School was friggin hard. It wasn’t hard in a thinking sense. No the classes were actually almost comically easy. Our general classes consisted of “this is an element. This is how you use this element” or explaining the difference between summoning, inherent, and spirit magic. Actually there was a control class in the general classes as well. Horace excused me from attending that one for the rest of my time here, replacing it with his personal instruction, but encouraged me to attend the first one to see what everyone else would be getting. It was pretty fun. Right when the class started, the teacher made a fireball and chucked it at a student with only a “catch.” When he threw it to me it was hella easy. I just had to imagine it stopping and it did. So I chucked it back and he gave me a double finger guns and a wink. No, those classes weren’t hard at all. What was hard was the replacement classes. Every day, for about an hour, I had classes with Horace. He used a similar idea, only instead of making a fireball and throwing it, he made a cat out of fire with lightning whiskers and ice paws and said “make it walk over there and lay down without melting, destabilizing, or burning anything.” That shit was hard. It was also pretty fun though. Actually, there was one other class that was hard. Power.

“Mr. Jin. You have to push.”

“Miss Horsig, you have to get laid.” Miss Horsig responded to this barb by forcing a massive fireball onto my hands, frying my skin a bit crispier than I prefer. At least we both got burned ayyyyy. I’m not usually such a dick, but we were doing an exercise that was similar to tug-of-war, except we had a fire ball and we just had to output more firepower1than our opponent. For starters, my opponent was the damn teacher so I was pretty boned already. Unlike Miss Horsig heh heh. Ok I’ll stop. Anyway so I tried getting past her power by moving the fireball around so she’d lose her ‘grip’ on it but that was against the rules so I had to stop. Then I tried to make her lose her focus by talking about her sex life but that got me delving into my medkit for burn spray.

“Alright everyone, class is over. Time to head to your next one.”

“Praise Jesus.” I said, prostrating myself before the clock. My classmates filed out of the room, a few casting a very obvious ‘Who?’ my way. I chuckled and hopped into the flood. Finally, it’s the last class of the day: combat. Combat was fun cause it had two parts, magic combat, and…

“Punching bag! Good to see you again! Roll up your sleeves and clench your cheeks cause we’re starting today with strengthening combat.” The combat teacher flashed a brilliant smile and dropped me a thumbs up so spicy you could burn yourself by lookin’ directly at it. Classic Limbmighty. He’d offered me a very similar emote when I had first talked to him on the first day. See, the thing is, strengthening combat was supposed to teach us how to control the amount of strengthening we gave ourselves when fighting so as to avoid hurting ourselves. This boiled down to jumping without breaking our legs on the landing, running without hitting things, and, of course, fighting without turning weaker opponents into red mist, and whichever limb we used along with them. Limbmighty took this very seriously due to some student or other accidentally brutalizing themselves or an opponent every few years during the trials. It was ‘kinda’ frowned on. The issue he had was that the magic academy gave him nullifiers that made students not take any damage while practicing. ‘How can they know how to control themselves without feeling the consequences?’ Or so he said to us on our first day. Enter stage left- his perfect solution- me. My aura of misfortune, whose existence I shared on day one to avoid being kicked out by accidentally breaking someone, increases an action’s chances of failure. This meant that the more power they put into an action, the harder it would hit them. So Limbmighty got a way to teach students their power with just a few broken bones here and there and I didn’t get expelled. Naturally Grey was excluded from this fun activity since his horrifying aptitude meant that both the principal, and Limbmighty, were giving him personal instruction and Kel was getting her own as well. Win-win for them since this meant that the only two that could possibly kill themselves against me accidentally were out of the picture. Win-win for me because I got to fight against abnormally strong, abnormally fast opponents in twos and threes and kick the shit out of them. Naturally, we were all a pile of broken bones and screams within minutes every evening. On this particular evening I was lying with two broken legs and an arm that was definitely bent in a direction it shouldn’t be, my free arm using treatment on various cuts and breaks on my torso.

“Thanks for the recap, Asshat.” Asshat, nice. Out of the corner of my eye I caught motion and glanced up. My eyes met an angry glare coming from a sandy haired kid with an average build. He was sitting with a small group of other kids around a Light Magic Mage who specialized in healing. Noticing how many patients there were for the obviously overworked mage, I finished my own treatment and stood up. I’d barely made it two feet before Limbmighty’s hand pushed down on my shoulder, fixing me in place. “Don’t worry about it.” I looked up at him, a grim expression on his face. “You’re planning on heading over to help heal them, right?” I nodded. “Bad plan Jin. You’ve probably noticed that the other kids don’t think too highly of you for breaking their arms everyday, right?”

“I mean yeah, they speak so highly of me. That’s why I’m gonna go help out.”

“The only break I give you runts is between bouts, when everyone is healing up. They already don’t like you, but if you went over and shortened their break between beatings? Hell, you’d need to start testing your food for poison.” I did anyway but I saw his point. “Don’t worry about them, they’ll manage. No I’m a bit more concerned with you.” Limbmighty took his hand off my shoulder and tilted his head at me. “Punching Bag, you aren’t using any strengthening magic when you fight.” I smiled a bit on the inside. This is what I genuinely liked about this school. Limbmighty hadn’t crossed his arms, stared me down and demanded an answer; he’d simply stated the facts. I nodded again.

“Yeah, I got an aptitude of 0 for the test, that means I can’t use it right?”

