[IC] In Enemy Territory

[Midna-Phobia]

Grace nodded slightly at the boy's words. "I think we can always learn new things." She mused aloud, perhaps not entirely on topic. "Trying to improve yourself is a good goal in life. It's something you can always be striving towards. Whether you want to be stronger or better informed or even just more confident in yourself." That last part was probably something she had to strive towards herself. She could imagine though, that the pressure for Kyle to be able to confidently control his powers was a little more necessary as his powers had the potential to be more destructive if left untamed.

She doubted anything like what happened in her younger years would happen again, she had felt a lot more confident in herself back then, and her powers had been stronger as a result. However as Kyle mentioned he was also open to making friends she smiled. "Honestly, I didn't think I'd make any friends this year." She admitted quietly. "I had kind of resigned myself to a year of quiet isolation." It was a little depressing to say aloud, but it was a truth she was not ashamed of. Truth be told over the years she'd developed the ability to be fairly happy on her own. In saying that thigh it was a lot nicer to have someone to talk to.

[TimasheTiger]

Kyle couldn't help but grin devilishly at the girl with her words, "I have to admit, those do sound like good words to live by," the amount of sarcasm in his voice was palpable, but he couldn't help and poke fun at the girl. Despite how desperately Grace should be the one to follow those words, he knew there was truth to that on his own end too, there was still much left to work on, and so much more to learn. As he continued to listen to her and her original plan of isolation, he found himself sympathizing with her, for isolation was something he was quite familiar with as well.

All in all being said, a new companion would be a fresh change of pace and in a way, Kyle found himself wanting to help Grace, to open up and find that powerful water warrior inside of her. His mind had settled on it since the beginning, but it was at this point that he openly confirmed it to himself. He'd already made the offer to speak with her on mana sources, all he needed to do now, was simply wait for her to accept the invitation. In the meantime though, it seemed as if the last of the students had gone up for the course, Mr. Steele was beginning to address the student again.

[Midna-Phobia]

Grace huffed slightly and turned her head. "Fine. Next time I'll keep my life lessons to myself." She pouted before turning back to him and giving Kyle a slight smile. However anymore words shared between the pair would have to wait as the teacher went into another speech.

"Alight, so now that I have more of an idea of where you are all at in terms of your power development and control it gives me an indication of where to start you out on your training. Now, because it would be difficult for me to supervise and assist all of you, we like to try and pair some of the lesser experienced of you with those who have a little more control. I'll still be here to mentor, assist and supervise and of course any of you are free to request to work on your own or request to swap partners if things are not working out. So I'll get to work on finding pairings I think should work. If anyone would like to offer suggestions or requests I will take those into consideration too."

Despite the fact that his words were comforting and encouraging, Grace got the feeling that he may be forced to say them, and that perhaps he was not as passionate a teacher as he could be. She supposed maybe the same thing got tiring after a long time, but that didn't mean they should make things uncomfortable for their students. He was a rather large and intimidating man after all.

[TimasheTiger]

Kyle looked around, everyone's auras were rapidly pulsating, anxious and fearful, to know who they would be paired up with. Already though there were other students gathering together in pairs or finding students they thought they would pair well with. Interestingly enough there were even some students approaching him and as the questions to be paired up with him began, Kyle's mind slowly drew over to Grace. Kyle couldn't feel any significant auras directed at Grace and that was disheartening, but also a good thing, because...

Kyle raised his hand and kindly apologized to the people before him, "I'm sorry, but I've already chosen my partner."

The student closest to him asked, "Wait, who did you pick?"

Extending his finger towards Grace he spoke, "Her."

[Midna-Phobia]

Grace stood back contently as people began to pair up. Her gaze shifted over to Kyle as others began moving over to him, asking to be his partner and she smiled, despite herself. He said he’d like to make friends; this was probably a really good opportunity for him. She then looked around slightly, though no one had really caught her attention to be her buddy, so it was more likely she’d have to be paired by the teacher. When she looked back at Kyle next he was pointing at her and everyone who had surrounded him to ask to be his partner was looking at her in surprise.

Instantly Grace blushed slightly, picking up quickly what was going on as people moved away, disappointed, some giving her odd looks. She walked back over to Kyle at this point, unable to hide the smile on her face. “You don’t have to, you know.” She said softly as she stood beside him. “I don’t mind if you want to have someone else as your partner.” Although she was really glad he’d chosen her, she didn’t want to feel like she was holding him back, or he was picking her because they were friends when he wanted to pick someone else more. If they had been getting graded as a pair she would have outright refused.

[TimasheTiger]

The group, disappointed, began to disperse and Grace quietly piped up. Kyle turned to her smiling.

"You don't have to you know. I don’t mind if you want to have someone else as your partner.”

"I know I don't have to, but I want to, despite what you may think, or believe in, I think and believe that there's a lot of talent inside of you, and I'm gonna bust it out of you." Kyle then extended his hand forward to her, "you and I are gonna work hard this year, alright? Before you know it, I think you're going to see a difference."

He really did mean that, her display today was pitiful, but he knew there was something waiting to be let loose and he wanted to help build up her confidence to unleash her hidden potential. That and he wanted to see if there was any kind of mana source within her that she could link to, if she could do that, her power would increase exponentially.

[Midna-Phobia]

When Kyle assured her that having her as his partner was something that he wanted to do Grace smiled a little and blushed slightly. She always felt bad when she thought this, but sometimes she was glad that Kyle couldn’t see. Then again she really had no clue as to the limits of his sight. He could certainly make out shapes at the very least, maybe he could tell when she smiled and blushed. She kind of hoped not. She felt a lot more comfortable thinking he couldn’t see how lame she was sometimes.

