heartbreak

"Now students, before we end this lesson, you will start learning control. I will be going to give you separately a single task, those of the corresponding element I encourage to follow the example.

"Terra, your magic connects you to living things. You can grow them. Give them life, please do so." Dowling instructs her, with Terra growing a flower. She then makes it bloom but pushes too far, killing the flower.

"You can give too much life, so that's something to watch out for. Now, Musa you are overwhelmed by emotional input, I want you to minimize your field of perception, only focus on one point, one emotion." She instructs and the girl closes her eyes before reopening them, her usual violet shine being duller than usual with a relaxed smile on her face.

"Bloom can you light a single kindling without burning the others?" Farah asks, moving on to the redhead who has a small firepit from tiny sticks on her table.

After hovering her hand over the stack she manages to ignite a single kindling.

"Very good." She praises the girl who's wearing a loose cardigan over a red shirt and blue jeans, with some hair gathered in a knot on top of her head.

Musa also strayed from her usual look of two small bulbs of hair on her head to letting her hair flow down naturally, framing her face with a ponytail making some of her hair stick out a bit.

"Very nice Beatrix." The teacher says, while Beatrix is floating a small ball of lightning in front of her.

"Now Aisha, it's your turn." Mrs. Dowling says moving to the water fairy who gathers a tennis ball sized ball of water from a bowl, hovering it in the air.

"Good. But a large body of water is predictable, reliable. Try controlling elements of the whole, a single drop of water. Can you control that which fights control?" She asks, with Aisha splitting off two smaller balls from the big one, but she soon loses control and the water falls on the table, splashing her a bit as well.

"That's all for today." The teacher says, moving back to the front of the class.

"Are you cool?" Bloom asks her roommate, seeing that she's upset about her results.

"I'm fine, I'm going for a swim." Aisha replies.

"So, Gar what are you up to? More training the specialists?" Bloom asks the green haired teen.

"Yep." He says, stuffing his book in his bag.

"Want me to come?" She asks.

"Why? Do you want to join too?" He asks.

"No... too? Who else has joined?" She asks confused.

"Musa. She didn't tell you?" He replies surprised, stepping out of the room and heading towards the specialist training area.

"No. I wonder why. Why is she training though?" Bloom asks.

"It's not my place to get into details. Let's just say she has her reasons to want to be able to defend herself and her magic doesn't provide that, at least not yet. The other day I read about a mind fairy being able to control other peoples at will, wild right?" He says.

"Yeah, sounds pretty powerful." She agrees.

"Well, I gotta go. See you around." He says.

"Hey, are you going to the party tonight?" Bloom asks him.

"I don't know. Why?" He asks, "just curious." She replies, sticking out her tongue.

A few minutes later he has the few specialists he's training doing their daily warm ups, consisting of 10 minutes physical conditioning and then another 10 sparring 1v1 with his best student, a girl called Trixie fighting against two.

Shortly after the specialists start their workout Musa, wearing yoga pants and a sleeveless hoodie arrives.

"You finally made it." Garfield remarks with a smirk.

"I had to change and then I bumped into Sam and well." She says.

"Yeah yeah. I don't need to know more." He tells her, Musa feeling jealousy roll off him.

"Now, start your warmup." He says and she lies down, angling up her legs before doing sit-ups.

With Garfield joining her to motivate her and because otherwise he'd only laze around anyways.

"What are you jealous about?" Musa asks him while they are doing the sit-ups.

"Does it matter?" He asks.

"Kinda. I want to learn to figure out what the emotions mean." She says.

"Fine. I'm jealous of your relationship with Sam." He replies.

"Why? Aren't you and Bloom a thing? You're so close." Musa asks.

"You do realize that I am closer to you than her right?" He asks chuckling.

"I don't count. I have Sam." She says huffing while sitting up.

"Either way. I mean we did kiss a few times, but I don't know. I think she just felt indebted cuz of my foot and me helping her with her magic. Other than those times she didn't show interest in me as far as I can tell." He says looking at Musa, who's only doing her sit-ups half assed, thinking about what he said.

"Hey! Do it right." He instructs her, pushing her back upwards.

"What are you doing here Musa?" Aisha asks, stepping out of the pool next to the stage Garfield and Musa are on.

"She's been training with me the past two days, now don't distract her please. She already has issues staying focused as I've seen." He says, looking down at Musa at the last part, getting a roll of the eyes in response from the empath.

"Alright. Now running." He says, making her sprint back and forth in between two lines over and over.

"That should be enough warmup. Relax a minute and then come back up here so I can start teaching you some tricks." He says, having watched her while she ran back and forth around 40 times.

"So, you and Sam how's that going?" He asks.

"Good I think. It's hard to keep in touch at times because he's Terra's brother." Musa says.

"Why would that matter?" Garfield asks.

"It's a roommate thing." She says.

