Ms. Harris's Guidance [.scribe.open.]

A note hastily tacked to her door held the list of the students she expected to see that day. When she'd come on as a teacher at Foresta, she hadn't realized that she'd also provide an outlet for students to talk with her, even if they weren't necessarily in her classes.

Late afternoon's dim light filtered in through the windows of her classroom as she organized the four folders on a table. The first of her appointments, Adrian Mackenzie was due to arrive any minute now and she had made sure to reread his dossier. She had met him once already; he'd been in her coexisting class.

From what she remembered and read, it seemed like his was a fire elementalist. Which made her wonder why he had been put on her guidance roster. Surely there was a better person for this? She hadn't had her powers for longer than she had them... and even then, they were being borrowed from her demonic parasite.

She also had a glass bell, a fire extinguisher, a lighter, and a candle.

For her own safety, she was wearing flame-retardant materials and a leather apron.

    Surely, every second that passed exaggerated the silence gripping Kestrel's over-prepared wait. Each tick of the clock carried the minute hand closer to the scheduled time, but Adrian had been determined to arrive just on time. His foot crossed the threshold as the new hour began, so that no one could complain of his tardiness. He held, briefly, an aire of authority and confidence, as if he planned to be leading the conversation since the moment he walked in the door. His intentions were dashed, however, and a slight pause in his step betrayed his thoughts as he glanced the arrangment on Kestrel's desk.

    "Oh, this will be great." He spoke with dry wit, maintaining his posture as his expression shifted from one of charisma to that of discontent. It could not be said that he feared the potential fire starter before him, since he took to his seat before Ms. Harris readily, but truthfully he would have otherwise drawn out the meeting with introductions and banter. He felt derailed and subdued, and became intent on making up for it by putting up an energetic, curious attitude, "So, what's this? See what makes me tick? No needles, though, yeah?"

Kestrel tried to smile encouragingly at Adrian as he came in just on time. The worst policy at this point would be to feed the sarcasm by offering a retort. She gestured at a chair mutely and watched as he sat. "This is whatever you need it to be. I have prepared to see your control of your power, but we don't have to do this today if you're feeling off."

She picked up a file, and pulled some papers out, offering him one. "I thought you'd want to see what we have on you." Not only did she have some descriptions of his power, she also had access to the records sent from his previous school, and incident reports concerning his expulsion. "This is where we stand. I'm not going to judge you for your powers, nor will I press you to talk about your past. We do need to look forward. Is there anything you would like to talk about first?"

    "Control?" Adrian scoffed at the concept. If he had any sense of control over this ailment, it had not been apparent to him. Such, after all, was the only reason for attending Foresta Academy. He could have easily tested for a GED a long time ago otherwise. "No, no, whatever the doctor orders, I'm up for it." He eased back into his chair to convey a casual interest in the conversation, as if a wild fire were an expected outcome of daily life. In a way, it was.

    He eyed the papers as Kestrel offered them, taking them with honest curiosity and suspicion. Adrian skipped the notes detailing, with frustrating inaccuracy, his history. On her word, he decided not to go into it. Who had time for that, anyway? Eyeing the basic description of his power, which seemed to be based on eye witness accounts, Adrian felt that it had been put together with as much wild speculation as the author could manage. It was about what he expected. "Fire's fire." His gaze shifted to acknowledge the lighter on her desk, "It just gets excited when it sees me."

Kestrel nodded, listening carefully and trying to gauge his mood and thoughts through his body language. Her eyebrows shot up when he said that fire got excited when it saw him. "First question: have you ever been burned through use of your power? I know I said no questions about the past, but consider this part of covering our bases for safety." She got up and moved to another part of the room, where she had a cabinet filled with art supplies. She pulled out another apron and a couple pairs of tinted goggles.

She shot the boy a grin and moved back. "Just in case. We're not going to be using a whole lot of fire, but it never hurts to be careful. If at any point you start feeling apprehensive or like things are getting out of hand, let me know and I'll smother the flame."

Kestrel was sure that there were other things they should talk about, like classes and making friends, but those could come next. The items for this meeting were placed in order of importance. Yes, making friends and getting good grades were important goals, but they would be difficult to do if his power couldn't be suppressed in some way.

    Adrian's eyes shifted to a distant place, recalling from memory every incident of the flame. No burns overlapped due to his power, but it was not like he had never been burned. He refocused his attention on Kestrel easily, then, "No, not really. There was one time when I was burned before I knew the fire was there, though. Of course, it wasn't for lack of trying. See, the first few times were small things. A birthday. A cigarette." He paused to laugh at the recollection, "A goddamn vigil. Anyways, after that, I got the hint. It's avoidable once you know it's coming, for the most part."
    He seemed to be more than content to reside in his given chair for the duration of the conversation, even as she got up to move about the room. Adrian did not tend to the exchange by bothering to maintain eye contact at this point, but a telling frown creased his brows as she returned. "A whole lot or a little is a moot point. But as long as it's only one candle..."

