Chapter 6: Chapter 6

I suddenly sat forward, greeted by the night sky out my car window.

"How long was I out?" I asked Misty, still looking at the sparkling stars. 

It didn’t feel wrong to think of her as Misty, even if it wasn't her name. I knew her as Misty, and so she was.

"About an hour," she said.

I turned to see her thumbs rapidly tapping on her phone. She was playing something akin to Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, but an off-brand one, probably from the app store.

"Aren't you tired?" she asked, eyebrows raised at me. 

Her eyes reflected the many flashing colors from her phone. Her black lips, lit up by it, showed the beginnings of chapping where she needed to reapply her lipstick.

Oddly, I liked that sight as much as when it was freshly applied.

I stretched, blinking. "Right as rain," I said and turned the key on the ignition. "That was great. Even that tiny little spark felt like thunder."

"We're not out of the woods yet," she said. "You'll have to go through that a few more times before the connection is firmly made."

"Do you think I'll be able to?"

The car now was on the main road, driving past the amber lights underneath a beautiful starry galaxy. Though the radio was off, this time the silence wasn't awkward because there wasn't one.

"Honestly?" she asked, voice unreadably deadpan.

"Are you ever anything but?" I retorted.

"Probably." 

"Probably, you're always honest, or—"

"You can probably do it," she said, putting her phone in her leather jacket pocket. "Just remember what I said. Don't try it again tonight, or in any capacity, for that matter."

I wouldn't. I was certain I’d only perform magic under Misty’s supervision until I was ready to go out alone.

"You're a good Obi-Wan, you know," I said, tapping the steering wheel to a non-existent upbeat song. 

"Thanks."

"Ahem," I said with a cheeky grin, knowing it’d push her buttons.

"What?"

"Nothing."

She sighed. "Fine, you're a good Anakin,"

"We agreed I'd be Luke."

"Our relationship is more akin to Obi-Wan and Anakin, don't you think?"

I chuckled. "Yeah, like, you didn't want to train me." I tapped my thumb on the wheel. "And eventually, we grew to be friends—according to the expositional dialogue anyway. They never showed it properly in the movies. We just had to take their word for it."

She gave a cute laugh of approval. "And then I chop your legs off, and you’re burnt to a crisp."

"It's a good thing you do Lightning, not Fire."

"Oh, really?" Misty snapped her fingers, and in the corner of my eye, a bright ball of pink flame emerged from her fingers like they were a cigarette lighter. 

She blew it out for effect, not because she would've been able to just will it away.

"Ready for your next lesson?" she asked.

I nodded, my heart rate quickening. 

"You look surprised," she said. "What do you know about magic, exactly?"

"Well, I studied it when I was thirteen, before my interview. But there wasn't a lot of information back then."

"Nor now, we do our best to keep it hidden. We, they. Anyway." She took a breath, tapping on the windowsill. "Your sub-affinity is the path you choose inside your main affinity. The way it works is- How do I put this? You could be a jack-of-all-trades if you wanted, mastering all elements in your affinity, but the further you specialize in one, the greater power it gets, sort of like, erm—"

She paused for a second to collect her thoughts.

"—So, leveling up goes up exponentially the further you get, like multiplying two by two, then four by four, then eight by eight. If you tried to master everything, you could only get to, say, sixteen by sixteen on all of them. If you focused on one, you could get to four by four on most of them and something crazy like two hundred by two hundred on the main sub-affinity. Of course, this varies, depending on the person and how adept they are, but it’s a pretty consistent rule. Are you following?"

"Mmhmm." 

I thought she was actually pretty good at explaining this stuff. I neglected to say she could be a professor if she wanted to, considering how obvious it was that she would hate doing such a thing—dealing with all those people and such.

Misty continued, "You can get so exponentially powerful that, even when you possess a natural disadvantage to another affinity, you'd still smoke them. To clarify, If you were, say, a jack-of-all-trades faith magi versus a single-focus magi of the order, even though they have an advantage, you’ll still be fucked. Do you know about the advantages?"

"Go on." 

I had a vague Idea, but I wanted to hear her explain it in case I missed something. 

"Faith depowers Chaos by dispelling their ungodly control of the elements. Chaos overpowers Order, because what good is a sword against the sun? And Order cuts through Faith with brute force."

"So you guys worship a god, then?"

"Worship? I suppose. It’s more...we’re employed by him. He makes the most cringeworthy jokes, just like the guy from The Office. I heard him speak at a lecture once."

"Are you joking?"

"His damn ego is a sick joke. ‘Have faith in me, and I will allow you to heal.’ He probably got that idea from your lot and bastardized it. I dare not even utter his name. "

"Dare not?"

