OoC: Although the first black section of this is still a part of Raven's training thread, I keep it in here due to it being a single part of the whole.

-Where the Wind Blows (Part 1)-

BiC: As Raven waited for Louis to pack away his fiddle, she thought again of what kind of teacher she would have, and now has - He doesn't really look like the brave and chivalric I thought he could be, nor a wise mage... and he seems too kind to be a sly and crafty trickster, she pondered, but looks are sometimes decievi-

"You seemed surprised to find out that I was your teacher... What did you expect anyway?" Louis asked, interrupting Raven's thoughts, "the Dome is a strange place after all; you could have had anybody - maybe a sailor?.. They've been known to get into fights at the drop of a hat." For emphasis, he dropped his hat, but then picked it up, along with the rest of the things he had with him. He walked toward and along a corridor, motioning Raven to follow; "Sailors will get into all sorts of mess if you let them do what they want."

What the heck is he talking about? Raven wondered It's not like this guy is a sailor himself - he doesn't have that feeling around him...

Raven looked around only to realize that Louis was no longer walking in front of her,but was now about 20 paces behind her, in front of a metallic door with a circular window near the top. "You might want to watch where you're walking; it's easy to get lost in these corridors," Louis called out.

As she walked back to Louis, Raven asked him, " What were you talking about with that stuff about sailors anyway? It's not like you are one."

"I might be..."

"But you're not."

As he opened the door next to him he said, "all right, I'm not a sailor... but I do know some sailors..."

In this new "room" was an ocean. Standing on the deck of a rather large steamship (about the size of a small village), Raven saw twenty or so people in uneven rows, marching and attacking the air in front of them in time with an instructor's verbal beat.

As Louis and Raven approached the group, the instructor saw them and said to his group in a commanding tone, "stand down men, rendevous by the helm in double-oh fifteen."

To Raven, it was obvious that the men and women who were being instructed were not sailors, as they seemed to care little for their leader's attitude, but the man himself - the one with this attitude... he definitely had the sailor "look".

"Admiral David P. Jones at your service Minstrel Fritz." Raven didn't know why, but Louis seemed to find the admiral's name a bit funny, as she saw him supress a laugh.

Does this admiral ever speak in a normal way? He sounds so... official.

"As I've told you before Admiral: I may be a minstrel, but that's not a rank. Just call me Louis," he said casually.

"Of course mins- I mean, Louis," the man didn't seem to like addressing people without using a title. "And who do we have here?" Admiral David asked, looking in Raven's direction.

"My name is Raven, and I've got no idea why I'm here," she stated.

"To fight of course! We have a very reliable source which tells me that you're at least the equal of any one of my men or women here. In fact, we'll let you choose which one you want to fight," the admiral told her. "Come up to the helm, and you can pick then."

Not given enough time to tell the man she didn't think she was strong enough to fight any of his students, Raven walked slowly to the edge of the ship and looked across the horizon blankly, If they truly think I'm good enough to fight these people, how strong could they be?

As Raven looked out to sea, Louis walked up to her. "It's not the type of helm which a person wears," he casually said in case Raven did not know the term, "on a ship like this, the helm is a part of the boat where the captain, or in this case, the admiral, tells people what to do. It's the room on the other side of that window," he said, pointing at a large window near the top of the ship.

"I guessed that, it's just... I don't think I'm good enough," Raven responded.

"Well if that's what you think, then you'll never beat them."

"I can't just walk away?"

"Nope."

"Fine," Raven sighed, "lead the way."

As soon as she finished saying this, Louis and Raven were quickly walking up to the helm. While Raven followed Louis, she thought about the people the Admiral was instructing, while in line in front of their instructor, they were all perfectly obedient and stayed in precise form, but as soon as he dismissed them, they all went in different directions and acted differently from eachother... Maybe I should look into that later...

When they finally reached the helm, the admiral was standing with five other people. "These are the people you may fight," he stated. "If you wish, you may ask each of them one question before choosing which one to fight."

Raven glanced at the five people - four men and one woman - and thought carefully about what questions she would ask them.

The first man was tall and muscular and carried no weapon. He only wore a pair of brown, ripped pants, and had numerous unidentifiable tattoos all over his chest, stomach and back. When Raven looked at his face, she saw a hardened gaze; it pierced her soul, and her intuition told her immeadiately that it really did - this man was studying her more than the average person could.