“Normally, yes.” Teach folded his arms and gave a sharp nod, “but that test measures melee potential using magic.”

“Ok?”

“Well you don’t have any melee potential right?” Ahhh. Realization dawned on me.

“You think my skill interfered with the test?” Teach shrugged and regarded me for a moment.

“I’m saying it’s possible. Just try using it when we start tomorrow.” With that Teach stretched his back and clapped his hands. “ALRIGHT RUNTS! Ranged combat time. Think any of you will get your revenge on punching bag this time?” Ah shit. This is why Limbmighty had named me punching bag. Not because I got beat up during the melee portion of the day, honestly almost none of them had even landed a hit yet to the point that my daily pain came mostly from dodging the same guy too many times and being designated a ‘combatant’ by my skill. No, he called me punching bag because ‘while keeping your focus through pain is imperative for a mage, stress relief is important too’. The other students had quickly found out that magic didn’t make their legs spontaneously snap so used ranged combat to vent their stress. Usually by coming at me 20 to 1. I learned how to dodge pretty damn well at the Assassin’s Guild, but dodging twenty angry mages is impossible. In the end, it was still a win-win method of teaching. My only real weakness was mages anyway, so fighting against twenty at once was gradually making me grasp how I might survive such a situation. Every day, after about five minutes, Limbmighty would stop the one-sided beat down and split us into pairs or teams to practice some real combat. “Not bad punching bag, you lasted 12 seconds longer this time.” I groaned in response and let the light mage do her good work.

“Ahahaha! That felt good! Hey Jin! How about you pair up with me today?” I waited until I felt light magic sink into my pores before turning my head. The speaker was an energetic young man with black hair and piercing golden eyes. He had a more stylish version of the padded training shirt and long pants the rest of us wore wrapped tightly around his athletic figure; something about a reputation to uphold I think he told me. He was the thirteenth prince of some kingdom or other and the classmate with whom I was on the friendliest terms.

“What Jules? Feel like getting your ass kicked again?”

“Pfft, your magic might be fancy but it’s all bark and no bite. I’m more scared of a bar fight with you than standing still and letting you take potshots at me.”

“Really? Why don’t we try that then?” I said with a brilliant smile, my stance widening into a lazy combat stance. “I’m sure I’ll run out of mana before you start crying.”

“Just because you can’t hurt me doesn’t mean I can’t make it exciting for you, sparkles.” Julian responded, sinking into his own ready stance.

“START.” Limbmighty yelled. Immediately I leapt into a horizontal dash. A moving target is harder to hit than a tree said a wise man many years ago, probably Lincoln. Julian responded just as quickly, keeping pace with my own dash and adding his own flair, a flair in the form of a raging ball of fire he side armed in my direction. Quickly, I opened my arms like wings, fire flickering along their length and turning into a flaming bird that leapt out and above the ball. Just as quickly as it appeared, it popped out of existence, the resulting vacuum pulling Julian’s fireball just enough to sail harmlessly past me. Was there an easier way? Yes. Would it look as cool? No. And if Prof. Piercil had one rule, it was that magic had to look cool.

“You think I haven’t seen you do that yet?” Julian shouted with a mocking smile. It was true that we had opened a fair number of exchanges with similar tactics; after all, it was hard to resist finding ways to make flaming birds rise out of my arms once I could. With a snap of Julian’s fingers, the fireball behind me burst in an explosion far bigger than its baseball-sized form should have allowed. I didn’t even glance behind me before spinning my mana in a mini-tornado centered on my torso, allowing the flames to once again slide past.

“You’re getting really good at that compression thing Horsig keeps trying to teach us.” Julian grinned at my compliment without slowing down.

“Of course! I’ve always been better at power than y—“ Julian’s next words hung in the air as he plummeted towards the ground, his next step falling into a hole the size of his leg.

“Like a glove, Mr. Julian. You fit so well.”

“How the hell did you make a hole that fast using earth magic? You shouldn’t have that kind of brute force.” I wagged a finger in front of his nose.

“Tsk tsk Julian, a magician never reveals his secrets in the middle of a fight.” Julian blew out an exasperated sigh.

“Fine! You win. Now how did you do this?” I grinned and sat down next to him.

“Why Jules, I put it there before we started fighting~” He glared at me and pressed his hands to the ground, a stone spike pushing his trapped leg out of the earth and lifting him until he was looking down on me.

“Bullshit. How could you have known I’d step there?” I popped off a ball of air under me, helping myself to my feet.

“What does Limbmighty keep telling us? A fight is all about execution…” I tapped the ground with a foot,

“and preparation.” Julian gaped as around twenty more holes opened up in front of us. “We have fought like this a few times now after all.”

“Dude. Why try so hard?”

“Cause now it’s 15 me, and 14 you.” I laughed while clapping him on the back.

“Ah shit, I forgot.” Julian slapped his forehead then looked back at me. The pleading eyes of a wounded animal were a fierce threat indeed, but I would not kneel on this. There are times in a man’s life when he must stand for his values, and this was my time.

“Rules are rules, Jules. I’m winning now so you have to buy me lunch. Plus I’ve been buying for you for like, three weeks now so it’s payback time. Ahahaha after all, Jules, aren’t we such great friends?” I laughed manically and dragged Jules towards the cafeteria.

1Ayyyyy get it?