"He’s scary. He- What he did to the other creators, I can’t even..." She swallowed, gulped rather.

Fascinating, I thought. That could have something to do with my warding.

I glanced, and saw she had gone pale—paler than usual.

"Wait," I changed the subject to a perhaps easier question, "are you telling me magic was invented?"

"Yeah, well…" Misty hesitated, looking out the window and tapping on the door in…annoyance, panic, what? "Listen, Pete. You can’t tell anyone I told you this stuff. Not a single soul, not on the internet, nothing. Nowhere. No one."

"You know I won’t. I promise."

"What I just told you, I can't even begin to imagine what they’d do to me if they knew. Even now, it’s tearing at my stomach."

Misty took a sip of coffee, and snarled in disgust, putting it down on the cup holder, not before I noticed a line of black lipstick left on the rim.

She started breathing heavily. Hyperventilating?

I pulled the car to the side of the road and activated the handbrake.

"You alright?" I asked.

She nodded, closing her eyes and biting her lip hard. It looked painful. Then, releasing to reveal the oppressive bitemarks, she took a long deep sigh and shook herself free of it.

"It's weird. It's like some Pavlov’s dog shit or something."

I didn’t like seeing her helpless like that. Worry drew across her magnificent eyes. A slight sheen of sweat had begun to appear across her forehead and nose. 

She quickly wiped it with her dress, pulling it up to reveal a lot of her soft, thick thighs, but I only saw in my periphery, caring more about her well-being at that time. 

Still, I noticed. 

"Let’s continue another time," I said. "You've taught me so much already. Honestly, it's been incredible."

"You're not the worst student," she said. "I'm okay now. We can go."

I pulled back onto the road and said, "Man, the academy sucks."

"Mmhmm. Where was I?"

"Misty, it's fine. We can carry on next time."

"Nah, it will be fine now. I'm over it. So, I was talking about sub-affinities. You can do your main one, and it's wise to keep the other subs at, say, four multiplied by four, just in case you need to, I don't know, light a candle. It's handy." 

She laughed, and I did too.

"But for your main, it's probably best to pick two. With only one, sure, you can reach crazy heights, but you'll never know what you'll come up against. You're toast if you're Fire and a Water magi wants to fuck with you. So it's better to have, say, Fire and Thunder. That's a good combination. Fire and Wind. Water and Thunder can fuck a lot of people up if you combine them. You understand?"

"So it's not just the other affinities, but infighting too. That makes sense. I don't know why I never thought of that."

"Yeah, even though the different kinds are weak to each other in synchrony, half the time, you should be worried about your own damn affinity brethren. That's a whole different diagram."

"Order beats Faith. Faith beats Chaos. Chaos beats Order. Flame beats Water. Shield beats Sword? It's just like Pok—"

"Yeah, it is," she interrupted. "Can you imagine how sick of hearing that the professors were?"

"I bet."

"That's enough for tonight." She tried to suppress a gag. 

Was she going to be sick?

"You okay, Misty?" 

"Yeah, it's just the programming they put in you. Works pretty well, but my disdain for them is stronger." 

I didn’t exactly need more reasons, but I suspected there was more to her hatred of them. She had done enough for me already. We could save that conversation for another day. 

Luckily, I knew just the thing to distract her; by giving her a reason to be annoyed at me.

You are reading story Mastering Magic — Screw the Academy, I’ll Master Magic My Own Way at novel35.com

"Thanks, teach," I said. "I'll be sure to bring you an apple tomorrow."

"You’re so lame," she said. 

But I thought I heard a smile.

The car finally approached the city.

Partygoers were everywhere, drunken girls half falling over each other, men arm in arm singing songs. A dude was kissing up against a scantily clad woman on the sidewalk as if nobody could see them.

"It's Friday. I didn't realize," I said.

"Don't you work?" she asked.

"It's a long story."

"Then I don't wish to be bored by it."

"Charming as always. Where am I dropping you off?"

"Here's fine."

We were in the middle of the city’s main square, between all the loud bars and flashing advertisements. A particularly large crowd of partygoers were in a huge human pile of each other, yelling, dancing, and such.

"Are you joking?" I asked.

"Pete, I'll blast any fucker in the face who looks at me twice."

She gave me a disdainful snarl, and the bags under her eyes told me she was extra not in the mood for my silly goose behavior.

Still, I was curious and asked, "Won't you get in trouble with the Academy?"

"Not really. Self-defense is fine. After all, your kind hates us, so it’s not totally uncommon, especially on nights like this."