"What is my greatest strength?" Raven asked the man, seeing if he really could see inside her mind.

The man looked at her for a few seconds more, seeming to be searching for the answer, then suddenly looked puzzled. "To... hide in your own pocket," he stated with slight confusion.

This baffled Raven. His gaze must have either been wrong, or he knows something I don't...

The next man was rather lean and slightly hunched over, wearing a purple and green full body suit, a pair of polished white leather shoes, and the cheesiest grin she had ever seen. But, as they say, it's all in the eyes, and in this man's eyes she saw... cruelty. Cruelty in a surprisingly pure way, but cruelty nonetheless. Raven couldn't see any weapons, but did not doubt their existence.

Her question was clear: "How many ways do you know how to kill a man?"

Without missing a beat, the grin said it plainly, yet still with an inflection of his own personality. "Two thousand, three hundred and eighteen, not counting the lingering kinds of death."

Raven found this scary, and as she looked around the room, she saw that she was not alone in her reaction - everybody else in the room had the same look on their faces except the man with the piercing gaze (who must have already known), and the third man, who was a man with a mostly metal face and thus barely showed any emotion.

The third man was covered in metal on not just his face, but all over the rest of his body too; it was intergrated into his skin in such a way that it was clearly not armor, but Raven knew it would still be harder than normal skin. His right arm was entirely covered in metal and had a circular end, which Raven assumed concealed his weapon.

As Raven could not think of a question for the metal man, she looked to the next person - the only female - and saw... herself. The only thoughts which went through her head before Raven asked her question was that it couldn't be Tera, as Tera was not a student at the Dome and thus would not be under the command of the Admiral.

"Who are you?" Raven asked.

"I decided that 'Thira' would be a suitable name for me," she said with a smile.

"Then you..."

Thira nodded, expecting this response.

I thought that I was safe if I portaled while in the void already? But if she's here... I guess not. Raven frowned at the thought.

Briefly glancing toward the last person, Raven felt as though there was no need to ask the last man a question, but when she turned back to Louis and the Admiral, Louis spoke up; "Look back Raven," he said simply.

When she looked back, she couldn't get her eyes to focus themselves on the fifth man; whenever her head was facing the right way, her eyes automatically moved to face a different way, and when she moved her eyes to the right spot, her head moved. W-what is this guy? She wondered, although even thinking about him was a slight struggle in itself.

"H-h-how a-are y-y-you d-doing thi..." Raven couldn't quite finish the question - it seemed as if this man was able to control her thoughts, making her attention shift away from him no matter how hard she tried.

When the Admiral saw Raven struggle, he knew she had found out enough about the last man, and so he announced, "Raven. The time has come to decide - out of all the people here, whom you will duel?"

Raven thought about it. She looked at the first person and figured that a fight against a clairvoyant would be difficult, if not impossible, so she would not fight him. She looked at the second person, and knew that entering in a fight with someone of such cruelty would be far too dangerous - practically suicidal - so she would not fight him either. She looked at the third person and saw that a fight with him would involve little (if any) trickery, and was possibly her best bet for a fair fight, so she might choose him. She looked at Thira and immeadiately knew that she could not in good concience fight herself... or at least someone who was that close to being another Raven. She was understandably unable to look at the last man, and so fighting with him would be out of the question.

"I think I've decided," Raven said as she walked to be in front of the metal man, "I choose..." then, in a reflection in the eye of the third man, she saw a man who looked familiar to her; a man who was fiddling with a colorless ball which Raven recognized as soon as she turned on her heel to face him, "...that man," she said sharply, pointing at the man holding a bolo.

---
An hour earlier
---

Raven had been so confident that her method of letting people out of the empty Dome room would work, and it did... for everyone except herself. Here she was, stuck in a place which went on forever, and Raven knew she couldn't get out by herself.

Knowing that she couldn't go through the void to get back to the tour group, Raven decided to wait for room to become a training room, as the tour guide had implied it would, and as she waited, she thought about this infinite place and the infintesimal void...

Let's see... the void was a singularity; it was impossible to move anywhere in a normal way, as there was nowhere to move to, but this place is the opposite - it goes on for-

Raven was interupted by a shift in reality it seemed - a whole world was forming around her. A bright blue, cloudless sky formed above her from horizon to horizon, while a dark blue ocean formed below; There was but one thing which broke the apparent monotony of the sky and sea, and that was a small grey dot on the horizon.