"Great explanation and also, you do realize that because of you I now have a bunkbed in my room so I can get at least some sleep." He tells her, since she sneaks over almost every night, sometimes not even because of her being an empath but rather out of habit, not that she would tell him that.

"Yeah yeah. Admit it you enjoy me coming over more than anyone." She challenges him with a smirk while joining him on the platform.

His other students also heading their way.

"I admit, it does smell good in my room when you sleep over." He says.

"Warm up is done, what's on the schedule today?" Trixie asks, with the other four students waiting next to her.

"I'm gonna teach you a few hand-to-hand combat moves you then can practice in pairs of two." He says.

Today I'll show you three moves I want you to engrave in your body.

"Sky could you come up here please?" He asks and the blonde specialist switches places with Musa, who steps off the platform intimidated, feeling the dislike of Garfield's other students.

"Go easy on Musa alright? She's an empath. She can sense that you don't accept her. But let me tell you something, she has as much right to be here as you. She asked me to train her so I will, same goes for you. If you want me to continue to train with you after Silva is back on his feet, then I will." He tells the group, noticing Musa's expression change.

"Sorry. We should be glad to have you joining us. Some fairies look down on us specialists." Trixie apologizes to Musa, patting her shoulder.

"No worries. I'm just glad to be here." Musa says.

"Alright, now then. First move is pretty simple and you probably have done it a lot before." He says, lowering his stance and sweeping sky's leg, stopping once the back of his leg connects with Sky's leg.

"Now what is different about this approach." He says and wraps his leg around sky's pinning one leg in the underside of his knee and tugs the leg towards him finally, Sky falling backwards.

"This way you have the same result as with a usual leg sweep, but with more control, like if Sky jumps over the wrap around." He says, nodding to the blonde while showing them the same move again, Sky jumping over it.

"You are far less exposed like this. You can jump away, you can close the distance, there are many opportunities." He says, jumping back a step.

"Now make sure to practice this slowly otherwise you could hurt your partner's ankle." Garfield adds.

"Second technique, is simple, you shield your face and organs like this. Making yourself pretty small. Now while that sounds like being defensive, don't be fooled." He says, putting both arms in front of him to shield from blows he then gives Sky a large pad, making him hold the training device up in front of him.

"And once you are shielded properly you do this." He says ramming himself against the pad sideways, while extending one elbow.

"And the last technique is this." Garfield says, tackling sky over by diving at one of his legs, sliding on his shin and pushes the leg upwards and topples the large teen over.

"Now finally you can guess which one is the best of these against burned ones?" Garfield asks.

"The second one?" The group guesses.

"No, the last one. Remember, like I told you before try to take out their legs." Garfield says.

"Now, train it." He says and the students hurry along.

"Sky, thanks for the help, I think you might want to talk to Silva now though, by my estimate he won't last much longer if they are unsuccessful in killing the burned one." Garfield advises the teen, looking at the pale teacher holding himself up on a bo staff.

"Yeah. Thanks." He sighs worried and walks to the teacher.

"That was nice of you." Musa says, climbing up on the stage with him.

"It had to be done. Sky's in denial." Garfield tells her.

"Now, you saw the techniques. Do your worst." He smiles cockily.

Musa dashes towards him and tackles his leg, pulling it upwards with him landing on his back hard.

"Oh, don't worry about me holding back on you." She says smiling while leaning over him.

"Yeah, I kinda see that." He groans with a chuckle and Musa gets up offering a hand to him.

Garfield grabs the hand but instead of getting up he pulls her down, lightly shoving her legs out from under her with his and catches her as she falls down on him.

"I'll do my best to do the same." He tells her, his hands holding her secure at her hips so she doesn't hurt herself.

"Good. I don't want special treatment." She says, knocking away his hands and flops down on him, knocking the wind out him for a moment, making her grin victoriously while lying on top the green haired boy, looking down at him, with her head in her palms and both elbows supporting her arms on his chest.

"You are really cheeky for a newbie." He grunts, knocking her arms out from under her and holds them behind her back, smirking at her before standing back up with her.

Unknown to the two Sam went looking for Musa and observed them for a while.

"Now, come at me." Garfield says, this time ready for her.

Musa tries the first move, but she doesn't succeed in pulling his leg out from under him, only wrapping the back of her knee around his calf.

"That's fine for now. Getting the technique down is a good first step, strength will only develop in time." He tells her. Musa nods and then tries out the next move, shielding herself before jabbing her elbow at him with Garfield catching the attack in his palm a hand width away from his chest.

"Nice, try to imagine pushing your elbow to a spot behind me. And change the angle slightly, you want your arm to be in a nice horizontal line." He tells her, pushing her raised shoulder down slightly.

Musa then attempts this again but gets distracted by feeling Sam's anger from the other side of the training yard.