‘Your kind.’ But I’m one of you now, I thought. Not quite yet, I suppose.

"I can still drop you home," I said.

"It's fine. I want to walk. I need to get some fresh air, but—" She dug into her jacket and pulled out her phone, unlocking it and placing it on my thigh. "—give me your number."

I picked it up and hesitated. "Hang on." 

I knew about this encrypted texting app where nobody could read your messages, not even the big phone companies. I installed it for her and then put my number into it. 

"I don't know what sort of control your guys have—judging from your website, maybe nothing—but to be safe, let's only chat on here. Then we can talk about anything we want."

She looked at me for an uncomfortably long time, then said, "That's a good idea."

"You sound surprised."

"Perhaps you're not such an idiot after all."

"And perhaps there's a soft side to you, underneath all that black." 

"Doubt it."

I shook my head. "There is. I've seen it, bright pink. It shows in your magic."

She scowled fire at me. "Never say that again." Her voice had gone unnaturally loud and demonic.

Just when I thought we were beginning to get along, she showed yet another one of her...insecurities? I was starting to suspect that Misty had a lot of issues. 

Her 'I don’t care about anything' act was merely a way to hide the fact that she cared about a lot.

I felt sympathy for her, but there was nothing I could do, especially when she looked ready to blast me in the face with lightning at the nearest mention of it again.

Besides, I had my own stuff to deal with, so I said, "Well, you gonna get out, or what?"

"Gladly. Don't text me. I'll text you." She pushed open the door.

"How could I? I don't have your number."

Halfway got out, she paused and said, "Right, good. Okay, bye, Pete."

"Bye, whatever your name is."

Before shutting the door, she leaned back in the window and said, "Call me, Old Ben."

I scoffed, and she jammed the door shut so hard the car shook.

I drove back to my apartment, feeling several different things at once. The moment I tried to focus on one, another poked right through, so I decided to just forget about it all for the moment.

Finally, I parked in my usual spot. I shut the door of the car behind me, took a deep breath of the cool night air, then entered my apartment complex. 

I felt at peace as I stood in the rickety elevator, with its offensive bright orange wall color. It shook and trembled from my weight, and I worried it might crash and I would fall to my death, though I'd had the same worry every time I used it, and it hadn't done so yet.

Then I entered my apartment, seeing that familiar Turkish rug on the ground and the horribly apt artwork of flames and thunder on the wall above the tv. 

I suddenly realized I probably wouldn't receive any messages from Misty until I downloaded that app. 

I did so quickly—far too quickly, embarrassingly so.

But what surprised me more was that a message was already waiting for me. 

Unknown number: You did good. 

I saved her number in the app, then typed back as fast as possible.

Pete: So did you.

My phone buzzed instantly.

Misty: Fuck off.

Pete: I mean it. You were a great teacher.

Misty: You’re gonna make me sick again.

Pete: You threw up?

Misty: I should be fine next time.

Pete: Make sure you drink lots of water.

Misty: Fuck off.

Pete: Could you drink your own water? Is that a thing?

Misty: It's not recommended unless in desperate circumstances.

Pete: Why? Lacking in nutrients?

Misty: It tastes weird.

I laughed. 

Pete: When do you want to train again?

Misty: I open on Saturdays, so same time tomorrow. 

Pete: What about my side of the agreement? The website, etc.

Misty: Oh yeah. How long will that take?

I hesitated. 

How long would it take? Once we were done with magic and my tech stuff, would that be it for us? Did I want that to be it for us? 

Damn. 

Pete: I’m not sure, to be honest. I'll do the website first. Maybe three hours, maybe a few days. It depends.

Misty: Okay, just come in the morning. I can put you in the corner on a stool.

Pete: Good night.

I stared at the screen for a while until I realized she wouldn't reply. 

That was fine. I didn't need Misty to be my friend or anything else for that matter. I just needed her magic instruction. It was better that we didn't get mixed up in other stuff. It would be like fucking a coworker multiplied by a thousand.

So, even though my stomach rumbled fiercely, I pulled my jeans off and threw myself into bed.

Eyes closing, I thought I should've offered to get something to eat with Misty, perhaps chinese food or something.

But she was nauseous from revealing her people's deepest darkest secrets, so maybe not.

I then thought that if they only did that secret-keeping for their origins, and not magic as a whole, it might have been a kind of hiding-in-plain-sight thing. 

If you acted like you had nothing to hide, then people wouldn’t go snooping. It was probably better for the Unchosen to think magic had been there all along, like in Harr—

My phone vibrated, interrupting my thoughts.

Misty: Good night, dickhead.

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