When the world finally settled, Raven realized something - she was very high in the air, and although she realized the air was very thin this high up, Raven did not worry, knowing that her falling body would escape from the upper atmosphere quickly.

As she fell, Raven realized that the grey dot on the horizon was actually a boat, and not caring how big it was, Raven shifted the air pressure around her using a bolo to, in effect, fly to the boat.

When she approached the boat, she saw about twenty people in rows, moving in syncronization, and two more people walking up to them on the deck. The boat was larger than she had first thought. By the time Raven had made her dramatic splash-landing in the water beside the boat though, everyone had departed the decking, was seemed to be headed toward a large structure on one end of the boat. Raven set off there immediately.

When Raven got to the big building, a large man in uniform greeted her, "You are eager to fight I see, but... where is the minstrel? Where is Louis?"

"Who's Louis?" Raven replied, "and I never said I wanted to fight anybody," Raven said carefully.

"You... you are not Louis' new student? No matter; you may join me and the fighters in the helm for Louis' student Raven to fight."

Raven? So there is yet another one of me? I must pick a replacement name; I don't want people to know I can split into multiple bodies...

When they finally arrived at the helm, the uniformed man directed the young woman who was still trying to think of a name for herself into the fourth position in a line, and then stood by the front of the line now composed of four - no five - people. The last person in line was very difficult to see, as he seemed to be able to divert attention away from himself.

A couple of minutes later, the original Raven walked into the room with a man who the person formerly known as Raven assumed was the minstrel Louis; he certainly looked like a musician, anyway.

As the original Raven studied each of the other people in the line, a thought came to the other Raven's head; back in the Dome's foyer, one of the names we thought of using was Thira, and this would be a perfect time to use it!

As Raven looked at the person now known as Thira, a hint of recognition was immediately felt when their eyes met. "Who are you?" Raven asked cautiously.

"I decided that 'Thira' would be a suitable name for me," she said with a smile.

"Then you...?"

Thira nodded at this half-question, expecting something like this, and as Raven accepted this and glanced at the next person, Thira caught the eye of an aging man standing in the crowd in front of her. He looked familiar, but Thira just couldn't place from where. As Raven walked back into a position to choose whom she was to fight, Thira saw the man pull a small ball out of his pocket which looked scarily similar to a bolo. But who could have one of those except Tera, Raven, or myself?

And as she thought this, Raven turned around suddenly and pointed at the man. "I choose that man," she declared.

Thira, puzzled by this, looked at Raven as if to ask why, and before she could respond, the man made a declaration of his own, "I see... so be it; I do not intend to lose."

---

Even merely by how the man acted, Raven became even more sure that this man with the bolo was the only man alive she could think of who could use the same magic as her - her own father.

"I might need your help Thira," Raven called out, still facing her father, "as you are the only person in this room whom I'd call my equal."

But when Thira nodded and took a step forward, the Admiral stated, "any duel aboard my ship is to be one person versus one other person; Thira, you are not allowed to help."

Raven could hear Thira mumble her complaint; "we'll see about that."

"Now, as the combatants have been chosen, the arena shall be set. Raven; here or on the deck, it's your choice," the admiral asked her.

"The deck. Definitely the deck." Raven knew that she would need the space.

"You seemed a bit hostile when you decided to fight me Raven; is there a reason for that?" Her father said as everybody walked down to the deck.

"Yes actually, there was a reason." Raven briefly looked at the man and continued, "it was because you were holding bolos."

"Bolos?"

"I guess you must have picked a different name for them... I'm talking about the small orb you were fiddling with earlier."

"You mean my balajuster?"

"That's a weird name for it."

"No it's not; but you'll find out why in a minute," Raven's father concluded just as everyone had stopped on the deck.

The admiral, who smiled as if he knew something the two soon-to-be-fighters did not, directed both of them to a white ring marked on the boat which, from the center, reached halfway to the edges of the great metal seacraft. "You may commence when the foghorn sounds; the winner is the first one to knock the other into the water below."

Raven walked into position and stood with her left arm stretched out facing her opponent, and her right arm pulled back to her hip. As she tried to bring out her staff, she remembered that Tera had it.

Oh no... how can I fight without my staff? I really wasn't expecting to have to fight at a school... Raven thought in frustration, now what am I going to do? Hang on! I could use my knife; it's not great, but at least it's something.

