Reward

"Looks like you two had fun." Lleu said standing over the two of us.

Me and Davy were laying on the ground after we won the race together. Lleu offered both of us a hand and then pulled us up to our feet.

"We did win, right?" I asked, still unsure of our victory.

"You did. It was close between you and Loki, but the rest of us didn't have a chance of catching up." Lleu's smiled at us with a proud look on his face. "Let's go get your reward off, Miss Duffy."

Everyone was back to being human again, and they were all panting and gasping for breath. Loki looked the most exhausted, and his body was drenched in sweat. I couldn't judge anyone; I was also swimming in my sweat, and my legs were shaking slightly as I walked. The only one of us who looked fine was Davy.

"You did a great job, everyone." Miss Duffy was handing everyone water bottles and giving them words of encouragement. "Usually, half the students fail to transform with the first lesson, but everyone here was able to do it. It doesn't matter if it was the first try or not."

Me and Lleu were holding onto Davy as we limped towards Miss Duffy. "Miss Duffy, what kind of prize did me and Davy win?"

"Prize?" Miss Duffy began sweating, but it wasn't because she had overexerted herself.

"Yeah, you promised the winners a reward. Me and Davy won, so what reward do we get?"

"Oh yeah, I did say something like that! Give me a second to go grab it."

Miss Duffy transformed into her coyote form and ran back into the school. When she came back, she was holding the handle of a metallic box in her mouth. She returned to a human and began to rummage through the box.

"Here it is!" She exclaimed as she pulled a sandwich from her box. The sandwich was on half a baguette and had tuna and lettuce as a filling. She tore the sandwich in half and passed us each a half. "I got this from this great sandwich shop I found the other day. It's run by a culinary mage, so his food is divine. I was going to keep it a secret, but I can tell you where it is."

Davy immediately began to dig into the sandwich, I had seen the way he gets around tuna, and it's like everything else in the world disappears. I, however, didn't share his enthusiasm for the baked delicacy with tuna. Don't get me wrong it was a good sandwich, probably the best I had eaten, but it wasn't what I thought of when I heard reward.

Miss Duffy could see my disappointment by the look on my face and panicked. "How about I give you private training as well? I'm free tomorrow night, and I'm sure with your talent you can learn a lot. Foxy, why don't you come too?"

Loki's face lit up after hearing that. I could tell he probably didn't like losing by the way he looked before. "Sure Miss Duffy, I'll be there."

"Great, the three of you can meet me out here tomorrow after your lessons. And anyone else who is interested can join too, but you all have to promise me you won't tell Woods. He will scold me for giving your class special treatment."

Most of the class seemed excited, especially Loki and Jack. Hell, even I was excited. The partial transformation showed me there was more that my body could do that I had yet to learn.

The rest of the lesson was spent practising perfecting our transformations. The transformation was not instantaneous, and our bodies took a few seconds to transform. Davy was the fastest being able to transform into a cat in under a second, and it seemed he was more skilled at transforming than me.

'I wonder if he could also use partial transformation under the right conditions?' I thought as we practised transforming by running together and switching our form mid-run.

Lleu had the lengthiest transformation. It took almost 10 seconds for him to go from human to sheep. His sheep form was so incredibly fluffy and woolly that we all took it in turns to lay in his wool. His face was bright red when he went back to being a human afterwards.

By the end of the lesson, everyone felt they had a better grasp on their animal side, and we all left for lunch feeling extremely hungry.

I felt a better connection with the whole class after the lesson, so we all decided to eat at the same table during lunch. Miss Duffy also decided to eat with us, but when Mr Woods spotted her eating with us, she was dragged away kicking and screaming.

I saw the lion and leopard in the corner of my eye. They and some of the other big cats glared holes into the backs of our heads, but they didn't dare approach us.

I tried to sit and eat with Davy and Lleu, yet the rest of our class had other plans. They all wanted to ask about how I transformed the first time and asked me questions about the partial transformation. In truth, I didn't know how to answer them. Every time I transformed it didn't feel like I had any control, it was like a cough. It bubbles up inside of me until I have to let it out.

However, explaining this to everyone in the class wasn't easy, and Davy was wearing an expression that showed he didn't like sharing me with everyone else. He got between everyone else and me and hissed at them to get their attention.

"Close your eyes and pretend you are animal." As he said that he transformed into a cat. After everyone finished looking at him with awe and amazement, he transformed back. "Once you open your eyes, you are animal."

Davy smiled at me smugly, but he had yet to realise all the attention I was getting had just shifted to him. All our classmates tried closing their eyes and transforming, and none of them could do it, so they all started to question Davy on how he did it and like me, he had no idea how to explain it.

After he reached his threshold of how much attention he could take, he looked at me with tears in his eyes.

'So Cute!' I couldn't help but scream in my mind as I looked at his saddened eyes. He turned into a cat and hid behind me. I wanted to pet him so badly, but I knew it wasn't appropriate to pat your friend's head or start scratching their ears.

"Hey guys, leave Davy alone. You know he isn't good at talking and besides, you will get your chance with Miss Duffy tomorrow." I came to Davy's aide, and after that everyone calmed down with the questions.

When lunch ended, we returned to the omega classroom for our final lesson of the day which is magical beast studies.

We were all waiting for our teacher to arrive when we heard loud tapping on the window. I looked over to see a bright blue bird banging its beak against the window.

"Open the window! Squawk Open the window!" The bird yelled grabbing everyone's attention.

Eventually, after all the squawking and shouting Rie opened the window to let the bird in. When the bird came in it flew to the front of the classroom and transformed into a small woman wearing a bizarre outfit.

She seemed to be wearing a normal outfit for a teacher, but she had a pair of massive brown gloves that came up to her elbow. She also had a chain wrapped around her shoulder almost like a purse or satchel.

"Good evening class, my name is Frieda Lambert, but please call me Mrs Lambert. I'm your magical beast studies teacher, and today I will be going through what magical beasts are and how they differ from regular animals." Mrs Lambert bowed slightly as she addressed the class. "My assistant will be bringing some subjects in the meantime I would like to learn all your names and your animals?"