    So far, it had been the little flames that caused the most trouble. They were discreet and might pass his initial notice, but they grew rampantly when given the opportunity. A cigarette would burst in someone's face and set about igniting every bit of the poor sap's clothes on fire. Listing Adrian as a hazard to public safety had been quite the understatement. All in all, Adrian felt undecided about letting Kestrel have control of the extinguisher. I guarantee, he thought inwardly, I have more experience fighting fire than you do. But, his own confidence could be risky, as well. He might let it get too out of hand, just to prove that he could contain it. Besides, seeing how she handled it would be an interesting exercise.

She handed over the apron and goggles and offered the fire extinguisher to boot. "I'm going to use oxygen deprivation via this glass bell as our first line of defense. If that doesn't work, the fire extinguisher." She was mulling over his prior experiences, trying to figure out some way she could possibly help. She could ask to have a kiln created for pottery lessons, but also for this sort of thing. Would that be a safer outlet for Adrian to practice?

With all of the preparations in order, she picked up the lighter. It was at this point, Andy piped up with, "You sure you want to do this? You're not fireproof and he's not worth the time or the potential medical bills." Kestrel gritted her teeth, sent Andy a warning, and lit the candle. She held the glass bell at the ready, also holding her breath. Right now, she was putting a whole heck of a lot of trust in a student she barely knew. Maybe it would have been better to talk about more mundane things first?

"You're a damn loony," Andy commented distantly. "You're not the only person with a vested interest in the well-being of this form."

    Adrian was quick to discard the apron and goggles, taking up the fire extinguisher as if it were the only viable tool to choose from. Nothing could convince him to wear that get-up, least of all something he'd experienced in much less prepared scenarios. Too bad, he thought, giving a slight inward shrug while preparing the fire extinguisher for use, Would've been fun to see her in action. He'd never tried it before, but Adrian felt certain that a bell would not have any impact. She probably would not even get the opportunity to test it.

    As Kestrel Harris applied her thumb to the lighter's mechanism, metal grinded to flint and released small flashes of light. The sparks gave no indication of change, but as the gas lit up and came to life, they could see the flame swirl into being. It barely even made it to the candle. As soon as it had gained definition, the tiny flame bloomed in size to that of a baseball, immediately attempting to consume the lighter and the hand that held it. No longer requiring support from its origin or the candle's wick, the sphere of fire hovered momentarily in mid-air. Adrian did not even notice the effect it had on his own body, but he knew what was at work. On one particularly bad day, when the fire had gotten out of control, it had drained him of every ounce of energy he had.

***

    At once, thoughts rushed together in a violent stream; ripped away from absence and disparity, colliding into a siphon of confusion and enlightenment, only to be crammed into cognitive wholeness unceremoniously. The Antient surfaced from dark nothingness into a world of air and light, gasping and reaching for life.
    Awaken. The thought came distantly, yet unified the reborn flame into a singular consciousness once again. How it pained to be fragmented in the void. Once, this physical, flesh-ruled realm had been unwelcome and stifling, but that was before the prolonged visits into nothing.

    With an exhale of burning fire, the flame observed its surroundings at once, merely a second passing since its awakening and bloom. Not a pace away, that repugnant mortal, so often present, watched like an amused kelpie waiting for its prey to stumble. The weapon in the fleshling's possession registered from distant, cobbled memories. The mortal had learned to approach prepared. But so had the flame.
    Immediately, the fire surged in size, though its core remained the same, recklessly sending out arms and spinning in place to lash out at the female mortal and her candle. Small success: the cloud of white suffocated fury before it could take hold on the woman, but the distraction had allowed the fallen candle to start a small fire. Adrian's papers had torched easily. Quick to gather up the freshly birthed flames, The Antient stole what it could before the fog smothered the embers. Ascending rashly to the ceiling, it seemed intent on spreading its influence as quickly as possible while avoiding the white cloud dispensed by the mortals.

    You will not send me back!

Kestrel wasn't sure what she'd been prepared for, but it certainly wasn't the sudden expansion of the flame and its subsequent engulfing of the lighter. It might have gotten her hand if not for the fact that she let go of the lighter and Adrian started to let loose with the fire extinguisher. She tried to drop the bell over the worst of the flames, but the edge hit her other hand it it tipped over pretty ineffectively.

She held back a word that might not have been acceptable to say in front of a student as the flame started to spread in a manner unlike most fires.

