Rising Shards

In our void practice class, Dr. Diast pulled me aside from the group. We were all training in the field of flowers, fighting void monsters a level higher than normal. Diast had her own bloodsaber with her, something I hadn’t seen her use much.

“Am I in trouble again?” I asked. I hoped she wasn’t assigned to protect me in case my parents tried something again, but I didn’t want to ask that.

“Nah, Letoh’s got the rest of our pod for today.” Diast said. “I figured you could use some more focused ass kicking to blow off some steam.”

“Huh?” I said.

Diast stuck her bloodsaber blade in the grass and leaned on the handle as she looked out around us.

“My family sucks too.” Diast said. “And whenever they screwed me over like your parents did to you, I had a lot of anger. A lot of rage that I didn’t know how to let out. Luckily, I had a teacher that helped me channel that into something a little productive when my rage was at its rage-iest. And when you’re super pissed as a teenager, it’s tough to wrangle that down into something focused, maybe even tougher for Cani teenagers, so I respect them forever for it. We went out in the void and just went to town fighting void monsters. So I hope I can pass that onto you.”

“I don’t know if I’m really rage filled.” I said. “I’m just…kinda numb. I guess. Foggy.”

“Well, some fighting might help still.” Diast said. “But if I misread and you just wanna hang out, that’s cool too. If you don’t want to fight, I can still give you this. My teacher told me something before letting me annihilate some void monsters that stuck with me forever.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“I’ll paraphrase for you, she was even chattier than me if you can believe it,” Diast said. ”She told me, ‘I’ll be there for you through this. You have so many people who care about you. And you’re bright, and talented, and kindhearted. Don’t throw all that away for people like them.’”

I bit my lip. “I like that.”

Something hissed nearby. A group of void monsters that looked like knee-high cars with snakes for wheels slithered towards us. I ignited my bloodsaber (Minty was still getting repairs, this was my temporary replacement sword) and slashed at the one closest to me. Without thinking my move out too much, I screamed as I swung, screamed as I kept stabbing at it, and screamed as I sent out a little thunderstorm at the goopy Elka remains of the monster. The others were blasted away by the thunderstorm, but once they righted themselves, they started slinking towards me again.

“OK, maybe I have some anger going on here.” I said.

“Whatever way you want to let it out is fine,” Diast said. “And don’t worry, this won’t bring out any beast tendency.”

I nodded, finding it hard to respond verbally to that. Knowing I was capable of being a monster like that was scary enough, but Diast and Caya and the nurses all assured me that it wouldn’t recur if I didn’t repeat the specific circumstances my parents inflicted on me. I went back to fighting the void monsters, and as I slashed at them, I felt internal dams opening in me.

“You know who I’m mad at?” I asked. “I’m mad at my parents, obviously. For everything. I’m mad at Ovie and 09. I’m kinda mad at Aira and Laenie, but not really at them, I think I get where they’re coming from. I’m mad at Caya for not catching any of this. I’m mad at Stella for keeping all this from me. I’m mad at myself for being such an idiot and letting everyone down and falling right into all this!”

There was one car-snake looking monster left, and it got the brunt of my anger as I gave it a particularly strong burst of electricity as it turned to formless goop on the ground. “I’m just…really mad!”

I took a few seconds to catch my breath. Diast always brought us water bottles when she came with on void trips, and this was no different. I sat down and drank the cool water she tossed my way (I fumbled it and dropped it instead of a clean catch, but I blamed that on how mad I was). Diast sat down beside me as I took a big gulp.

”How do you keep these so cold? Do you like use your metal Cani power to...freeze them so they stay cold all the way from back home to here?”

”I just bring a cooler.” Diast said.

”Oh.” I said.

”But if anyone asks again I’ll tell em that one, I like that.” Diast said.

I finished the water bottle off and crumpled it in my hand.

“I feel like I learned too much all at once,” I said. “I’m a Kathron. Did Stella tell you? I hope she keeps less from you than she does from me.”

“She told me, yeah.” Diast said.

I hugged my knees. “I’m sorry if I’m putting you in the middle of this. The middle of me and Stella, I mean.”