Buuuuuuur-ooooohh... The foghorn sounded, and without even realizing it, Raven had lost track of where her father was.

"He's behind you!" Raven heard Thira yell.

Oh how cliche is that? Raven turned around used the nearby air pressure to try to push her opponent far away, but was only half successful. As the man staggered back, he seemed slightly surprised at what Raven did.

"An air adept, eh? I wasn't really expecting that... I was more expecting a metal-mage." His play-on-words was not amusing her. "But I'd say it's time to display the power of my balajuster to you," he said with a smile as he brought out the orb.

Suddenly, Raven felt a stinging pain on her right ankle. What is this? It... The pain increased.

"Have a look Raven." When she looked, she saw her knife, but it was completely black, and was releasing black fumes. "It's balance has been adjusted; your once-neutrally aligned knife now is consumed by darkness, and there's nothing you can do about it... Do you get why it's called a balajuster now?"

"You sneaky..." Raven didn't like having to part with her only physical weapon, but without many other choices, she decided to throw it to somewhere where her opponent couldn't get it: over the side of the ship. Without a weapon, all Raven could rely on was her magic, and so without hesitation she shot a series of fireballs at the other fighter. Even as he evoided most of them, the ones which hit him, hit hard.

"Fire now is it? Can't you just make up your mind?" Raven's father looked into the air, then looked back at her and pointed his finger saying, "how about you try this!"

Raven felt her clothes get warmer, but she couldn't seem to take the heat away and absorb it as fire. "I don't know what you did, but you still won't win." Raven gathered in the air from around herself and suddenly noticed something - the area had been getting steadily foggier until she brought that air in. Either way though, I will just push him off the edge! Raven thought as she let out all the air she had in her bolo in one big gust aimed straight at her opponent.

When the man was hit by the blast this time, he was more than just staggering - he had all-out fallen over, and was still sliding away from Raven as the wind died down and the fog quickly rushed back in.

"Is that all you've got?" the father asked, "because I still don't intend to lose."

"You haven't seen even half of what I can do," Raven declared.

"And I don't intend to." And with that, Raven's father gathered darkness itself into a ball shaped area by his hand, and threw it at her, hitting her head and knocking her unconcious, backwards to the edge of the boat. "And now there shall be a soggy end for you..."

"I don't think so. You won't get that opportunity," Thira called out as she ran to be between the two combatants, "you have to fight me first."

"Thira! Get back here! This is not your fight; even if you were Raven's twin sister - which is what you seem like - this fight is one person against another one person. You may not fight," the admiral commanded Thira.

"Oh, I know... it's just that me and Raven..." Thira paused to look at her, "we are one person. We were separated into multiple bodies, but at the start of the day, we were as one mind in one body."

Their father was frustrated, the admiral was surprised, while the minstrel merely nodded.

"If that's true, then it should be just as easy to beat you as it was to beat your other half," Thira's father said.

"No; while Raven was studying your abilities from within the heat of battle, I had the opportunity to study them as a calm spectator... I know how to beat you."

Thira's opponent didn't seem to like this, so while gathering a ball of light into his hand, he declared, "That is irrelevant... You shall not win!"

When her father finally threw the ball of light at her, Thira calmly pulled out a bolo and absorbed it all; "nothing you do will work," she mumbled.

My turn. Without wasting a moment, Thira melted the metal beneath her father's feet and gathered all of the fog she could and turned it into water. "Wind, Fire, Earth & Water; I had thought that these were the building blocks of everything in the universe, but now I know that there is something more... Your 'balajusters' are merely primitive bolos, and I shall show you what they could do if they were at their full potential."

Using the water she had gathered to surround her father, she froze it and did the most fitting thing to him she could think of: adjusting the light-dark balance of the ice to make it untouchable by the man inside; the sphere of ice now was not only cold due to the frozen mass, but also lacked any of the warmth of the light essence she had now removed.

"Surrender now, father, or I shall shrink the bubble until you do."

"Su- father?! I don't have any children; you must be mistaken."

"No, your abilities are too unique for that kind of mistake... try remembering back twenty years, to a woman you probably decided to... have a little fun with. She was my mother."

"..."

"I thought so... so shall you surrender?"

"Never to anyone, even if you are related to me."

