About a month into school, Zeta got into a fight. Now, unless she was really good at hiding a secret violent streak, I knew Zeta wasn’t the fighting type. So I suspected the other girl, Ovie Chirhart, was the aggressor in it all. Ovie was absolutely the type to try and rough someone up. However it started, the end result was that Zeta got roughed up. It’s never a good feeling when one of your students gets into a fight (even more so since Zeta’s one of the students I was directly advising), but even worse when you hear they’re in the infirmary. And the sinking realization this happened after I gave her and her friends the afternoon off from class while I wrapped up my group’s memory trials.

Not to get too mired in minutiae, but a memory trial is something Cani have to do to get better in tune with the void. They’re also pretty therapeutic. I’d go into more detail, but the important thing to know is I was busy with other students, I gave Zeta and her friends the afternoon off, Zeta got into a fight, and I had to rush to the nurses’ office with one thought blaring over and over in my mind’s loudest mental speakers.

Stella’s going to kill me.

I figured she was on her way as well, and I did not want to see an enraged Stella in full protective big sister guardian mode especially when I was the root of the issue. Well, I didn’t try to fight Zeta, but still. I was partially responsible for all this.

Being a Cani teacher, I’ve seen some pretty beat up students. A lot of Cani education and Cani life in general has to do with fighting, and fighting with powers means sometimes you get pretty beat up. I love all my students obviously, but ones in my pod (each teacher gets a group of students to directly watch over as protective mama/papa/parent birds) get my attention more, so I winced seeing Zeta on one of the medical room’s beds, bruised and bandaged up. It was especially tough with a sweetheart like Zeta, who you don’t want to see get in any kind of calamity. Even if she wasn’t Stella’s little sister, I’d still feel a sense that I had to go out of my way a bit more to protect her. She just has that kind of personality; a mixture of shy and caring, like a nice little kitten who waddles out to your porch and mews softly, so you try to do everything you can for em.

Eventually, Zeta noticed me standing there like a doofus. I had to say something. I’d done this plenty of times. Try cracking a joke to lighten the mood, talk them through what happened, treat any kind of Cani power related injuries, crack some more jokes to continue lightening the mood. But none of that was coming to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I let you down.”

“You didn’t.” Zeta said.

“If I scheduled the memory trials better and ugh,” I said. “I won’t let this happen again.”

“It really truly wasn’t your fault.” Zeta said.

See? Total sweetheart. I don’t deserve the students I get.

“I don’t know what her problem with you was,” I said, referring of course to Ovie Chirhart. “And I won’t press you on knowing that, but I wanted to let you know she won’t be at Rising Shards anymore. I am 99.99999% sure she’s getting expelled if she doesn’t transfer schools.”

“So she’s probably going to Wildfire Hearts, then?” Zeta said.

Wildfire Hearts is a school heavily connected to Rising Shards. Generally, if someone flunks out or gets expelled, they end up at Wildfire Hearts. It’s a problem because Rising Shards is an Atrian school, and Wildfire Hearts is an Endoran one. I could go into great deal about the various differences in philosophies there, but the overtly simplified version: Atrian school = good guy school, Endoran school = bad guy school. Zeta did not want to go to Wildfire Hearts for reasons I didn’t want to pry into, but I didn’t want her to go either. Not only is it a bad look to lose students in your own pod (it’s humiliating really) and a pain to deal with the paperwork, but cinnamon bun personalities also don’t do well at Endoran schools. Either they get chewed up and spit out by vicious fangs, or they get chewed up and the cinnamon bun squeezed out of them and replaced with a much more unpleasant pastry.

“As if you needed any more reasons not to go there, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” Zeta said.

“Well, I’ll double my efforts to keep you here,” I said. “You have my word on that.”

“Thank you,” Zeta said.

After chatting a bit more about her day and looking her over (poor thing had to get stitches for some of the cuts from Ovie’s bloodsaber), I heard a very loud voice echoing behind me, and I hated the mix of butterflies from wanting to see Stella again mixed with terror that she was probably about to kick my ass either verbally or physically.

“Where is she?” Stella yelled. She rushed past me to hug Zeta.

“Watch the stitches,” I said.

Stella whipped her head around, and I braced for rage.

“Oh, thank god you’re here at least,” Stella said. She sounded absolutely mega pissed still. My guilt overwhelmed the small but very loud thought in the back of my mind how hot Stella was when she was absolutely mega pissed.

“Is that genuine or sarcastic because of all this?” I asked. “Because my guilt-o-meter is off the charts right now after your sister went through.”

“Genuine,” Stella said. “Now where is the pathetic little bitch that did this to her?”

“Dude, your sister is awesome,” I said. “Sorry, that came out incredibly unprofessionally."

“You're fine, and I know,” Zeta said. “She’s gone, Stella. The detectives or whoever took her. And I won the fight at least.”

Zeta explained the fight in more detail, and it hurt even more hearing it from her. I had a bunch of paperwork to file, so I excused myself. I wanted to talk to Stella a bit more, but I just considered myself lucky she didn’t hate me now. I wouldn’t have blamed her if I did. I wasn’t sure when I was going to see her next, but I hoped it’d be under happier circumstances.