As his hand extended towards her, Grace looked at him in surprise, glancing from his hand, up to his face and then back again before she reached out hesitantly and shook it. “I’ll do my best.” She promised, since it was really the only thing she could assure him. For some reason Kyle seemed to think she was capable of a lot more than she did. Then again she’d heard that you’re always your own worst critic. So maybe he was seeing something she wasn’t. “Okay then, Coach. Should we get started?” Grace shrugged slightly, still smiling to herself.

[TimasheTiger]

"If the teacher is even going to let us begin."

Looking around, it seemed that was exactly the case, maybe it was to get people somewhat acquainted with each other. That being said, Kyle was going to need to discuss more theory before really putting Grace to practice. There was one thing in particular that had bothered him, is what Grace had said about water. He'd only read things in textbooks, well, felt is more like it, and he seemed to know more about water's limitless properties than she did.

"What you said earlier, about water moving around objects," he wanted to confront this problem immediately, "You know that water does more than just move around objects right? It pushes, it pulls, it can rush you away or cradle you gently, if its hot enough it boils, if its cold enough it freezes, depending on an object's density it sinks or floats in it, water sustains life and can be a harbinger of death. Water has such limitless potential, my first question is why not use that to your advantage?"

[Midna-Phobia]

Grace fidgeted slightly at the question, casting her gaze down to her feet. “I just… I don’t… being aggressive and confrontational isn’t really in my nature.” She said meekly, knowing it was a poor excuse. “I’m aware water can do all that… and I have practiced some of that stuff… I can freeze water and if I concentrate I can boil it… but only in small amounts.” The reality of the situation was that Grace just didn’t practice with her powers a lot. Her experiences with them hadn't been exceptionally positive so she tended to associate her powers with something bad.

She was sure she would get over the mentality eventually, but it was going to take time. That and she supposed she’d never seen herself as the ‘limitless potential’ type of person. Kyle seemed to think so. But Kyle was also a lot more confident than she was. “I guess… as far as bodies of water go I’m a little stream.” She tried to explain. It would take a lot of rain to make her into a rushing river with any kind of real power. Then again if anyone could do it, it was probably Kyle.

[TimasheTiger]

"I never said you had to be confrontational or aggressive Grace, water is a force, but not with ill will. Even streams can carry away a tennis ball," he smirked a little, it was meant to calm her down, but he may have only agitated her more.

"look why don't we start off with something simple," as tempted to see how much force with water she could produce, he didn't want to give her a heart attack by forcing her to do something so 'aggressive', Instead he picked up a tennis ball that had landed close nearby during their exercise. "Ok, so this thing isn't going to be coming at you at 60 mph, instead, I want you to just show me what you can do with it, and by that, I mean how well you can manipulate this physical object with water."

[Midna-Phobia]

Grace looked up from her shoes eventually and smiled slightly despite herself and she listened as Kyle offered her a gentler exercise and she nosed slightly. There was still a fair amount of water in the bucket she had used during the earlier exercise, she walked over to it and picked it up, bringing it over to where he was standing. She took a few nervous breaths, looking around anxiously. However everyone else seemed focused on their own practices so no one was looking at her that she noticed. Another few nervous breaths, mostly to stall just that little bit longer before she slowly drew the water from the bucket.

She pushed it forward in a gentle glob that kind of sucked the tennis ball up into it. It floated to the top of the glob quickly, which was a relief because she had thought it was going to fall straight through. Strangely enough, Grace found closing her eyes helped her focus on what she was doing. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as difficult as she has thought it was, moving water around herself was something she did often, usually to amuse herself in the bath or shower, and the added tennis ball wasn’t adding as much difficulty as she thought it would. Grace even let out a small giggle as she moved it around her body, turning in the opposite direction every now and then as if it was some kind of weird dance.

[TimasheTiger]

She seemed relieved that he had given her this simple task, and quickly complied, grabbing a bucket of water and beginning her focus. To be expected, she effortlessly manipulated the water around the tennis ball and moved it around herself as if she were dancing, the fact that she seemed amused by it was kind of...cute. So she could at least move an object with mass in her water manipulation, but could she do it with multiple objects? She had done it with the rain earlier, it couldn't hurt to see how much multi-tasking she could handle with a few tennis balls.

"Good, keep manipulating the ball exactly like that," he stepped over and reached for another tennis ball and grabbed it, "We're going to add more to the equation now, I'm going to keep adding tennis balls, when I add a new ball, use a new way to manipulate that ball different from the first ball. The moment you lose concentration is when the exercise will be over."

He smiled at her, "Be creative, have fun with it," he rolled the ball over to her, "Go."

[Midna-Phobia]

When Kyle rolled the ball over to her, Grace hardly missed a beat as she flicked the ball up to her chest height with her foot and split the water glob in half, catching the second ball in the empty water glob. She stopped spinning at this point, moving two balls in two different directions taking up a little more concentration than she could spare on spinning, however she seemed to have no problem moving the balls in opposite directions around her torso. At the addition of a third ball she was forced to open her eyes as she concentrated a little more.

The task was swiftly moving to difficult and she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle many more. By the fifth ball she knew she was barely holding it together and there was this small, waisted glance of worry cast in Kyle’s direction as he rolled another ball towards her and she kicked it up like the previous four, however as she moved to catch it with more water everything seemed to fall apart and water splashed all around her, the tennis balls scattering in all directions. Grace sighed in defeat and then turned to look at Kyle with a small shrug. She knew hadn't done very well.