“Don’t worry about me, you just say what you gotta say.” Diast said.

“All my life I thought I was a Faleur,” I said, setting the crushed water bottle down and trying to balance it for a second before giving up on the futile task. “And that I had cool parents that like probably just died in some weird tragic accident. I never saw any pictures of them. But now I know it all. It’s like someone uploaded a bunch of bad information into my brain computer. And my brain’s still trying to process it. Even when I heard about Arctus Kathron being my dad…the Arctus I saw before was so cool. The retention memory. Whatever thing. What’s it called?”

“Retention sprite.” Diast said.

“Right,” I said. “But then the real thing, my real dad, just. Sucks. And my mom sucks too. My parents absolutely suck.”

It all flashed through my mind too quickly. That kept happening. A rapid-fire repeat of everything that happened. From finally finding my parents, seeing the machine that brought them around the void, that old ratty throne, seeing Aira and Laenie again. Seeing 09. Getting tricked by 09. I barely processed that Ovie Chirhart and Kitty Kilander were there. My own mother stabbing me and poisoning me and turning me into a monster, all so she and my father could try some Endoran crap.

“Is the beast tendency really in me?” I asked.

“In a sense, but not in the way your parents probably told you,” Diast said. “To your computer analogy earlier, beast tendency to a Cani is like overclocking a computer while also giving it a virus.”

“I don’t know what that means.” I said.

Diast tried to think of a way to describe it that I’d understand better. “It’s like…oh! You know that Tower of Hate and Love arc with that drug that got let out into the streets that turned people into werewolves?”

“Oh! Yeah, from the sixth season of the first run!” I said. There was a storyline in Tower of Hate and Love where a few of the evil organizations teamed up to create a super drug that pushed people’s bodies past their limits in an attempt to make an army of werewolves. I liked the arc because it was one of the ones where Arlit (as always fantastically and beautifully portrayed by Raina Starlight) was one of the heroes that put a stop to the nefarious scheme.

“That was actually inspired by beast tendency,” Diast said. “They didn’t want to directly use beast tendency and promote it, but yeah.”

“Wow,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense. So the medicine I got is like the same kind they gave the hyper werewolves to calm them down?”

“Yep.” Diast said. “But it definitely won’t cause any brain swaps like the show’s did in that filler ep.”

“Ahhh, good.” I said. I poked at the soles of my shoes. There was another emotion swirling with my anger about what had happened the prior Friday.

“Hey, Dr. Diast?” I said.

“Yeah?” Diast said.

“I’m sorry.” I said. “I was really stupid. I know I hurt a lot of people with this, so. I apologized to Oka and Kalei and Lillia and my other friends that heard about it for scaring them. I want to say. I’m sorry if I scared you too. Or let you down by sneaking off into the void and causing all of this.”

Diast patted my back. “I was scared, yeah, but—alright, I accept your apology, I don’t want to dismiss your apology—but I don’t want you to entirely take what happened as something you did wrong, when most of that was you being wronged.”

I nodded. There were a lot of reasons it was hard for me to accept that the root of what happened Friday wasn’t all my fault, but I appreciated Diast trying to remind me otherwise.

“How is Stella doing?” I asked. “When I’m not there, I mean. Because when I’m there she’s obviously. Discipline Stella.”

Diast sighed. “It’s a lot for her. The kind of thing I think she’s spent a long time preparing for, but still not being ready when it becomes real. I know you’re mad at her, but I think she’s even angrier at herself. And that hurts to see.”

When I saw Stella in the nurse’s office, I cried out apologies. But I didn’t really talk to her about it. When Stella grounded me, it was more in relation to the void sneaking than anything with our parents.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “She’s still family. I’m mad, but…overall, she’s lower on the scale of people I’m mad at. Way, way lower. My parents suck, but that doesn’t mean my whole family sucks.”

“Good to hear.” Diast said.

“And thank you,” I said. “I did need this.”

“Any time you need to smash some void monsters into Elka, just let me know.” Diast said.

“I will,” I said. “And when I say not all of my family sucks, you’re included, you know. I’m your canon daughter and everything, right?”

Diast grinned. “That’s right, bud.”