-one?”

“One on one for the first half of the year, then as a group later. Usually you’re pitted against others in the same year, or groups one year above.”

“That sounds harsh,” Jade said.

Morgan wiggled her hand before her in a so-so gesture. “It’s worth it. Some lessons are more tactical. How to handle certain monsters and such. You need to approach them the right way in order to make defeating them easier. There’s also field training later.”

“That sounds awful,” Cassy said as she floated closer. “No toilets out in the field.”

“Plenty of bushes,” Morgan said.

The way Cassy’s nose wrinkled almost set Amber to laughing.

“We should work on team-work stuff then,” Amber said. “Get an edge on the other teams, right?”

Morgan hesitated a little, then nodded. “That’s not a terrible idea. I’m not too sure how to train that kind of thing though.”

She does strike me as a bit more of a solo-ist. For that matter, so does Cassy. And I don’t know about Jade. This might be complicated.

The shopping area was busier than Amber would have expected. Girls, some she imagined were in their second or third years, were gathered around and chatting or pointing at things in windows. There were some magical boys too, but far fewer.

Is it sexist to assume it’s because shopping is a girl thing? Amber wondered.

“Okay,” Cassy said as she leapt off her broom and placed her hands on her hips. Her broom floated up behind her and hovered in place. “We need to be methodical here. I say we start from the left, then work our way around. No skipping shops.”

Amber looked at the shops, maybe a dozen in all. It reminded her a little of her very few trips to the city to pick something up. The stores were all individual buildings, brick and mortar, with ads and logos that were very much on the minimalist and unobtrusive side. It felt like a high-end shopping area, which she supposed was the case.

The busiest place by far was a Starbucks set in the middle of the street with a little terrace out front. Some of the shops were entirely empty. Only a couple of hundred students. Can’t expect even a quarter of them to be here. That’s... not a lot of customers.

“The numbers don’t add up,” Amber said.

“You’re right,” Jade agreed. “Even with just two employees per shop, there would be a quarter as many employees as there are students.”

Morgan stepped past them, towards the very first shop on the left. “You’ll see,” she said.

With that enigmatic statement spurring them on, the girls followed Morgan over to the shop. It was a leather boutique, the name sounding italian and the purses and coats hanging off the mannequins within looking expensive.

Morgan opened the door for them, and let them into a store that was, surprisingly, nearly empty of stock.

It was nice, with pedestals for the things being sold, and plenty of place to walk around, but there weren’t any racks like Amber expected.

“If you see something you like,” Morgan explained as she pulled out her phone and flicked it on. “You turn on your purchase app and scan it.” She did just that to a big purse to one side, and an image of it appeared on her phone, price hovering above and details below. “Buy it, and it’s sent to our dorm within the week.”

“This whole place is like an online shop?” Cassy asked.

“There’s a catalogue for every shop,” Morgan confirmed. “The actual shops are mostly to let you touch and feel things before buying them. No employees. Well, there are some, but they’re not here all the time.”

“This is strange,” Jade said as she carefully poked at a coat on a mannequin.

“You have no idea how much money the Academy makes from renting these places out,” Morgan said.

“But why?” Amber asked.

Morgan shrugged. “Fashion, or something? They get to claim that they have an exclusive storefront on Agartha, with pictures and all.” She turned to Cassy who looked like she’d just found heaven or was experiencing a religious moment. “So, you need any of this junk, or can we move on?”

Amber resisted the urge to palm her face.

***