"I see... so be it." Thira started shrinking the bubble of dark ice until it couldn't stay spherical, and when her father still made no attempt to escape, the bubble wrapped around his body until it looked like a full skin-tight piece of clothing.

...And in an instant, the bubble seemed to completely disappear. Knowing that it was impossible for anything to corrode her father's body from the inside-out when it was attacking from the outside, Thira could only think of one place he could have escaped to: the void. With this in mind, she opened a portal to the void and immediately saw her father fall out. He was concious, but only barely.

---
A few minutes earlier
---

In her unconcious state, Raven had been in another place...

"Where am I?" she thought aloud, "this place looks familiar, but..."

Although Raven couldn't remember at the moment, she was actually on the ship where she had just been fighting her father, only everything was a shade darker than it should have been. All of the people were gone except one - the man who could gaze into people's souls. Getting up from where she had been hit down to, Raven walked over to him.

"I'm surprised you made it here so soon after I told you about it," the man said.

"Who are you?" Raven asked, "and where are we?"

"Ah... I guess your method of getting here did a bit to your memory... My name is Luke Thruit, and you are on the dark half of the boat you were just on, where you fought your own father in a duel."

"Dark half? My father? How do you know all this?"

"I am a clairvoyant; I am reading the parts of your mind which know the truth about this place, even though your concious mind does not."

"Then I guess I can ask you anything about this place and you will know the answer, right?"

"No, I only know what you know. In truth, the only important thing I have left to tell you about this place is that it is directly related to the place I refered to when I said you had the ability to hide in your own pocket."

"So this is my 'pocket'?"

"Yes, but you are not hiding in it; my normal eyes can see your body."

"But this is my body right here, isn't it?"

"No, that is merely your conciousness; your real body is still in the normal world, and to make sure that you can return to it with as little pain as possible, you should go back to where you woke up here in this 'dark half'."

"I guess that I should go... but wait; what is happening in the real world?" Raven began to remember where she was and why she was there, "And why hasn't my body been pushed into the sea yet?"

"Thira stepped in. Right now she's got your father trapped in a hollow sphere of dark ice... wait... go back. Now. Your body will be lost if you do not. I shall guide you so that you are lying in the right spot here."

Raven rushed back to where she thought she entered the realm. "Here, right?" she asked.

"No; two steps to your left, face up, with your head facing the sea," he responded.

Raven moved into position; "Now?"

"Yep. Now just imagine you and your body being one again."

As Raven successfully returned to her body, she saw her father sneaking up behind Thira. "Behind you, Thira," Raven tried to yell, but only got a whisper.

"Ahh!" Thira had been caught in nearly exactly the same type of trap she had tried to get her father in. Raven, thinking that the darkness bubble Thira was in was merely an area of extra dark element, decided it would be best if she removed this darkness, but was caught by surprise when the dark bubble turned into a bubble of void. Raven could not hear Thira's cry as she was lost into the void.

Angry with the current turn of events, Raven did something rather simple yet effective: she tackled her father into the ocean.

---

Tera had just re-entered the void when she heard someone cry out; since when was it possible to hear anything in the void?

Then Thira appeared.

Focusing on the fact that their minds were in the same place, Tera telepathically spoke to her new company. Raven?

No... Thira. Raven got us split apart again.

How nice... do you need a way out?

Can that staff take us both? If it can, then I'll go with you.

Really? It'll be nice to have company I guess.

---
A few minutes later
---

After having been pulled out of the water, Louis brought Raven and her father to stand in front of the admiral.

"Although this duel was a little unorthodox, it is still my duty to report the winner..." the admiral said.

In an (unsuccessful) attempt to build suspense, the admiral paused before delivering the results: "and the winner is... neither of you; It was a draw."

"What? But I knocked him into the sea!" Raven complained.

"But you also fell in yourself," Louis reminded her.

"But... but..." Upon seeing the admiral's determined face and realizing that complaining would get her nowhere, Raven conceded, "Fine... What's next mister teacher sir?" she asked Louis with misdirected contempt.



OoC: All done. Wow... this extra bit looks to be about twice as long as the original bit... in the number of lines, anyway.

Word count: 1747 (original); 2900ish (Character Fiction exclusive); 4650ish (Total)

That was longer than I thought...

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• SSBB Section on the Main Site.
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• Make Cody a Webmaster.
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• Other ZU stuff.