"Whoa." Garfield says, catching her when she stumbles and crashes into him, her glowing eyes locked on Sam.

"I gotta go. Sorry." Musa says and hurries after Sam who is walking away from the area.

"Alright." Garfield says to himself, shrugging his shoulders and sits down on the platform, observing his other students, giving the remaining four of them some pointers and correcting their form.

Once he's content with their progress he takes one of the training swords and closes his eyes before going through some katas.

"Hey, Gar. How come you know all this stuff anyways?" Trixie asks him, helping up her sparring partner after knocking him over with the pad in hand.

"I worked for the army for a long time so to speak and they made sure to train me thoroughly." He answers void of emotion.

"That must've been exciting." She replies, jabbing her elbow at her training partner.

"I was 6. So in a way... I guess." He says.

"Wow. No wonder you're so good." Another student compliments.

"Anyways, continue on your training." He tells them.

"Hmm weird." He mumbles, trying to use his small control of Mind magic together with his spirit magic in his palm, expecting either it to take form of a wolf or of the cloak which covered Musa the other day but it is a tiny purple tiger instead.

"Well might as well." He says, taking off his jacket and uses his magic to tske form of a tiger, walking over to one of the large trees in the training area. Once there he starts to claw at the tree wildly, covering it in claw marks more and more, always repeating the same move, jumping at the tree and clawing at it three times before dropping down again.

After keeping this up for a while, pretty much removing the bark of the tree up to eye level he runs towards it and climbs it up to a branch about 10 meters high.

He then lies down in his tiger form, observing his students training.

In the meantime, Musa caught up to Sam.

"Hey Sam. How is everything?" She asks him cheerfully, taking his hand in her own.

"Why do you care? You were obviously busy getting pawed at by the school's freak." Sam replies disappointed.

"We are sparring Sam. Not pawing each other. You know that I care about you." She tells him, poking his chest.

"Didn't look like sparring to me." Sam says.

"Well it was, sure we joked around a bit but he's just my friend." Musa says.

"Friend. Huh? Why would you want to be friends with him? He got experimented on as a kid and killed a group of 13 of specialists." Sam tells her.

"How do you know that?" Musa asks shocked.

"I heard my dad talking to the headmistress. Look Musa I don't want you to be around that guy." Sam says.

"But I need him. I want to be able to fight." Musa explains.

"Fine, then you know what? Go to your freak but I can't do this. It's just too weird. I mean you falling for me because of what I sound like is already freaky as it is without involving Garfield." Sam tells her, breaking up with Musa, who is left standing in the gardens crying and runs away towards the woods, while her powers are getting out of control and the students around her overwhelm her.

Garfield is still lying on top of the tree when his ears pick up a student running towards the barrier and since he knows that someone let the burned one free in the past he decides to check it out, jumping sliding off the tree and takes off after the person he heard.

After maybe 5 minutes he finds the source of the crying being Musa who is walking away with tears streaming down her face.

"Musa. What happened? What's wrong?" Garfield asks concerned, turning back human.

"Just leave. I can't be around people now." She says sorrowfully.

He turns into a wolf and closes the distance towards her, Musa sitting down on the floor and he lies his head in her lap, his cold snout poking her hand, licking over it.

"Whatever it is, it'll be OK." Garfield says.

"You are weird." She laughs at this slightly, seeing his wolfs mouth talk.

He remains silent and just lies his head and neck over her legs.

"Thank you." She says quietly after a while, scratching the back of his neck.

"You're welcome." He says.

"Aren't you going to ask?" She asks sadly.

"No." The wolf says, closing his eyes while lying in her lap and wraps his bushy tail around her waist protectively.

"Sam broke up with me. He thinks I'm weird and being friends with you is a bad thing. And I just can't control my powers." She explains anyways, scratching his fluffy ears.

"You're not weird." He says.

"Well me talking to a guy who magically becomes an animal isn't exactly screaming normal." She grins.

"Oh and walking through walls is?" Garfield replies challengingly.

"Thank you Gar and I'm sorry you had such a rough life." Musa tells him, hugging the wolf around his neck with Garfield turning human again, rubbing her back comfortingly.

"So, Sam... want me to rough him up?" Garfield asks with a smirk.

"No. It's fine. While the way he told me wasn't great I guess I understand why he wanted to break up." She says with Garfield sitting down next to her.

"What happened to your shirt? Rip through it?" She asks.

"No, I forgot it at the specialist area." He tells her.

"Shall we go back? You can lock yourself in my room if it helps." He offers, holding out his hand to her.

"Yeah. Thanks." She agrees and takes his hand. The next thing she knows he's holding her close to his chest with two enormous wings sprouting behind him, taking them airborne gradually and Garfield then flies them over to the school with Musa smiling excitedly, her eyes locking on Garfield for a moment and kisses his cheek, whispering "thanks" before looking back down, watching the students below them.