[u]Codi Bailey[/u]

Codi, after safely bringing the people who had been injured, along with the healer, to the hospital, had retreated into her room to hide for a bit, and was thankful to see that her roommate wasn’t there. She did not recall ever having a formal conversation with her, but she was not in the mood to talk with anyone, not even the person she would be sharing living arrangements with. She had to let the stress of the day wear off, and it was particularly difficult, even though she was a person who could reach Zen in the worst of situations. She used the term ‘Zen’ on multiple occasions, although she also had to affirm that she didn’t hold Buddhist beliefs. It was primarily her figure of speech for being calm and at peace, although what had happened today was deeply troubling, for her.

She didn’t quite know what had happened, but even as someone who had to do the research on both Atticus’ powers and her own, she hadn’t recognized that roar she had heard in the distance as belonging to any sort of man or beast. Although she was sure, due to the fact that they were on an island, that the wildlife could be extremely unique, the thing that had attacked everyone had been anything but natural. As strong as what had gone up against it was, people had nearly died. Codi and Atticus weren’t even on their level of skill, and mentally calculating the odds, things didn’t look good for them. She was also aware that if it could happen once, it could happen again, and next time, it might happen to her, and she might be all alone by herself with no assistance.

Sitting on her bed, blankets piled up under Reef’s bulk, she reflected, and resolved that she wouldn’t be as trusting as she had been when she had first arrived. She enjoyed placing her trust in others, but already too many incidents had taught her that even the planning of the faculty and staff had major holes in it. There weren’t plans that had been arranged in case something went wrong, and people took challenges of strength so seriously that they might have brutally maimed someone if others weren’t monitoring them to ensure safety. If she was forced to fight in order to survive, she didn’t want to be the one dead or lying on a hospital cot. She wanted peace, but if she was seen as easy prey, then there was no hope of getting it in this school, or anywhere on this island.

Taking a deep breath, the unsettled fears turning into a strange mix of determination, and perhaps a deep-burning anger at herself, Codi stood up, pulling in Reef’s six arms so as not to knock anything over. The parasitic urchin felt bulky and awkward where he was fused to her back, and he was so frequently ignored by his host that he tended to just flail his arms about at whatever the insect’s simple mind thought was a threat. Codi needed to change her way of thinking about that, too. Reef was [i]fused to her back[/i], and their blood supply was the same, which meant that the parasite was an extension of her own body. She could even control him, but perhaps she needed to gain more control of the insect than what she had seen as sufficient in the past. She would force herself to always make sure the arms were held in a certain way, and that she could prevent even the slightest inclination the urchin had to swat anything that she didn’t see as a threat herself. She wouldn’t let it have free reign over unconscious actions, anymore.

Now hooked on a specific goal, Codi got up, and left the dorm room, heading off for the training hall. She was going to go train, until she was capable of protecting herself, so that she could finally enjoy some peace. It didn’t matter how many times she had to do a backwards-hug, or scratch at a dummy. 

She would do it, because once she set her goal, she didn’t stop going after it until she had succeeded.

[u]Atticus Fowler[/u]

Atticus took out his Tenor Saxophone and tried to play it in his dorm room, but to any well-trained musician’s ear, the music had a tense quality to it that would have indicated clear stress in the person who was performing it. Because Atticus did, in fact, have such a trained ear, he gained no satisfaction as the person who laid claim to being the source of the music. He tried to play jazz, but instead of sounding calm and peaceful, the tune was somehow harsh and uneasy, as though the notes were eager to leave the air and flee to some dark corner where they would never be found again. He tried pieces of music that were intended to sound uneasy or skittish, but the quality of the notes was still sub-standard. Atticus finally lowered the saxophone, still in his creature form, and looked at the instrument with a distinctly dissatisfied expression on his face, even though his features were already warped by an inhuman appearance.

He then sat down on his bed, and laid the silver saxophone down next to him, before putting his face in his hands, and shaking his head, forcing the stoic, unreadable expression it normally had to return. The people who had been hurt were fine, nobody had died. As much as he tried to reassure himself, the fact that the fight had happened at all still deeply worried him. What kind of environment was this school, if the first thing to happen when you wandered off alone was that you were attacked by some predatory species? Secondly, when students got lost, shouldn’t there be an easier way to locate them, versus simply sending a search party, when the search party just wound up in another bad situation at the same time? Actually, how did students get lost in the first place? Why would anyone wander off in such a dangerous place? It was pretty obvious that even strong meta-humans could die out there.

Atticus stood back up, and looked at a calligraphy paper he had hung up on his side of the room, bearing the Japanese word for ‘Courage’ that he had written himself. There were other words, too, but this one, in particular, applied to him the most strongly right now. This school seemed to bring out the most extreme aspects of a person’s nature, enough that it had seemed abnormal. Atticus was now thinking that it was actually probably more normal than he thought, if perhaps there were more incidents like the one that had just happened. What kind of things did that do to a normal person’s mind, thinking that if you weren’t careful, you would wind up on a chopping block?

If he knew anything, Atticus was aware that this would probably have a worse effect on Codi’s mental state than his own. He deeply cared about her, as his best friend, but he had always been aware that she could be a bit ‘off’ or ‘misguided’ in her actions, even if they were often well-intended; some might say they were more disturbing, or an indication of something far worse, however. As kind as she could be, when she set a goal, she went to dramatic lengths in order to achieve them. Everyone had forgotten about punishing her for pushing Atticus over the waterfall after the fight that had injured several people, but that didn’t mean that it hadn’t happened. In the end, Codi hadn’t done it for the sake of a prank, but to finally prove whether or not Atticus’ creature form could breathe underwater. She was generally a follower, or someone who was willing to accommodate others, but in the end, if she felt like she was forced to do so, Codi could take control, and be ruthless with it, not allowing anyone else a say-so.

The controlling aspect of Codi’s personality was a part of her that Atticus was somewhat afraid of, even though he still greatly liked her. It was what had driven her to push him over the cliff in the jungle, and when she had just been learning her powers, what had caused her to take Atticus’ advice, which he still in certain ways regretted offering. In the past, when Codi had still been learning the exact nature of her powers, she had been aware of the bacterial toxins she could inject with the hidden syringes under her nails. The problem was that she did not know what each toxin was, or what it could do. She didn’t know if it had been lethal or not. The suggestion Atticus had given her was perhaps the most logical option, to obtain mice and test the toxins on them, but if it were not for the actual researching aspect of what she had done, Codi still strongly felt as though she had been torturing small mammals. Atticus felt guilty, because the research showed that although the toxins were non-lethal, they existed primarily to cause pain and hinder whatever was injected. Codi now knew the exact nature of each toxin, but the knowledge came with the intense guilt of knowing that innocent creatures had been harmed to learn such things.

Atticus didn’t want to think about what this incident would do to Codi’s mind, but knowing how they had never really trained to fight, it was possible that right about now, she would be heading off to train and become more powerful. In the end, he knew her well enough to properly guess what her actions might have been. She probably [i]was[/i] going off to train, although Atticus was not as quick as his friend to build any sort of new goals or resolves based on recent events. He felt drained, and much of it was because his own body had been forced through a certain degree of stress. The automatic change into a fish-creature without a conscious effort was a defense mechanism, and even though he wouldn’t get sick because of the way Codi had timed it, it still messed him up, to a certain degree.

Sighing, he got up, and decided to go and check on the people who had been hurt, to see if they were okay. Pausing, he grabbed his Tenor Saxophone, and put it in its hard-back case, where it would be safe, before heading out the door. Maybe it would give him some peace of mind to play for anyone who was interested in listening.