Meanwhile, Andras had roused from his mild interest in the odd pattern of the flames to fully-fledged demon anger. This, partnered with Kestrel's sudden inability to do anything to retard the growth of the flames, gave him the ability to tear down what control she had and take over. Kestrel's eyes went from green to a bright yellow in a heartbeat and she snarled in a language long-dead, "<You will definitely be sent back if you keep trying to burn down the room.>"

He used Kestrel's body and sprinted across the room to a fire alarm lever next to the door. "<Even if the alarm doesn't go off from the smoke, I will pull this and the water will come down.>"

    Like always, the fire had started small and gotten wildly out of hand. Thankfully, Kestrel seemed fine, largely due to Adrian's pre-emptive CO2 dousing, but, he noticed with intrigue, the flame had not immediately pursued him this time. Such was the usual way of things. Instead, it had done as much as possible to spread its fire in every other direction. It took every bit of attentiveness to catch each little ember, the floor and desk now coated in white clouds. A vague improvement over ash.
    Nonetheless, the torch had definitely grown in size and set about igniting the very ceiling over their heads. It spread too rapidly for Adrian to keep up with, and the fire extinguisher's range fell short when trying to deal with the apparition directly. All he could do to restrict the advancing heat was to constantly release bouts of the white gas at rogue flames, but the more the fire spread towards the other end of the room, the more rapidly it drained Adrian's stamina. He had not quite felt it yet, but fatigue would settle in quickly after the adrenaline rush wore off.

    In that moment, under duress and focused on survival, Adrian failed to notice Kestrel Harris's change in appearance. What he overheard was simply a garbled mess of an incomprehensible tongue. For a moment, the sphere at the center of the fire paused with recognition, drawing all the wild flames into its embrace. Then, silence. Adrian thought, with hesitation, that she had used some strange restraining spell to subdue it. But the effect only lasted a second. And then, as if out of spite, a geyser of raw flame erupted from the sphere, plowing into a bookcase to set the entire thing ablaze. Without even waiting a second to observe its handiwork, the overbearing heat rushed for the door, swirls of fire rushing ahead to pave the way into the hall and the rest of the Academy.
    Adrian did not have time to be dumb-founded. He did not have the luxury to reason out that this thing might comprehend some forms of speech. It might be obvious by now that it was not simply a fire gone out of control, but a wild, living thing. He could not care less that it might be fighting for its own survival. All he could think of was that a single lighter had led to this mess, and that he would be blamed for everything all over again. Frustration peaking and no way to vent it, Adrian Mackenzie let out a long and loud expletive of rage. "I am NOT," He attacked the bookcase first, -"Getting"- despite the impending rain from the fire control system, -"Expelled,"- smothering books and smoldering shelves in white gas before stomping out the hall for damage control, "AGAIN!"

The measures had seemed to work, then... well, Andras knew that threats rarely worked. Luckily, it hadn't been a threat. Not only was most of the school's structure stone, they had protocols in place. Adrian was not the first student to lose control of a flame. Andras walked out into the hallway and pulled the main alarm, which would set off the blaring of the drill, but also release the sprinkler system.

"No, getting expelled would be too easy." Kestrel's voice responded down the hallway as the sprinklers burst into action. The bookcase was shot, which was just punishment for doing something so monumentally stupid. Kestrel could potentially get fired for doing this without taking more rigorous precautions. Maybe next time, they find a lab with no flammable materials and a vent for shutting off oxygen automatically. Or maybe they lock Adrian in a steel box.

Andras rather liked that last one, even if the boy's style seemed to jive with his own. Neither seemed to have particular regard for authority, and both had been subject to Kestrel's particular brand of ineptitude.

He did know now that the sprinkler system's automatic activation was on the fritz in the art room, which posed a direct threat to his host. As long as she worked here, she needed to take care about these students and their ability to hurt her. Amid the din from the fire alarm, he took out Kestrel's phone and shot a message to Martina, almost as if the school weren't in danger of burning down.

Now what? It wasn't his responsibility to take care the rest of these grubby little snot-noses. Kestrel's dismissal was in his best interests at this point, even if the job search for at least enough money to sustain her would prove ever-difficult. Then again, the wretched being had ignored his promise of retribution, which was difficult for Andras to ignore.

Then again, then again, what in seven Hells was he going to do about it? He didn't have even a tenth of his old power at his disposal, nor could he draw upon his legions. Kestrel lacked even one minion- Kestrel's eyes flew open wide as something occurred to him. Could he be Kestrel's minion?

He snorted derisively. The very idea! For good measure, he smashed her phone, let up a cry of exultation in all of the chaos, and started running down the hall to catch up with the boy.